Missouri sheriffs are asking the state legislature to address their priorities, including tightening Missouri sentencing laws. Buchanan County Sheriff Bill Puett said the Missouri Sheriffs Association has been pushing the proposed “Truth in Sentencing” laws for years, also referred to as “Clarity in Sentencing.”
“We have a variety of rules that allow convicted criminals to be released really, really early, and we have been arguing for a really long time that they need to serve more of their sentence, according to what the judget sentenced them to,” Puitt told Missourinet affiliate KFEQ in St. Joseph.
The association wants non-violent offenders to serve at least 75 percent of their sentence and violent offenders to serve at least 85 percent.
“It’s disheartening, especially when victims call you and they say, ‘you know, hey, I thought that the person who victimized me got sentenced to prison, and I just saw him at Walmart,’” Puitt said. “On nonviolent felonies right now, they are giving them 30 days on a year, so you’re doing one month for one year, and that’s just not acceptable.”
In November, Missouri voters rejected Amendment 6, an attempt to shore up the retirement fund for county sheriffs. The Missouri Sheriffs Association hopes lawmakers address the issue this session. Puett suggests there’s not a lot of incentives to become a county sheriff after the courts rejected the funding mechanism for pensions and the voters rejected a proposed fix.
“If there is no retirement, (if) there are no resources and all those things, why in the world would anybody step up and say, ‘Hey, I’m willing to take this, this position?’” he said. “Why would I subject myself to all the things that go along with it and then at the end there’s, you know, there’s no retirement?”
Amendment 6 would have funded sheriffs’ pensions by reinstating a $3 court fee that would be levied on people convicted of or pleading guilty to traffic offenses. Opponents argued that it would have led to “policing for profit.”
Puett said the association also wants lawmakers in Jefferson City to make county sheriffs a constitutional office.
Report by Brent Martin, KFEQ
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