WRAL reports here on the top local story this week: the SBI is “looking into allegations that former Wake County court employees improperly released jail bondsmen from their obligations to pay bond forfeitures.” It sounds as though criminal charges may be forthcoming. Other sources indicate that one or more employees of the clerk’s office have been fired as a result of the investigation, and that the school system, which was due the forfeited money, may sue to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bondsmen who benefitted from the improper forfeiture set asides. In other news: Is this technocorrections stuff really working? Another report has surfaced of problems with GPS monitoring of people involved with the criminal justice system. This one comes from California, where probation officers “are drowning in a flood of meaningless data . . . [They] are inundated with alerts . . . as many as 1,000 a day. Most of the warnings mean little: a blocked signal or low battery. The messages are routinely ignored and at times have been deleted . . . Auditors making a spot check last fall found more than a dozen cases in which officers failed to notice that the devices were dead and probationers roamed unmonitored, some for weeks.” My anecdotal impression is that many agencies here in North Carolina are happy with GPS monitoring, but I would be interested in input from others with more direct knowledge. Climate change and crime rates. Although it has been a cold and [...]
Faculty Coordinators
