The Crime Report » Archive » CT Gov.-Elect Vows To Fund Delayed Justice Reform Plans

I was quite heartened to read of this today and I can only hope that our new Governor is genuine regarding his commitment to seeing the long-delayed Judicial reforms that were passed by the Connecticut Legislature two years ago, finally become a reality. Those reforms, we were assured by Governor Rell , " were "just the beginning. " This, all in the wake of the Petit family murders and several other tragic sexual assaults and murders in the state, all committed by recently paroled career felons. Seven people were killed in three separate violent crime incidents, all occurring within months of each other in late 2007. The reforms hastily and in some cases, grudgingly passed by a somewhat reluctant and petulant house of representatives, and less so the State Senate.

I have asserted for quite some time that there is no more essresponsibilityesponsibility of our state government than to protect its
citizens from crime.And while this starts with our Police force, the bulk of our state's issues with crime do not exist within law enforcement; These men and women are on the lines doing their jobs and usually doing them well They are often frustrated by the same things that frustrate victims of crime, victims advocates, probation and parole officers and Activists for Domestic Violence and sexual assault.

The state has major issues with such important issues as bail, I recently posted an article about unscrupulous bail bondsmen, and completely inconsistent bail amounts for similar crimes, often leading to men being bonded out too easily and going right back out to commit immediate further violence upon whomever they were placed under arrest for attacking or stalking in the first place. Then there is the issue of our Parole system; inexperienced parole board members with insufficient training, no enough forensic psychologists to assess likelihood of re offending. We have one now on our entire Connecticut Parole board-we had none prior to 2008.

Communication between departments within the judicial arm of the government has been abysmal at best. The Petit murders brought to light an age old issue that unbenowst to the people of the state had been going on for years whiteout resolution, putting hundreds of innocent lives at risk and finally culminating in the perfect storm of one Steven Hayes, and one Joshua komisarjevsky, two recklessly paroled inmates who despite reams of criminal records showing both as high risks to the public were paroled anyway due to a common problem of a lack of complete criminal records that had been going on for years and paroles were still being granted left and right..

A lack of time limits for a violent crime case resolution always always benefits the defendant, and in turn always detracts from the victim's case and the victim them self..The inordinately high plea bargain percentage in Connecticut at 96-97% of all criminal cases