THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602170017
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
If justice delayed is justice denied, there's a justice shortage in Portsmouth.
Records for 1994 show that the city's Circuit Court has the largest case backlog in Virginia, measured by the number of pending cases per judge. The statewide average that year was 1,543; in Portsmouth, the number was 2,775.
Some locality has to be the slowest just as some other locality will be the swiftest. What's bad here is not last place but the size of the gap between Portsmouth's backup and the average.
So at the request of Chief Circuit Judge Norman Olitsky of Portsmouth, a state Supreme Court examiner has begun viewing the city court clerk's files.
Plaintiffs, witnesses, defense attorneys, prosecutors, jurists, families of victims - even many defendants - will hope the examiner can help. But the sad fact is that Portsmouth has been dogged by crime, violent crime, more than most communities. The city must deal as well with a problem of witness intimidation that inhibits prosecutors' ability to prosecute and creates even more backlog. Portsmouth may also have a direr need for more judges than do other localities.
All this is a reminder that crime's great monetary cost to society goes beyond the expense of building ever more jail and prison cells and enlarging police departments. A high volume of crime obviously increases the expense of dispensing justice.
By all means, let us find ways to trim Portsmouth's backlog. But at best these will likely be prescriptions simply to ease the pain, not cure the problem.
If crime's costs are to be contained while governments still have the capacity to pay the bills, then the commonwealth and its localities must begin now to invest more in reducing criminal recidivism and more, too, in trying to stifle crime at its roots.
This is a hard, complex job. It requires sizable investment from which dividends will emerge only very slowly. But even as the state tries to help Portsmouth turn the wheels of justice faster, the commonwealth must help turn other wheels that can stem the number of cases coming before our criminal courts. by CNB