It just turns out this is a great state to commit crime in
because:
NO.1 The law says that when persons are incarcerated they have a right to an attorney. But when they can’t afford an attorney they get a public defender.
There is an extreme shortage of public defenders in Oregon. This is not a new problem, but it has not been addressed. Oregon must get criminal defendants attorneys within 7 days or release them from jail, judge says.
So the criminals are on the street right away. Oregon has 1/3 of the number of public defenders we need.
The states that do not have this problem have public defenders as employees of the state and as such they get retirement benefits and other perks and a much better income than they do now working for charitable organizations. It is not a good paying job and it is overwhelming. So nobody wants this job – you can understand why.
So if we want to increase public safety we need to get criminals judiciously processed into or out of the system.
This is not happening and putting criminals back on the street just encourages them to commit more crime because there does not seem to be any penalties for that.
Drug addicts included. Democrats are soft on crime! The state has not addressed this long time problem. They just don’t address it. Before we become insane about paying more taxes in a high tax state. Let us see the state solve one problem that is part of the cause of crime. They are not trying to solve the problem, they just want to convince you that they need more taxes. Don’t you believe it.
Right now our state is buried in money. We are supposed to get some of that money back in the kicker. It is supposed to be the biggest kicker ever.
I say the state should take care of the lack of enough public defenders by changing the way this job is paid for and hire public defenders as state employees. This would make the job more desirable. Other states do this.
NO on taxing homes for public safety, (cause lack of money is not the problem)