Press Enterprise: Riverside County’s criminal justice system in ‘crisis,’ supervisors say
A chronic lack of judges and the dismissal of more than 1,300 criminal cases in recent months has become a crisis for Riverside County, two supervisors said.
The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday, Jan. 24, to endorse a bill from state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, to add judges and to ask the executive office, which oversees county government’s day-to-day affairs, to study the county’s criminal justice challenges and offer solutions.
That plan came at the suggestion of supervisors Kevin Jeffries and Karen Spiegel, who wrote in a memo to colleagues that Riverside County’s criminal justice system “is experiencing a crisis the likes of which we have not witnessed in more than a decade.”
While state government, not the county, is responsible for adding judges, “we are not getting our fair share of resources in many areas,” Spiegel said Tuesday.