The Law and Justice Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, September 18, 2006 @ 6:30p.m. in the DeKalb County Administration Building’s Conference Room East.  Chairman Sue Leifheit called the meeting to order.  Members present were Paulette Tolene, Anita Turner, Pat LaVigne, Rich Osborne, Pat Vary and Roger Steimel.  Others present were Frank Bierlotzer, Steve Kuhn, Steve Slack, Ken Johnson and Margi Gilmour.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

 Moved by Ms. Vary, seconded by Mr. Osborne, and it was carried unanimously to approve the joint committee minutes with the Finance Committee from July, 2006.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

 Moved by Ms. LaVigne, seconded by Ms. Vary, and it was carried unanimously to approve the agenda as presented.

STATE’S ATTORNEY’S REVIEW OF THE JUSTICE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE GRANT

 Chairman Leifheit said that Mr. Matekaitis was not present this evening.  She said that he was supposed to explain to the committee why it is important for the Violence Grant to continue.  She said that it is included in the FY2007 Budget and the funding is coming from the General Fund.  She said the only question that she had on the funding is whether or not it should come out of the Opportunity Fund.  She pointed out that there is another salaried position coming out of the Opportunity Fund.  She asked the committee to keep this issue in their thoughts when discussing the upcoming budget.

PUBLIC DEFENDER’S REPORT

Mr. Ken Johnson, DeKalb County Public Defender, thanked the members of the committee that rendered his support to continue as the DeKalb County Public Defender.  

Mr. Johnson then said that the with the recent gang activity in DeKalb, his office now has its second juvenile who will be tried as an adult.  Both of the cases involved 15 year olds and they are going very well.  The hearing dates are moving through the court quickly.  

Mr. Johnson said that he is seeing the impact of prisoners who are being housed out-of-county.  He has two juveniles being housed in the Juvenile Detention Center in Kane County and he has some people in Southern Illinois.  He also has one sex-offender who is housed in Western Illinois.  His attorneys are concerned that they can’t get out to Kane County, Boone or Ogle County on a regular basis as they can if their clients were across the street.  

He then informed the committee that the Drug Court will be up and running very soon. He will be handling drug court himself. 

The Juvenile Justice Counsel is moving much faster this year.  He is seeing problems with truancy clients lately too.  The Juvenile Justice Counsel will be looking into ways to help with this issue.  

He did receive some additional funding from the County for mandatory training sessions that the attorneys in his office have to log every period and report to the Illinois Supreme Court.  One issue that he is looking into is there is also a requirement for pro bono work, which is free legal service.  He does not believe that his office is going to be considered as doing pro bono work because they do receive a salary.  He may have to come back to the committee one day and explain that they have to practice law outside the office of the Public Defender as a volunteer requirement.  He did inform Mr. Bockman and Judge Klein about the insurance issues that could arise with that.  

Mr. Slack said that he knows that one of the criteria to be a drug court participant is that the candidate is required to be able to make their own travel arrangements.  He is concerned about that because mainly a lot of these people may have their licenses revoked or they don’t even have one.   

Mr. Johnson said that they were looking at NIU to provide the buses or the VAC buses for this purpose.  He is confident that it will get done.  He said that other counties have even given bus passes to the candidates.  He may even buy bikes from the Sheriff’s auction to provide to the candidates for transportation purposes.

Mr. Slack said that he is only asking for someone to please monitor this issue.

COURT SERVICES REPORT

 Ms. Margi Gilmour, Director of DeKalb County Court Services, said that the adult court services report shows that they had 442 active cases with filing 28 new cases.  The CRS hours report shows that a significant number of hours ordered have not been completed.

 Ms. Gilmour said that the Juvenile Report for July shows that one young man was released from Focus House.  This left them with two young women at Norman Sleezer yet.  One of the young women actually ran from Sleezer at the end of the month and was retained for a couple of days at the County Jail.  While she was at the Jail, Norman Sleezer held the bed and did not charge us for that.  They viewed it as a problem but they wanted her back because she was doing well in their program. She did return in August and they did not charge our county.  Ms. Gilmour continued by stating that there was another female ordered to report to Norman Sleezer in August. She just wanted to let the committee know that this would be reflected in the August Juvenile Report.

 She said in the Juvenile Report that out of the 10 detentions that they had in July, 4 kids were detained for the 1^st time, 1 for the 2^nd, 1 each for the 3^rd, 4^th and 6^th time.  

 Ms. Gilmour said that the Juvenile Learning Mentor Program just started last week. They have 8 people ordered into the program and 9 mentors who have gone through the training and are working with these kids for the next 10 Saturday mornings at NIU. The kids will learn how to write a research project. 

JAIL REPORT

 Chairman Leifheit informed the committee that according to the Jail Report the average daily population for the jail last month was 119 inmates.  

 She further stated that if the committee had any questions regarding the report to call the Sheriff with them.

ADJOURNMENT

 Moved by Ms. Vary, seconded by Ms. LaVigne, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.

      Respectfully submitted,

      ________________________________   

      Sue Leifheit, Chairman