By Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – When the Minnehaha County Commission met this Tuesday, the meeting’s main business only lasted about 10 minutes, but four briefings made up the other 70 minutes they were in session.
The majority of those reports dealt with criminal justice reforms in the county, along with other ways offices are dealing with needy and vulnerable county residents.
Robin Houwman, the presiding judge of the Second Judicial Circuit, spoke on two different presentations: one, a look at what has been going on in her circuit over the past year, and the other, a briefing on the MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge grant.
Over the past year, Houwman reported that Second Circuit has made many changes due to the COVID pandemic affecting how the courtrooms needed to be run.
During this time, the court permanently installed Zoom capabilities in seven courtrooms for virtual trials, thus allowing everyone who needed it access to the proceedings.
Houwman also added that the Second District (Sioux Falls area) has been a pilot program for these virtual courtrooms, and these practices are being looked at for statewide expansion.
She seemed particularly proud of the new jail courtroom which brought people on trial right to the courtroom without the need for transportation.
Houwman said that this reduced the need for 8,000 transports of prisoners, resulting in a substantial savings.
The jail courtroom handled 4,180 cases from Sept. 2020 to Feb. 2021, and people could stream the proceedings live. Those proceedings have an average of 77 viewers per day.
In a related presentation, Houwman also talked about the MacArthur Safety and justice Challenge grant that is helping rework the judicial system to keep people out of jail.
Part of what this grant covers is setting up a system to keep people from going to jail before trial, when possible.
Houwman explained that suspects are given a score which shows the probability of them not showing up for trial and/or being arrested again on other charges.
Whenever possible, those who have been arrested are monitored weekly by staff who check in on them and remind them of any upcoming trial dates.
For pretrial monitoring, Houwman said there were 230 “successes,” where people were not rearrested and showed up for trial.
She had figures that 98 fell into the category of “failure to appear” and another 105 were listed as re-arrested, although, she pointed out that many of these re-arrests or outstanding warrants came from charges on things that happened prior to their current arrest with the circuit.
Minnehaha County Human Services Director Kari Benz also referred to some of these same people, but she went far beyond that in talking about challenges her department has faced in the past year.
However, even with those challenges, she said, they have been helping needy and underserved people throughout the county deal with a myriad of problems.
The Minnehaha County Commission meets the first, third and fourth Tuesdays of every month at 9 a.m. on the second floor of the Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
All meetings are open to the public, and public input is always encouraged.
