DeKalb Times

DeKalb County Law & Justice Committee met Nov. 22.

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

The Law and Justice Committee of the DeKalb County Board met in the Legislative Center’s Gathertorium in Sycamore, Illinois. Madam Chair Dianne Leifheit called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. Those members present were Ms. Mary Cozad, Mrs. Karen Cribben, Mrs. Kathy Lampkins, Ms. Linda Slabon, Mr. Ellingsworth Webb, Mr. Larry West, and Chair Dianne Leifheit. A quorum was established with all seven Members present.

Others that were present included Tom McCulloch, Michael Venditti, and Tim Bagby.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

It was moved by Mrs. Cribben, seconded by Mr. West and it was carried unanimously by voice vote to approve the agenda as presented.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Mr. Webb moved to approve the minutes of the October 25, 2021 Committee Meeting. Ms. Slabon seconded the motion and it was carried unanimously.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

There were no Public Comments.

PUBLIC DEFENDER’S REPORT

Mr. McCulloch placed his October 2021, Public Defender’s Report on file with the Committee. The report illustrated that there were 2,684 cases opened and 2,612 cases closed. Mr. McCulloch asked the Committee if they wanted to see anything different in his monthly reports since they have provided the same information for at least the past two decades. In terms of this month’s report, Mr. McCulloch noted that the Office is rocking along and they’re holding their own. Which is good given the lack of jury trials and contact with clients. From now to February there are about 100 cases scheduled for jury trial, he shared.

Mr. McCulloch and the Committee took some additional time to discuss how cases numbers are assigned. It was noted that for many years the Circuit Clerk’s Office assigns separate case numbers for separate police reports. Different instances were reviewed as to how there could be multiple case numbers for one individual.

COURT SERVICES REPORT

Mr. Venditti shared that numbers-wise the Office is keeping steading with adult admissions from inside and outside of the County. There are no juveniles in any placement facilities but there are two currently in detention. Mr. Venditti also reported that his Detention Budget, as of October, is 55% under original budget and on track to come in under budget for FY2021.

Pretrial numbers are back to what they would consider back to “normal”. Supervision numbers have also somewhat leveled off a little bit with just shy of 500 cases.

Mr. Venditti had spoken before about the State-wide Pretrial Program and when that program would take over services here in DeKalb County. That would mean the County’s Pretrial Program would cease and those services would be provided by the State of Illinois. At this point though, it seems like the implementation date for that has been pushed back for the foreseeable future. The AOIC is currently focusing on getting a program up and running to assist Counties that do not have an up and running County-established Pretrial Program. Then, Counties such as DeKalb, would be the last on the list but only after legislation is passed in order for that transition to take place. Mr. Venditti estimated that it may take a few years before DeKalb County sees any type of changes. He also shared that more than 50% of the Counties in Illinois have no Pretrial Services Program at all and a little bit less than 30% of the total Counties have somewhat of a Pretrial Service Agency. There are only 12-24 Counties in the entire state that operate at a level that DeKalb County does. Mr. Venditti also shared that he has been asked to join a committee that would be setting the state-wide standards for Pretrial Services, which the Committee was happy to hear about.

COMMUNITY SERVICE HOURS

Ms. Kaleigh O’Brien, Community Service Coordinator, joined the Committee to providing reasonings behind the very large number of outstanding community service hours in DeKalb County. Ms. O’Brien shared that on her case load right now there are a total of 733 clients. Out of those, 589 past-term, noncompliant, or on warrant status. Out of those 589, there are 78,252 hours still outstanding. Those hours do not go away if a case is open or if an individual is on warrant status. Some of the warrant status cases go back to 1992.

The pandemic has made it very difficult for many clients to complete CRS hours for a variety of reasons, one of the primary reasons being that nearly all of the active sites within the County shut down and stopped accepting clients for the better part of a year. Many have come back online over the past several months; however, a few have scaled back operations in order to accommodate social distancing, etc. Unfortunately, they have had a few sites that have folded under, and others continue to not accept clients due to the pandemic. As a result, Court Services had to get creative, and created a donation program where hours were given based on clients donating canned goods and other non-perishable food items to food pantries and hygiene products to places like the Hope Haven. Also allowed were donations of dog/cat food and supplies to local animal shelters such as the Barn on Baseline and TAILS. Thankfully, many hours were able to be completed this way. The department continues to employ the donation program as it has become one of our most successful sources for CRS hour completion.

Additionally, the Courts have been less inclined to use punitive actions against clients that are noncompliant with CRS hours due to the pandemic, and the need to use jail space sparingly to reduce potential exposures, etc. Many of these cases continue to go through the court system with pending probation violations. These cases on violation in court contribute immensely to the “active” caseload and number of outstanding hours reported despite most of them having not completed a single hour of CRS. The CRS process in our office is fairly straight forward. Once sentenced to CRS hours, the client meets with our CRS Coordinator in office or virtually. The client and CRS Coordinator discuss options for worksites based on the clients’ abilities,

Note: These minutes are not official until approved by the Law and Justice Committee at a subsequent meeting. Please refer to the meeting minutes when these minutes are approved to obtain any changes to these minutes. work/childcare schedule, and ability to access transportation. Once a site is chosen, the client is given the contact information for that site so that they may contact the worksite to work out a schedule. The worksite then reports back to the CRS Coordinator, usually monthly, the number of hours clients have completed at their site. If clients do not report, the CRS Coordinator reaches out to clients in attempt to troubleshoot or reassign them. After 3 unsuccessful attempts at reassignment, or if the client is unable to be reached, a violation report is filed with the State’s Attorney’s office and the Court. It is then at the State’s discretion if a Petition to Revoke is filed.

ADJOURNMENT

It was moved by Mrs. Lampkins, seconded by Mr. West, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting at 7:22 p.m.

https://dekalbcounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/min21-lawnov.pdf