Creative sentencing to benefit nonprofits

Creative sentencing to benefit nonprofits

Oct. 12, 2000

BY MATT GLECKMAN
Journal Staff Writer

In an effort to put money back into the community, a local judge is proposing that individuals who are found guilty of crimes in Montezuma County Court could reduce their fines by making a donation to a local nonprofit organization.

Montezuma County Court Judge Christopher Leroi, who is initiating the "creative-sentencing" effort in the county, said, "The majority — if not all — of the fines that are imposed in our court normally go to Denver and we never see (the money) back in the community for any community organizations."

Leroi said that, through this effort, convicted lawbreakers will be given the opportunity to make a monetary donation to a local charity and in return the county court will reduce their fines.

If the person chooses not to make a donation, the original larger fine will be implemented.

"I am trying to do a lot of positive reinforcement. . . if they make a donation between the first court date and the last court date then I will reduce their fine accordingly," Leroi said. "What I have been basically doing is reducing their fine by double the amount of the donation that they made."

Leroi said that this option could be open to relatively any case in county court — from speeding tickets to DUIs and domestic-violence charges.

The endeavor is currently being coordinated by the Montezuma County Court and the district attorney’s office, Leroi said.

District Attorney Mike Green and his challenger for the DA position, Joe Olt, both support the idea. "They have both been more than agreeable," said Leroi. "I think that the DA’s office can use this in a lot of creative ways.

"What we are talking about doing is creating a local nonprofit charity list and giving the defendants the option of picking an organization off the list and making a tax-deductible donation to them," he said.

This is a chance to give some money to those organizations that usually struggle and need as much community support as possible, the judge added.

However, Leroi said that if the same organizations continue to receive donations over and over while others are continuously ignored, the DA’s office will be assigned to randomly pick the charity so that the money gets spread around evenly.

This is money that could go to volunteer fire departments, the high-school marching band, the Child Advocacy Center, Partners, preschools — any nonprofit within Montezuma County, Leroi said.

The judge said that Jacklyn Berdzar at the DA’s office is taking applications from those nonprofit organizations within the county that would like to be considered for the donations. Organizations must meet the federal 501-c(3) nonprofit status in order to be considered for the list.

"I understand that we already have quite a few people who are sending in applications," Leroi said.

Leroi said he learned about the creative-sentencing program while talking with a judge from Salida during a September judicial conference. "They have been doing this for years in Salida," Leroi said.

Upon returning from the conference, Leroi said, he began reducing fines for people under the condition that they make a donation to a charity within the following three to four months.

At this time the sentencing program has not been implemented in the area at the district-court level, Leroi said.

"It’s not as feasible to be done at the district-court level because the district court carries so many different costs and fines that are mandatory," he said.