By Michael Bielawski
A Republican lawmaker from Newport is concerned that the state’s court systems are not issuing strong enough rulings for serious and repeat crimes. The issue came up when the House Appropriations Committee met December 19 to discuss crime-related issues including an ongoing case backlog last week.
Rep. Woodman Page (R-Newport), an Appropriations Committee member, addressed the issue during the session. “My colleagues and I, we sat in one day on some court proceedings in Newport, and we recognize that there is a backlog and work is being done to make progress on that,” Page said.
He suggested that lenient court rulings could be contributing to the problem.
“The concern is that some of these rulings are not beneficial to the public related to safety,” he said.
Rep. Martin Lalonde, D-South Burlington and Chair of House Judiciary, responded. He suggested that the time gap between the offense and the consequence – regardless of what that consequence may be – is the bigger problem.
“What I’m focusing on for the Appropriations Committee is not what those consequences are at the end, whether that’s more incarceration, probation, deferred sentences, there’s deferral to Community Justice Centers,” he said. “I’m not talking about the consequences, what those are so much, it’s the time frame between the offense and the consequence.”
Nonetheless, Lalonde argues that lighter penalties are more beneficial than harsher ones. He goes as far as to suggest that probation is a “higher deterrence” than jail time.
He says, “There are studies that say that probation you have much better outcomes than incarceration for instance. So reports that are focused on doing more probation, they are following what the research says is a higher deterrence value.”
He talks about the option of “precharge diversion” which is when offenders for certain nonviolent offenses can engage in other community-based programs instead of jail time or other consequences.
“One of our other bills is looking at expanding precharge diversion,” Lalonde said. “If you have precharge diversion you have even closer consequences under a different roof from a Community Justice Center or Restorative Justice but it’s still consequences closer to the offense and also takes pressure off the courts.”
Page acknowledged these efforts but argued that there is still a public perception that courts are not being tough enough on offenders. “That’s all well and good and I get it but there is a perception out there that the rulings are not as strong as perhaps they should be,” he said. “So I’ll just leave it there.”
Lalonde said it’s unclear if state’s attorney offices need more staff to push through their workloads.
“So state’s attorneys, I think what you are seeing here mostly is that they have very high caseloads but one shouldn’t just look at the caseloads to determine how many state’s attorneys should be in a particular office. It’s the workload, these are two very different things.
“Caseload you look at the number of active or pending cases but they are doing a lot more. The time that they spend for instance on helping investigations in the murders for instance, you know I’ve heard from Rutland’s Ian Sullivan [Chief Deputy State’s Attorney for Rutland County] and how much time they’re spending with for doing that kind of work.”
Earlier in the meeting Lalonde went over some statistics regarding the extent of the backlog. 21% of felony cases are over 360 days old, and 38% of misdemeanors are more than 180 days old.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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Categories: Legislation, Uncategorized
Martin Lalonde, D-South Burlington . Once again, a “D” that is not a part of the solution, but an iniator of the problem .
every store in vermont should have a sign stating a judge is on duty///the judge five rounds of love///
There’s a judge at my house
21/2″ or 3″ ?
Vermont is cooked. As is once beautiful Oregon, Maine, etc. But keep the focus, as the lawmakers & law breakers like it, on scrapping over auxiliary issues and in maintaining the vacuous battle over the dastardly law-abiding fellow Americans who dare to spend their money vacationing here and in paying higher tax rates to hold second homes here. Makes all the rest oh-so easy. Enjoy your Amerika. It has arrived with a bow on top.
Maine may be in even more trouble than Vermont.
“There are studies that say that probation you have much better outcomes than incarceration for instance. So reports that are focused on doing more probation, they are following what the research says is a higher deterrence value.”
Hey Lalonde, there are studies that say just about anything… As for results the highest crime rates are in the cities with the most gun restrictions, yet you continue to advocate for any restrictions you can think of. How is Vermont’s crime rate since your gun restrictions have passed? Has it gotten better? Of course not!
