INDIANAPOLIS – The enthusiasm for a major shift away from jailing low-level offenders to local treatment and supervision instead is clear at the Statehouse.
But will the money be there when the budget is finalized at the end of April?
It is the final question in a criminal justice overhaul that has been in the works for five years.
“I can’t for the life of me believe it’s going to be funded the way it needs to be,” Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull said. “This is expensive work we are doing. If the goal is to keep people locally, they have to give us resources.”
Gov. Mike Pence’s initial budget proposal contained no new money for community corrections or other local treatment programs.
Instead, he focused on building prisons – exactly the opposite of what lawmakers wanted when they passed the criminal code reform in 2013. The initiative was phased in, and judges are now starting to sentence for crimes committed under the new regime.