Costs strap response to domestic violence

AUGUSTA – Ted Glessner, the administrator and chief numbers guy for the state’s court system, listened politely Wednesday and was certainly interested as judges and task force members hashed over ways to improve the way the state responds to domestic violence.

As ideas and suggestions were tossed around that could help the courts keep victims safer and create more accountability from offenders, Glessner sat in his appointed seat and listened.

The bottom line, however, is money, and Glessner knows better than most that in the government’s third branch, money is not flowing nearly as fast as the ideas.

With 40 vacant positions statewide, most of them court clerks, and the inability to provide enough security to adequately protect courthouses and those who work and use them, ideas that would in any way increase court dockets or create more work for judges or clerks will be a difficult sell.

It’s one of many issues facing the Governor’s Advisory Council on the Prevention of Domestic Abuse.

The council met for its third meeting Wednesday in Augusta and is to report its recommendations to the governor in February.

On Wednesday, three district court judges appeared before the council to discuss ways the court was dealing with domestic violence cases. The judges also took the opportunity to tell the council what they would like to see contained in its report.

Judge E. Paul Eggert of Portland said he would like to see a day when a person arrested for domestic violence would be bailed out only by a judge and not by a bail commissioner. Judges would have more information and background available to them to make a better-informed decision on what type and how high to set bail, he said.

For many offenders, however, that would mean spending more time in jail. Now those arrested are bailed by a bail commissioner who comes out any time of day or night to determine and set bail. To be bailed by a judge, an offender may have to spend the night in jail or even a weekend if arrested on a Friday evening.

Many in the group acknowledged, however, that such an idea might work in a perfect world, but in Maine’s economy, it would be seen as added work to the court docket and extra inmates at overloaded county jails.

Judge Bob Mullen of Farmington noted his concern that the Legislature accepts and passes recommendations but doesn’t include any additional funding for the courts to implement them.

Judge Joyce Wheeler of York told the council that a domestic violence court, started in York County in 2002, allowed judges and court staff to spend more time on each domestic violence case.

“This program allows us to coordinate criminal and civil dockets and ensure that various court orders involved in the case do not conflict with one another,” she said. “What we found before, for example, was that you could have a case in which a bail condition might conflict with the conditions on a protection for abuse order.”

Clerks in domestic violence court also have statewide access so they can research cases in other courts. In regular courts clerks can research only cases filed in their court, which means that other cases could be filed in other courts against the same offender and the judge might have no knowledge of that.

Yet again, however, a domestic violence court, which in this case is funded by a federal grant, involves more money, and Glessner had to toss in a dash of reality.

“Our budget for overtime is zero,” he said. “We have 40 vacant positions that we can’t afford to fill.

“I’m telling you, this is a very stark picture here, and we’re not confident that we’re going to see it get better anytime soon,” Glessner said.