Lalonde is a proponent of the Anti-Gun bills, he has led the charge towards removing the 2nd amendment in Vermont and here he is following the script telling you that you need to go easy on the criminals all while reducing your right to defend yourself, then telling you that there is a backlog and you need to spend more money.
Get his bowtie out of office, we do not need anymore clowns under the dome.
I understand compassion but the “repeat offenders” ended my understanding of compassion.
How are liberal criminal justice policies affecting Vermont? It’s gone from the safest state in America to the second-highest murder rate in New England. And when you hear the words “restorative justice” it’s time to turn him off. It would be nice if the rest of Vermont fought back against the ridiculousness of these Burlington leaders.
those whom write more than six sentences are promoting themselves///can we make it simple and say the apple does not fall far from the tree//
Sure, sure….George Soros endorsed and campaign funded judges and states attorneys have nothing to do with this….
Martin LaLonde is not my hero, but is there a glimmer of a workable idea in his thinking? Could a harsh form of probation, immediately adjudicated, restrict young, stupid criminals sufficiently that their anti-social activities would be curtailed, even ended in some cases? Could harsh probation be combined with some mandatory, short-term, initial incarceration plus insightful incentives to behave (like quick, automatic return to jail for probation violations), to keep a workable lid on them? Doesn’t LaLondes’s idea of quick justice resonate? Don’t throw LaLonde out with the bathwater. Lord knows our current strategy is not working.
No disrespect intended Mr. Frenier, but Rep. LaLonde has in my opinion, done so much damage to the culture of real Vermonters that I have to question that because he comes up with an idea that may creedence, that he should be given any more credit that blind squirrel that occasionally finds a nut. In my opinion he’s still way more detrimental than he is helpful.
Citizens of Vermont deserve a criminal justice system of proven effectiveness. Harsh probation has an immediate attractive ring to it and perhaps there is a role for it. But before accepting the concept there are many obvious questions that require honest answers. Harsh probation —- is there a strict legal definition of that across different jurisdictions? Mr. Lalonde cites ‘studies’ but there are thousands of studies in thousands of journals. What journals are his cited studies published in? What is the standing of these journals in the criminal justice literature world ? Have these studies been corroborated for effectiveness in multiple follow-up studies? Have the statistics used been verified by others as valid and appropriate? It is very easy to cite ‘studies’ to advocate for your position but very, very difficult to ascertain the results over time of policies these ‘studies’ are advocating.
Vermont deserves proven, effective criminal justice that achieves the intended results.
“I understand all the facts go against my feelings but lots of people have the same feelings as me”
The problem here is not the prolonged time from crime to consequence. The problem is that however long it takes there is a certainty of a consequence that is an effective deterrent to crime. Rep. LaLonde speaks of studies demonstrating that probation has a higher deterrence value than incarceration. So in Rep. LaLonde’s world let’s hypothesize that the consequence of first degree murder is 30 days probation. Most people would consider that ridiculous as of course it is . However that is no more ridiculous than accepting Rep. LaLonde’s concepts at face value without scrutiny. People in authority like Rep. LaLonde love to cite ‘studies’ to make their arguments persuasive. However, there are many questions to be answered before uncritically accepting the value of academic papers as a basis of legislative policy.
What journals were these studies published in? There are thousands of journals. What is the citation value of the journal in the criminal justice world. Have these studies been corroborated over time by other investigators ? Have the statistics used in the articles been independently validated and verified ? Are there studies refuting these proposals and have those studies been similarly evaluated and made available to Rep. LaLonde and his critics in the Legislature? Unless those questions can be satisfactorily answered one should be loath to accept Rep. LaLonde’s proposals as a serious attempt at better criminal justice results for society.
The bottom line! Most and I say most of you Vermonters need to wake up and stop voting in these Liberal Dem Swamp Rats 🐀 🐀 no good for nothing period!!
WAKE UP PEOPLE!! 😎
do not impeach my sheriff//////////////////