Opinion | Virginia needs to revisit how it funds local prosecutors - The Washington Post

This country has learned the hard way that the tough-on-crime approach adopted in the 1990s really doesn’t work. It has resulted in costly mass incarceration that has disproportionately affected minorities and led to recidivism without addressing the root causes of crime. Far more effective are diversion programs that aim to keep nonviolent, low-level offenders out of jail and make them productive members of the community. So why, then, does Virginia punish counties that have led the way with criminal justice reform and reward those that have stuck with the old, failed ways? That is the question that confronts a newly commissioned state study on how the state should fund local prosecutors.

“It’s maddening, and it’s frustrating,” Jeff C. McKay (D-At Large), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said of current state formulas that determine how much money goes to Virginia’s commonwealth’s attorneys. For decades, the state Compensation Board — which is in charge of allocations to commonwealth’s attorney’s offices — has based its funding decisions on how many “sentencing events” an office has per year. “The more offenders convicted in circuit court, the more money awarded,” wrote The Post’s Antonio Olivo, detailing the cockeyed set of priorities that have incentivized the failed policies of the past 30 years. “A joke” was the characterization of state Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax), who has spearheaded an effort to reexamine the state’s funding formulas.

Counties such as Fairfax, which have led the way in Virginia with investments in services that seek to keep people out of jail by steering low-level offenders into mental health, drug or other programs, rightly argue they are being shortchanged by not focusing solely on aggressive prosecutions, no matter the offense. The disconnect is apparent in the fact that Fairfax, which prosecutes an average of 2,600 felony cases a year, received about $1.8 million in state funds last year, and Chesapeake — which has far less than a quarter of Fairfax’s 1.1 million residents — got nearly the same amount because it had nearly as many as felony convictions.

Doing justice is not just about getting convictions and sending people to jail. It is encouraging that Virginia seems to have recognized that with the appointment of a commission that will study how local prosecutors are funded; we hope it will come up with a more rational system. No doubt counties that are wedded to the old ways will fight any change for fear of losing funds. But instead of digging in their heels on the status quo, they should seek to get the state to help them implement programs — such as those started in Fairfax — that deliver real justice.

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July 11, 2021 at 10:00PM
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Opinion | Virginia needs to revisit how it funds local prosecutors - The Washington Post
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