Alachua County Commission hears report on recommended changes to Court Services Department
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their September 23 meeting, the Alachua County Commission heard a presentation from a consultant about changes to their Court Services Department and asked for more engagement with stakeholders before adopting the recommendations.
CEPP hired to take a comprehensive look at Court Services
Assistant County Manager Heather Akpan introduced representatives from the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP), a consultant hired to assess, design, and implement a reorganization plan for the County’s Court Services Department. Akpan said, “Over time, although our employees continue to work hard and we continue to assist [justice-impacted] citizens, we have had somewhat of a scope creep that has strained our resources and the impacts that we were able to make on our justice-impacted folks, and so we started on this journey about a year ago, under the direction of the County Manager, to take a comprehensive look at Court Services and see what we could do to reorganize it.”
Click here to see CEPP’s presentation.
Kelvin Banks from CEPP said the organization is centered on “gender equity, system disparities, as well as justice reinvestment.” He said their work is “research-informed, collaborative, focused on human dignity, as well as equity-centered.”
Tara Boh Blair, also from CEPP, said they had met with County Commissioners, the County Manager, the Jail Director, the judiciary, the Public Defender, the State Attorney, and all of the Court Services staff in the process of preparing their report.
Rebranding
CEPP recommended changing the name of the Court Services Department to the Justice Support Services Department and provided a long list of positions that could be reclassified, transferred, or eliminated in the first six to nine months, with other changes coming in phases over 24 months.
CEPP also recommended exploring whether the County has the statutory authority to supervise felony cases, as it currently does in its treatment courts (Drug Court and Mental Health Court, for example).
Banks emphasized that the Department should apply the four features of procedural justice:
- Whether people are treated with dignity and respect;
- Whether people are given a voice;
- Whether the decision-makers are neutral and transparent; and
- Whether the decision-maker conveyed trustworthy motives.
Banks said, “If you do these four things, even if a person is sentenced to life in prison or some long term, they will consider their experience to be fair. This is about treating people fairly; you can hold them accountable, but you still want to treat them fairly.”
Recommendation to stop reporting all probation violations to the court
The report recommended that Court Services stop reporting all probation violations to the court: “Reporting every violation of probation to the court, regardless of its severity, is not an effective or evidence-based method for managing non-compliant behavior. Moreover, the response options listed in the guide are more severe than necessary for less serious violations, especially if other, less harsh responses are not initially used… This policy should include responses that match the severity of the behavior, incorporate targeted interventions and incentives, and minimize the use of jail time and restrictive sanctions for behaviors that do not threaten public safety.” During the discussion, Blair clarified that felony probation must be supervised by the State by statute, but the County may have more leeway in supervising misdemeanor probation.
Board discussion
After the presentation, Commissioner Anna Prizzia said, “You know, the ideals of being research-informed and collaborative and equity-centered — I think that’s really important to this Board, and I know for us, being of service to justice-impacted individuals, to ensure that they can serve their time and then move into back into the community and being effective citizens or finding diversionary tactics that support them staying productive members of our community, rather than having to be incarcerated, is always our goal.”
Prizzia said there was a lot of detail in the report and she didn’t fully understand all of the recommendations, but “I did appreciate the information you brought about the risk and needs assessment pieces in your report, and some of your suggestions around reporting [probation violation] behavior and finding more strategic ways to do that, rather than sort of an every-behavior-gets-reported kind of strategy with the courts.”
Regarding probation violations, Banks said, “What we found is, in many communities, there is an over-supervision, over-conditioning, over-accountability, and it’s causing people to fail, and the departments and the staff don’t realize that they’re causing people to fail.”
Blair said another concern is that pre-trial release and probation supervision are “sort of all blended together… So what we wanted to do is separate those two, because the missions are different, and everyone on probation needs to be under probation. Everyone that’s presumed innocent, that is still in the pre-trial [release phase], should not be subjected to probation practices.”
Prizzia said she was reluctant to adopt the recommendations without getting buy-in from the stakeholders and understanding the budget impacts; she also wanted a legal review of the recommendations to make sure they align with Florida statutes.
