In a recent wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post’s criminal justice reporter Tom Jackman, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot opened up about the role of drug courts in keeping criminals out of jail and his views on not prosecuting some crimes through his office.
Asking Creuzot about the drug diversion court that he began in his previous capacity as a judge, Jackman inquired, “Has that had an impact … Is that something you can measure with statistics?”
“In 2005, Texas was told, soon, in addition to the 150,000 existing prison beds, that we would need 17,000 more,” Creuzot responded. “So, the question was, ‘What can we do differently?'”
Creuzot’s answer: “divert court.”
The aim of drug courts, or diversion courts, is simple: to slow the flow of criminals into jails.
Creuzot went on to say that he and other judges worked with legislators to develop criteria such as “evidenced-based sentencing” to create the framework for implementing drug diversion courts.
The Center for Sentencing Initiatives explains on its website that so-called evidenced-based sentencing is a “set of sentencing practices designed to promote public safety through risk reduction and management of probation-eligible offenders.”
Tenets of this approach include a systematic approach to “identify probation-eligible offenders who may be safely and effectively supervised in the community given available community resources.”
After identifying these individuals, a court is then to “order appropriate conditions of community supervision given the offender’s individual recidivism risk, criminogenic needs, and responsivity factors.”
“The bottom line is we closed 15 prisons in the state of Texas [since 2005],” Creuzot said.
Whether these types of programs actually work to reduce crime long-term is still a question that its proponents are not fully prepared to answer.
For example, according to The Crime Report, “a widespread lack of data about fees, success rates, recidivism, and who is accepted or rejected from diversion programs, precludes accountability and improvement almost nationwide.”
The Center for Health and Justice echoed that criticism in a recent report saying that a lack of standards in how these programs function has made accountability on cost savings and reductions in crime all but impossible to measure.
Meanwhile, as these programs have shuttered prisons, recent data showed Texas ranked 15th for violent crime per capita amongst all 50 states, and Dallas is currently experiencing its own rise in violent crime.
Jackman also asked Creuzot about crime in Dallas and his approach as the county’s chief prosecutor.
Creuzot gave the example of drug crimes relating to marijuana. His office declines to prosecute any marijuana case, “with a few exceptions,” he said.
Cases involving “4 ounces or less” are not prosecuted “because those cases take up too much of an officer’s time,” he said.
Creuzot’s policy on marijuana, he insists, was instituted to increase the “efficiency” of police resources.
“The community understands what we’re doing here,” Creuzot continued. “We no longer prosecute for simple criminal trespass, people who are homeless or mentally ill, and when we talk about certain types of shoplifting, it’s actually a very small category … it’s those stealing for sustenance.”
Keep Dallas Safe, a local organization focused on crime and vagrancy, has been highly critical of Creuzot’s so-called “theft-amnesty” policies, which essentially permit theft of items less than $750 in value if his office deems them items of necessity.
In email correspondence with The Dallas Express, Keep Dallas Safe’s Jake Colglazier said, “Creuzot repeatedly claims that his policy only applies to those stealing out of necessity, but anybody with common sense can see that he has simply given a free pass to thieves. No matter what your ‘necessities’ are, no one has a right to steal.”