Courthouse buzz today is strong relating to recent meeting re jail overcrowding issues.  Judge Ross is supposedly looking for written suggestions from judges to alleviate jail overcrowding issue (jail today is at roughly 102.5% capacity).  Concerns relating to impending national audit and monetary fines and recent publicity of the issue are possibly making this a "hot button" issue.

In my humble opinion, many of the suggestions from my post of 9/29 (which were synthesized from talks with many people), if implemented, could help solve some of the overcrowding issues.  Why can't Judge Ross sign an order a la Hillsborough and St. Lucie allowing for drug sick and non-violent offenders or BS VOP'S to be released on GPS (see prior posts for articles and link to admin. order in Hillsborough).  Why can't every judge involve themselves in plea negotiations?  Why can't these ridiculous violations and probationary sentences be dealt with in a manner that terminates sentences without prison time (as in other counties)?  Why can't there be consistency amongst judges on running magistrates? Etc., etc.

Of course, the very real danger is that some of our less than visionary judges will interpret the jail population crisis to mean that more people have to go to prison.  This would, of course, be an extremely ham-fisted approach, particularly in regard to the overwhelming scholarship as to the huge economic and cross-generational social cost, borne, of course, by the citizens of Broward, that a "send 'em to prison" attitude has when dealing with non-violent and drug sick individuals.  And let's not forget that Broward judges, unbelievably, already send people to prison at nearly twice the rate of Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.  Don't let them use overcrowded jails (which I believe the judge's have created) as an excuse to send more poor folks to prison.

I have also learned that the National Institute of Corrections (http://nicic.org/) should already be in possession of the letter from BSO requesting the audit I spoke of in the 9/29 post.  They are assessing what they need to do and the scope of the audit at this time.  I will post again when I receive my copy of the letter and when I receive more info from the NIC.

Please call Judge Ross's office at 831-7837 and make your own suggestions, add a comment to this post, or better yet, write to info@jaablaw.com to be set up as an author in order to post on the main blog page.  We need people from all sides of the issues (State, BSO, Judges, Defense, Community) in order to create an open dialogue.  If we can pierce the veil of secrecy and defeat the culture of fear, maybe our judicial administration will begin to act more proactively in order to address all of the issues plaguing Broward's criminal justice system. 

Lastly, Collections Court will not be continued past Nov. 30.  The conventional wisdom on that decision is that it was probably more expensive to run than the collections that were recovered warranted.

Bill Gelin