NAVAJO COUNTY — From higher case loads to fewer prosecutors, Navajo County Attorney Brad Carlyon gave a bleak view of the county’s criminal justice future if a significant source of revenue, like the jail district tax, is not forthcoming in the years ahead.
Speaking at the public hearing for the jail district at the Navajo County Board of Supervisors meeting on Aug. 14, Carlyon said, “When I first came into office, I had 17 prosecutors, today, 10 years later, I have 10 people who are actually serving as prosecutors.”
During a job interview two months ago with a young attorney who worked with Maricopa County, Carlyon found that he was working a caseload of 29. “My two attorneys, who were in the interview with me, told him that their caseloads were 85 and 87. One is my homicide attorney for serious crimes, the other one is my sex crimes attorney. That’s the kind of case load that my prosecutors are now taking at a lot less pay than is found in almost every other county in this state.”
Carlyon continued, “If we lose this $2.5 million from the loss of the power plants and don’t have new funds coming in, be it the jail district or something else, then I have to cut another 20 to 25 percent. That means I am cutting three more prosecutors.”
The loss of more prosecutors will lead to the inability to prosecute crimes. Carlyon noted that misdemeanors would be the first level of crimes that would no longer be prosecuted, which include driving under the influence (DUI), domestic violence (DV), shoplifting, family fights and fights at school.
“Right now my office handles all the misdemeanors in the county, which means we do all the municipal crimes.” In a partnership, the cities and towns pay the county for the prosecution, which Carlyon said helps to pay for one of his attorneys. “If we don’t have the funding, I am going to have to give all that back and the municipalities will have to continue to pay the jail fees as well as figure out how to prosecute the crimes that occur in their jurisdiction.”
“And it won’t stop there,” continued Carlyon. “I am going to have to start giving up some low level felonies. The aggravated cases, including aggravated DUIs and DVs, some burglaries and thefts, as well as aggravated shoplifting. I won’t have the manpower to do it. All I will be able to focus on are the serious crimes, the weapons crimes, the sexual crimes. We have enough of those cases to keep eight prosecutors busy full time.”
Carlyon further noted that in this future without funding even if Sheriff KC Clark can keep deputies on the road and criminals are arrested and booked, the Navajo County Attorney’s Office will release them because of the lack of prosecutors to try the cases. “What does that do to the quality of life in our communities?” asked Carlyon.
Carlyon went on to detail the loss of services, including those for the victims. “We will lose our victims’ services. We won’t be able to maintain our statutory, constitutional duty to allow them to be a part of the process because I won’t have people to notify them. One of the things the criminal justice system has worked hard on these last 10 years was finding programs that stop the cycle of crime.”
“We have been very successful in our drug court program,” Carlyon said. “We revitalized that and maxed out at 50 participants. We have more than an 80 percent success rate of people not re-offending within three years of graduation.”
From there Carlyon talked about the Veterans’ Court that was started three years ago. “This has been a great success using the services available through the Veteran’s Administration. At one time KC (Clark) and I set up a substance abuse treatment program in the jail that had great success because nobody wants a treatment center in their neighborhood. We had inmates begging to get into the program, which had an assisted outpatient treatment afterwards.”
Carlyon concluded his appeal with, “We don’t have money to continue the programs that we have now. While other counties are expanding and adding programs, we are cutting the few programs we have. I don’t know where else to go, we can’t provide the type of services these other counties provide.”
