The Senate could vote next week on an anti-crime package for Marion County.
The five bills create more oversight of electronic monitoring, encourage police agencies to work together in downtown Indy, establish a half-million-dollar grant fund for anti-crime programs, and restrict bail for violent offenders.
All but the two bail proposals received unanimous support in a Senate committee. One bill would set a bail schedule for counties which don’t create their own. For violent crimes, the bill would throw out the schedule and require judges to set bail on an individual basis, after reading the police affidavit supporting the charge in open court. Suspects who already have a violent-crime conviction would face a minimum bail of 40-thousand dollars.
Indianapolis Republican Mike Young says nearly half the people charged with murder in Indy last year had a violent crime on their record already. He acknowledges the bill may not address the other half, but says people facing charges of violence for a second time have already demonstrated they’re a danger to the community, and shouldn’t be released again.
A second bill would allow bail charities like The Bail Project to post bail only for misdemeanor offenses.
Democrats say both bills are improved over their original versions, including an amendment from Minority Leader Greg Taylor (D-Indianapolis) instructing judges to release nonviolent defendants without bail if it’s safe to do so. But Taylor says he’s concerned the bills authored by Marion County’s five Republican senators are politically motivated. He notes Indy’s rise in violent crime has been mirrored in urban areas statewide and nationwide.
Taylor argues the limit on charitable bail is impractical and may be unconstitutional, by giving some defendants wider access to bail than others and treating bail charities differently from private bail bondsmen. And Chesterton Senator Rodney Pol, the committee’s other Democrat, contends the uniform bail schedule would address an Indianapolis problem by imposing a one-size-fits-all solution on judges in the other 91 counties.
Michigan City Republican Mike Bohacek voted for the bills, but says he’s concerned about the Indianapolis focus too. Like Taylor, he notes cities in and around his district have seen rising crime, and says they deserve the same access to the proposed grant fund for Indy.
