GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A new initiative in the proposed Brown County 2019 budget is aimed at creating a division to become smarter on crime.
Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach spoke on Monday at the Brown County Courthouse about his planned initiative to create a Division of Criminal Justice within the Health and Human Services Department.
“We are taking resources that have already been applied and we’re trying to find a better return on investment when we’re looking at it from just a financial standpoint,” says Streckenbach.
The division would use data from the Public Safety Assessment to give judges information on the likelihood that a defendant will commit another crime or fail to return to court.
“Then we can match the right service to the right offender, so we don’t have situations where offenders from different levels are together,” explains Erik Pritzl, the Executive Director of Brown County Health and Human Services.
He says the new division would create some changes in how they currently administer services but ultimately will make the process more efficient.
“We want to start with using evidence-based tools so that we can make sure every offender gets an assessment so we know their risk level,” says Pritzl.
The initiative is part of County Executive Streckenbach’s budget proposal, but he says this is something they had identified for a while.
“Two years ago we started to talk about Brown County experiencing high trends in jail population,” says Streckenbach. “We were noticing that a number of our individuals were experiencing addiction.”
He says the initiative will help staff to service approximately 280 to 380 additional individuals needs.
“We think we’re going to increase our capacity overall for diversion as well as pre-trial services,” says Pritzl. “We’ll ideally have a more efficient system and better response.”
An annual budget hearing held by the entire Brown County Board of Supervisors will take place on October 31 at 9 AM.
