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Show Speaks On Criminal Justice Throughout the United States, statistics constantly show that crime is a growth industry. indus-try. In 1981 alone, a major crime occurred in Utah every six minutes. Of those 500,000 crimes, only 3.3 percent resulted in an offender being placed in some type of correctional program. EVEN THOUGH these statistics are frightening, fright-ening, we must realize that our attempts to deal with the problems in the criminal justice system sys-tem must be guided by two significant facts: First, we cannot realistically expect to detect, apprehend and punish every person who commits com-mits a crime in Utah; and second, the success of our criminal justice programs must hinge on a coherent public policy of crime control. State and local governments have traditionally tradition-ally shown their commitment to criminal justice jus-tice programs through the priority funding these programs receive. Our past experience has shown that we can't solve crime problems just by throwing money at them. If clearance and prosecution rates were improved and ten times as many offenders were placed in correctional correc-tional programs, Utah's criminal justice budget would exceed $1.5 billion per year, excluding ex-cluding initial capital expenditures for facilities. facili-ties. IT IS CLEAR that support of the entire criminal cri-minal justice system must be significantly increased in-creased in other ways. One example is to increase in-crease our support of crirne prevention programs. prog-rams. Another example is to increase support of volunteer efforts to deal with social problems prob-lems that are too often handed off to law enforcement en-forcement agencies. But even with increased support of these programs, there is still a need for a uniform criminal justice policy to coordinate the efforts of the entire criminal justice system. In our efforts to beef up the fight against crime, the individual components of the system have typically improved the efficiency of their organizations orga-nizations without regard to what impact those improvements will have on the other aspects of the system. For instance, increasing the efficiency effi-ciency of law enforcement is great, but the increased caseloads into the judicial system will impair their ability to prosecute those new caseloads. IN ORDER FOR the criminal justice system to work together efficiently, all parts of the system must be coordinated. At the present time, no clear policy on criminal justice has been formed to deal with the problems that the individual parts of the system create. Last December, the Governor's Conference on Criminal Justice met in Ogden and recommended recom-mended the establishment of a 18-member Commission on Criminal Justice. The commission, commis-sion, if legislatively approved, would be charged with the responsibility of overseeing, coordinating and clearing all legislative, budgetary and facility proposals affecting criminal cri-minal justice programs. It would also be responsible re-sponsible for establishing and monitoring sentencing sen-tencing guidelines. THE REPORT issued from the conference estimated the cost for establishing this commission com-mission to be approximately $500,000. Since that time, the cost was revised to $277,000-- ; $77,000 coming from various state agencies I and departments such as Social Services, Corrections Cor-rections and Public Safety. The remaining $200,000 would have to be financed through general funds during this session. The proposed prop-osed bill that would create the commission is j HB-205. Arguments can be made for not appropriating appropriat-ing the money for a new Commission, especially especial-ly in a year where money for new programs will be hard to find. However, with a program in place to coordinate efforts of the entire criminal crimin-al justice system, state and local governments could save twice the initial investment in no time at all. EVEN IF HB-205 passes and the commission commis-sion is established, we cannot be fooled into thinking that the commission will solve all the problems in the criminaljustice system. Utah's criminal justice system is large and getting each component to work effectively and cooperatively with the other units of the system sys-tem will be a major task. But with the commission commis-sion at the helm to coordinate the effort, we should soon see some productive changes in the efficiency of the criminaljustice system in Utah. i . . i i t N . - " Sf i A . : s V s 4?T ; i . i 'M SCOTT M. MATHESON, GOVERNOR OF UTAH |