NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County District Attorney Tom Stanton gave the Board of County Commissioners an update on Wednesday on the stated goal of reducing the county's jail population.
"I told you back in May, I believe, when I spoke to you, that by June, I would have a policy in place. I would develop a policy for looking at a person's record and helping the courts determine what their bond should be. I did that," Stanton said. "I presented that policy to various entities within the county that would be involved, the sheriff and court services, and then to the courts, and then the courts shut me down. I was told by the court that they were looking at other options, and then right after I filed my update, I did receive an update from Judge Macke Dick, the administrative judge here in Reno County, who indicated to me that the court system, the Office of Judicial Administration, that's the Supreme Court and the state offices, have determined that they are going to come up with a policy for this. When it will happen, I don't know, but we were not able to implement our policy because they're going to be doing this."
Commissioners wanted to see if there was a way to put Stanton's policy into place temporarily until a statewide policy is implemented. He didn't know yet if that would be the case or not, as Judge Macke Dick is retiring in January, so there will be a new presiding judge, Daniel Gilligan, after that.
"The plan was to look at, we would have all of these different considerations that would be checkmarked, including things like the residence here, what kind of crime was committed, and basically criminal history and all sorts of different factors, and then to determine a score, and then that judge would use that score to set bail, and also to determine what kind of pretrial services somebody would have," Stanton said. "For example, if they're found to be bondable, the court could set a low bond and then get them out of jail but have them being supervised by court services."
If court services staff is not going to be authorized to ask the questions necessary to get the bonding information, commissioners asked if staff from either the Sheriff's Office or Horizons Mental Health Center could be allowed to ask the questions that would be needed to implement that bail score.