A county in Washington has started a two-week program that allows defendants the chance to come in and skip arrest. I include an excerpt from an article Sean Robinson wrote about it:
The choice is simple enough: Keep ducking the arrest warrant and hope nobody notices, or wander in from the wilderness and schedule a court date.
For the next two weeks, Pierce County will offer 687 domestic violence defendants a chance to get legal. No arrest at the scheduling counter, no automatic trip to jail. The warrant goes away.
The county calls the program “Act Now.” It’s not amnesty – far from it. The domestic violence charges won’t be wiped away, but scheduling a court date and suspending an arrest warrant could open the door to court-ordered treatment instead of a bed behind bars upon conviction.
“We’re trying to give them a chance to take responsibility,” District Court Judge Judy Jasprica said Wednesday. “If we can get these people back on track doing whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing, that is our goal. The more we get these people stepping up, the better off the community is.”
The warrants represent a five-year backlog at the District Court. There are 824 of them – some defendants have more than one. The underlying cases cover a range of alleged domestic violence offenses, from assault and harassment to violating no-contact orders. The warrants typically followed failures to appear for scheduled court dates.
I like the idea very much. Instead of just throwing the few we can catch in jail, we can offer them a mutually beneficial offer. If they voluntarily turn themselves in, they won’t get arrested and the court can send them to rehabilitation centers.
If we just send violent offenders to jail, when they get out they will just re-offend. Plus, we won’t catch all of them who already have warrants.
By offering to suspend arrest (at least until after court) if they turn themselves in, we can actually protect more innocent people. We can get many of these violent offenders into the court-assigned rehabilitation programs, rather than just try to get a few in temporary jail cells.
What do you think?
