Sen. Mike Crider, R-Greenfield
GREENFIELD — Joining with other central Indiana legislators, Hancock County’s Sen. Mike Crider is launching a package of bills in the Indiana General Assembly aimed at reducing crime and increasing public safety.
“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to address the particular violent crimes that we’re seeing across Marion County,” Crider said.
Crider, R-Greenfield, whose district includes part of the east side of Indianapolis, said he and the other Republican legislators whose districts encompass Marion County worked together on creating the bills. They are focused on creating new approaches to the issue of violent crime in Marion County, he said, after several years in which murder rates have been particularly high.
One bill Crider authored, Senate Bill 10, creates funding for the Indianapolis-Marion County Police Department to experiment with pilot programs in high-crime areas of the county. High-crime areas are defined as areas of at least one census tract where crime is 35% or more higher than the crime rate in the county as a whole. It enables the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to give grants for additional law enforcement services in those areas.
Another bill, Senate Bill 7, establishes the Marion County Crime Reduction Board, which would be responsible for administering the funds. Up to $500,000 per year can be used to fund such programs.
Crider said potential uses for the funds could be to increase police presence in high-crime areas or to partner with other law enforcement agencies, but proposals for programs will ultimately come from the IMPD itself.
The pilot program, Crider said, connects to several other bills he and other Marion County Republican representatives authored aimed at reducing crime. Crider is an author or co-author on Senate Bills 6, 8 and 9, all focused on crime reduction.
Crider said the bills share a common focus on hoping to reduce the violent crime rate by preventing re-offenses. Senate Bills 6 and 9 both focus on bail. SB 9 establishes that bail for a crime involving violence must be paid in full and cannot be paid by anyone other than the defendant or a close relative. Senate Bill 8 creates new rules for non-profit organizations that pay defendants’ bail, establishing that a non-profit that pays bail for more than two people in a 180- day period has to register with the state and prohibiting such organizations from receiving state grant funding.
Together, the two bills reduce the power of organizations like The Bail Project, a national group that pays bail for defendants who can’t afford it, including in Marion County. The Bail Project has recently drawn controversy in Indianapolis for bonding out people with felony charges who went on to commit violent crimes. One man, Marcus Garvin, was bonded out by The Bail Project after being charged in a stabbing incident; he then cut off his ankle monitor and murdered his girlfriend a few months later.
The Bail Project’s mission statements say that it focuses on low-level criminal offenses and that it provides support to defendants and their families to make sure they make it to their court dates and address factors that led to their arrests.
SB 9 establishes new standards for how long people who have been arrested must wear an electronic monitoring device as part of a pre-trial release, probation, parole or community corrections program. It also defines interfering with or disabling a monitoring device as an escape from custody, with the attendant penalties.
Crider said he thinks the package of bills makes sense because it’s focused on extra scrutiny of people who have been charged with or convicted of a crime.
“A lot of the murders that are happening are post-adjudication, and they’re not being monitored,” he said.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the Indianapolis-Marion County Council have said they are open to working with the legislators who filed the bills on criminal justice issues. Crider said he’s optimistic that if the bills pass, they could help decrease the Marion County murder rate.
“The whole goal is to keep more people alive, and particularly those innocent people who are caught up in drive-by shooting or gang situations,” he said.
Other criminal justice bills Crider is sponsoring include one that would expand eligibility for compensation when affected by a crime to include payments for crime scene cleanup and for families of victims, and another to make interfering with a victim of domestic violence who is seeking to testify a crime of obstruction of justice.