By Tom Gantert
Legal News
Newly elected Jackson County Prosecutor Jerry Jarzynka is keeping his campaign promise to make no deals with ex-cons who commit a felony while on parole.
"Our main goal is to protect the public," Jarzynka said. "We don't want them to be victimized by someone who is on parole and who should know better."
A person on parole has had their original prison sentence reduced and is released but is under court supervision.
Jarzynka said under his new policy, if a parolee were to be charged with a felony crime such as felonious assault, the charge would not be reduced. He said the exception would be if there was a problem with evidence and they couldn't go forward with the case.
"Parolees of all people should be on their best behavior because they are under supervision," Jarzynka said. "They should be very mindful that they should not break any more laws. Common sense says they should not be reoffending."
And yet parolees tend to commit a higher percentage of crimes than other people, he said.
Jackson County Public Defender Jerry Engle said he gets about one case a month of a parole facing a felony charge, and guesses it happens about three times a month in the county. Engle said the court can only handle so many trials.
"It's probably a question of how many trials (Jarzynka's new policy) leads to," Engle said. "If it leads to too many trials, something is probably going to need to be done."
A 2011 study by the Pew Center on the States found that Michigan's rate of offenders returning to prison was below the national average.
Michigan's recidivism rate dropped to 31 percent from 2004-2007, below the national average of 43.3 percent.
From 2004 to 2007 - the latest data available - 15 percent of parolees returned to prison for a new crime, 16 percent for a technical violation, and 69 percent didn't return.
Craig Pappin, who lost in a GOP primary for Prosecutor in August to Jarzynka, said he wouldn't have instituted a "no deals for parolees" policy.
Pappin said he understood that protecting the community was important but had some concerns .
Not making deals could lead to more trials which can be expensive, Pappin said. He said that may be part of the added cost of protecting the community.
That "no deal" policy could force the Prosecutor's office to go to trail when they don't have to, he said.
"He's taking an all-or-nothing approach and I'm not sure that is always in the best interests," Pappin said. "At the end of the day it may not protect the community as much as he thinks it does and there's a financial aspect of it."
Pappin said that even on a reduced charge, a parolee would go back to prison and be off the streets.
"There are cases where pleas are appropriate," he said. "I don't think I would have made such a broad sweeping policy. If you had a plea deal, you might be able to offer compromise that still puts them back in prison."
Jackson County resident Cathy Hanson Keller said she is supportive of Jarzynka's new policy.
"If a parolee hasn't learned from his/her mistakes and taken steps to change his/her life with the opportunity that parole affords, they don't deserve a deal," Keller said.
Published: Thu, Jan 24, 2013
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