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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Ind. Courts - Vigo County Legal System Overcrowded

"Vigo County Legal System Overcrowded" is the headline to a story via WTWO, Terre Haute:

According to the latest figures from the Indiana Supreme Court Administration, the legal system in Vigo County is moving at an incredibly slow rate.

The figures were based on 2004 data and suggest nine judges would be appropriate to handle the caseload in Vigo County. Right now the courthouse houses just six, and one of those was just added in January of 2006.

Vigo County Superior Court, Division #1 Judge Michael Eldred knows the backlog all too well. Scheduling seven criminal cases every Monday, he`s booked through the year and that doesn’t include civil cases: "It`s just not fair for some of these people to have to wait 2 or 3 years to get into court, nor for a person who`s charged with a crime and presumed innocent to have to wait that long."

An overcrowded court system leads directly to an overcrowded jail and that`s where it gets really expensive. Judge Eldred says housing an inmate for one year can cost up to $50,000.

“Its a difficult issue,” says Eldred,” on one hand you worry about the tax payers having an overcrowded jail and on the other, you don`t want to turn loose people into the community that may be committing violent crimes.”

But it`s not the criminal cases that are clogging the system. Judge Eldred says of any given stack of cases in his office, half are for collections:
“It revolves around the conflict in our society about whether or not every kind of conduct that we deem inappropriate ought to be criminalized or whether there are alternatives for dealing with that."

Any alternative: settlement, mediation, or de-criminalization could reduce the overworked legal system in Vigo County and ensure the right to a fair and speedy trial.

But even the process to ensure a speedy trail is slow. Judge Eldred worked for almost seven years to get the county`s newest court that was just added this past January.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 26, 2006 02:01 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts