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Number of warrants seeking missing suspects has doubled

by Frank Cagle

Three out of four suspects arrested by the Knox County Sheriff’s Department have been arrested before. Fully half of them have been arrested within the past year. This would seem to indicate that the majority of the people who get arrested in Knox County are frequent, if not career, criminals.

More and more suspects these days are being summoned to court rather than being held in jail and more of them are being put on probation to relieve jail overcrowding. I asked the sheriff’s department for statistics to see if more felons are roaming the streets these days. When someone doesn’t show up for a court date, a warrant is issued for their arrest. If someone violates probation, a warrant is also issued. In the third quarter of 2003, there were 2,530 warrants issued. In the third quarter of 2004, there were 5,077 warrants issued. In plain English, the number of felons out there who didn’t show up for court or who have violated parole has doubled. Much of the increase seems to be due to a large number of prisoners released on probation committing another crime or having had their probation revoked.

Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols says he has not noticed an epidemic of people not showing up for court. He says the jail population is moving up from about 600 to the current 838, which he attributes to probation violations, usually drug use.

(It has been argued that the jails were overcrowded because they were full of public drunks and drug users. Nichols says 20 drunks constitute 600 arrests in the course of a year. Sheriff’s department statistics show the number of alcohol offenses total 10 percent of the arrests, drug offenses about 20 percent.)

The problem of felons loose in the community is aggravated by the actions of—you guessed it—the state Legislature. A couple of legislators had friends who got arrested because someone swore out a warrant. The legislators used these anecdotal examples to get a bill passed that says people should be given a summons to court rather than be arrested. So without further study, the Legislature just passed a damn law instituting the Criminal Summons.

Let’s see how it works in the real world. You own a music store in a shopping center and see someone put a half dozen CDs in his pocket. You grab him on the sidewalk and call the police. It is your word against the shoplifter. So the officer doesn’t arrest the shoplifter. He will escort you and the shoplifter to the courthouse and you have to swear out a warrant. The shoplifter is issued a summons to appear in court. You go to court on the date designated to testify against the shoplifter. He doesn’t show up. He may have been passing through and grabbing CDs in every town with an Interstate exit. Or, he just decides not to show up. If an arrest warrant is issued for failure to appear, what priority does a CD shoplifter receive in the scheme of things? Nichols points out that the shoplifter might get picked up for another offense in the meantime, but that the criminal summons isn’t in the computer, so the officer has no way of knowing this is a repeat offender.

A criminal summons also leaves out the bail bondsman, who has a financial incentive to see that a suspect shows up for court.

Jail overcrowding has led to a lot of people who would normally be in jail to be released on probation. Given the career criminal nature of most felons arrested in Knox County, there is no way to know how many of them are out there writing bad checks or breaking into your home unless they get caught again.

It is a complex subject and there are a lot of different sides to this issue. We will continue to seek information and enlightenment and will share it with you.

But what do we know so far?

• Do we need to revisit our (universally praised) policy to relieve jail overcrowding? If we have been through a year-long cycle of using probation and it has resulted in wholesale violations and more criminality, should it continue?

• No one in the Legislature wants to lock up more career criminals because every county has a jail overcrowding problem and no one wants to build jails. We probably can’t keep career burglars in jail because we have to have room for the pot smokers.

• We ought to have a low cost dry-them-out drunk tank that handles bums snoozing in front of your business without tying up the resources of the county jail and its jailers.

• The Criminal Summons law needs to be changed in consultation with district attorneys and sheriffs.

Stay tuned.

Frank Cagle is the host of Sound Off on WIVK FM107.7, WNOX AM990, FM99.1 and FM99.3 each Sunday 8-9:30 a.m.

December 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 49 © 2004 Metro Pulse