It is never pretty when a city has to decide what to slash to meet budget cuts. Usually, education, public programs and health care take a hit.
But Topeka, Kan., decided to take things in a different, and decidedly more worrying, direction.
Topeka will no longer prosecute domestic violence cases. In fact, the city repealed their law. This is an effort on the city's part to force the district attorney to take jurisdiction over these cases again.
The Shawnee county District Attorney's office had said earlier this month it could no longer afford to prosecute domestic abuse cases, and would be passing the responsibility on to the city.
Well, the city claims it can't afford to prosecute them either, so, to force the DA's hand, Topeka repealed the law.
Now, because the district attorney is statutorily obligated to prosecute these crimes, without any more money, they are picking and choosing who gets charged.
“Well, we have to prioritize what it is that we're prosecuting,” Shawnee County DA, Chad Taylor, said in an interview on NPR's “All Things Considered.”
This is clearly a bad move, on both the city and the county's part. Domestic abusers deserve to get punished to the full extent of the law. By forcing both the city and the county to do more with less, these budget cuts have almost guaranteed that won't happen.
It is domestic violence that has come under scrutiny for its high-cost necessary extras.
“The costs in order to prosecute these cases correctly ... providing the best services to the victims and the families requires family services, requires victim support,” Dan Stanley, city manager for Topeka, said in the same NPR interview.
“It requires court services, none of which our municipal court has and nor were we able to add funding for those, given the fact that we had no idea this was coming,” he added.
The worst part about this is neither party wants to be doing this. Their hands are tied. There is no malicious intent, just a resignation that the budget is not going to get any bigger, and things like this are going to continue to be cut.
“This is a trend right now that's going on nationwide,” Taylor said on NPR. “If you look at what's going on the West Coast, if you look at what's going on with the district attorney down in Miami, it literally is everybody is trying to find ways to where they can maximize their level of prosecution and public safety with the budgets that they have. I personally think it's a dangerous precedent that we're setting.”
I would have to agree. If cities think that by simply repealing a law to save from having to prosecute, the slack will always be picked up by the district attorney, we could see a huge increase in poorly prosecuted cases.
There's no denying that prosecuting a domestic abuse case, or any case that involves victims services and a lengthy trial, costs a lot more money and is more complicated than a burglary or drug possession charge.
But the complicated ones are the most important, and Topeka has set a precedent that opens a dangerous door.
Reach the columnist at omcquarr@asu.edu
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