The reorganization of the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Community Criminal Justice Board is drawing scrutiny from justice reform advocates. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Under Virginia law, Community Criminal Justice Boards, or CCJBs, advise their jurisdictions on pretrial services and community-based probation programs for those who have run afoul of the law. And the one that serves Harrisonburg and Rockingham County has made changes that some citizens say sidelines the effort to provide alternatives to incarceration.
In February, the Harrisonburg City Council and Rockingham County Board of Supervisors each passed resolutions that established bylaws for the joint CCJB – which had been operating since 2008 without any. These new bylaws accomplished a few different things.
First, they expanded the number of voting members appointed to the board to 20, so it now officially includes the local school superintendents; the chief of probation and parole; and an administrator from the Community Services Board. Original voting members included representatives from the city council and board of supervisors, court judges and staff, and local law enforcement leaders.
But another change effectively removed citizen participants from discussions around alternatives to incarceration for those involved in the criminal justice system. The new bylaws established procedures for setting up ad hoc committees, but that dissolved the standing committee for Alternatives to Incarceration.
City Council Member Laura Dent, who serves as the board's vice-chair, told WMRA she spoke with the chief of probation and parole and the director of court services, who are both on that committee, and Dent decided –
LAURA DENT: There's not a lot of low-hanging fruit left, meaning we already have both official and community alternatives that have been developed … So it was an internal discussion of the official members of the alternatives committee that was evaluating that we've done just about all we can think of.
According to board minutes, the committee was formed in 2014 by then-chair Pablo Cuevas to, [quote] "look at and design alternative programs that do not require the kind of jails currently utilized."
There were people other than voting CCJB members on that committee – some from its inception. Some other community members started participating in the committee meetings more recently. One of those was Hilary Moore, an attorney who teaches criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Mennonite University.
HILARY MOORE: So, what I observed during that time and what I participated in, was a discussion of the alternatives that exist in our community and how they are doing. For instance, during that time I believe there was a graduation of some folks from drug court, which was great to see. And then also, as far as bringing new ideas, we would come to the meeting, and if any of us had read relevant articles or looked at some research about alternatives or ideas for dealing with … potentially over-incarceration in our community, we would bring those and we would discuss them.
But she said new ideas and research on reducing incarceration, including reports from the Prison Policy Initiative and various bar associations Moore is a member of, were not taken seriously by CCJB leadership.
Dent says –
DENT: We already have adequate programs for the people who are in jail and are ready for alternatives to it … So the combination of the official and community services add up to something like 21 programs.
She gave the examples of the drug court treatment program, probation, work release, and Home Electronic Monitoring within the courts systems, and external nonprofits such as Strength in Peers and Gemeinschaft Home.
For those programs that actually are run by the courts, I asked Dent how the board was evaluating those programs.
HAGI (interviewing): But are those conversations that are happening within the CCJB? Like do you guys talk about those programs during the board meetings, specifically on like, you know, are we doing the most with the programs that we can?
DENT: Well, let's see, in the CCJB meetings, there are a lot of official reports attached, like the numbers of people who are going through the drug court and so on. Sometimes they're just submitted without discussion. … So when there's an issue, we discuss it, otherwise it's just sort of, frankly, a lot of agencies reporting on what they're doing.
Moore, for one, does not believe the local justice system has reached its full potential in terms of reducing incarceration in ways that still protect public safety and use tax dollars wisely.
MOORE: I never saw any in-depth discussion or investigation into … that list of alternatives. I saw no proof that each and every one of them was legitimate or maximized. I think that the presentation of that list should have been the beginning of the discussion, as to whether or not the alternatives were exhausted … For instance, one of them was residential and outpatient drug treatment programs. I have difficulty understanding that to be an alternative to incarceration, because frankly, we all know that residential and outpatient drug treatment programs are not widely available to all people who need them.
The only ad hoc committee that's been approved since the new bylaws took effect is one that will look into the costs and benefits of establishing a local public defender's office.
And the upshot of these changes is that, for now, there are no community members who are not appointed board members weighing in on committees.