Commissioner Ken Cornell said, “In your report — and I think it is the view of this Board, that we seek to minimize jail time that doesn’t affect public safety — I thought that was really strong, and that we fund an intensive outreach effort.”
Alachua County is the only County that oversees treatment courts
Cornell also asked why the County oversees treatment courts (Drug Court, Mental Health Court, etc.), and Community Support Services Director Claudia Tuck said, “When our staff go to conferences across the state, they’re regularly asked, ‘Why are you doing treatment courts under County government?’ Across the board, it’s all under the courts. We’re the only County, as they said, that is doing that. And they’re always asked, ‘Why is the County doing that?'”
Prizzia said the treatment courts were created because of “us being advocates for having more diversionary tactics and more diversionary courts,” but County Manager Michele Lieberman said the courts had asked the County to do it, “and we haven’t said no… In every other County, the [Department of Corrections] is handling those and overseeing those.”
Prizzia also pointed to the number of people in the Alachua County Jail, which has a capacity of 1,148 people, according to a document in the backup of the meeting (the jail population on September 23, 2025 was 964 inmates): “Our jail population was over 1,000 last week on many, many days… We’re bumping up over and over again against the top levels we’ve ever seen in our jail, and that’s a result of judges making decisions to keep people in jail, either setting bonds high or not giving pleas…, on top of people making bad decisions in their lives and ending up in jail to begin with.”
First motion
Cornell made a motion to “receive the report provided by the consultant with gratitude, authorize our staff to proceed with the 24-month implementation of recommendations, and meet with each of the affected stakeholders to work on a collaborative implementation process to achieve the cited best practices and bring back any changes of the recommendations from this input within the next 90 to 180 days.” There was no second.
Prizzia said the County had missed a public engagement step at the end of the process, “and I probably should have caught this, when we put the contract together with you, that there wasn’t time built into that contract for you to do a delivery of this back to stakeholders and have a second iterative step in that process. I didn’t catch that, and that’s on me, I should have… If people do not see where their ideas and input were inputted into the plan and where they fit into the plan and have the opportunity to respond to that, it’s not a truly participatory process.” She wanted the plan to go to the Public Safety Coordinating Council (PSCC) and to community groups who work with “justice-impacted people.”
Second motion
She made a motion to “accept the report with gratitude, for sure, for all of the work, and that we develop a next-step process for participatory engagement of the stakeholders, for input on the recommendations, and bring an implementation plan back to us in the next 60 to 90 days.”
Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said, “I’m still trying to understand what it is we’re expecting from this report. We paid for the report; we got the report… I don’t know why we paid all this money for this report if we’re expecting to change it.”
Cornell seconded Prizzia’s motion.
Prizzia said she was open to bringing the consultant back to manage the stakeholder engagement.
Assistant County Manager Heather Akpan said, “This can’t happen in 60 to 90 days. We do not have anyone to do what we just said. I have no problem with the stakeholders and all of that, but we need the expertise to be able to have those conversations. We don’t have that.” She said staff would need to go through the procurement process and hire a consultant to engage the stakeholders. She said staff had planned on hiring a consultant to guide the County through the implementation process, “and we already have budget for that.”
Third motion
Prizzia made a new motion: “I recommend that we accept the report and that we include in the implementation phase of this report a process where we engage the stakeholders on the recommendations in the report and take those recommendations and that input into consideration as we move forward with an implementation plan, and then that implementation plan be presented to the board when it’s ready.” Cornell seconded the motion.
Cornell pointed out that the implementation phase will be part of the 2026-27 budget discussion.
The motion passed 4-0, with Commissioner Mary Alford absent.
My gosh, this is one of the most woke, pro-criminal discussions the county has had in a long time. STOP CODDLING CRIMINALS. You’re basically punishing those who FOLLOW the rules.
No, no, no Joe – Its okay if it is only small violations! It doesn’t mean they will go on to bigger violations, Joe! It is very i portant to afford them all DIGNITY AND RESPECT.Remember, “…Banks said, “If you do these four things, even if a person is sentenced to life in prison or some long term, they will consider their experience to be fair. This is about treating people fairly; you can hold them accountable, but you still want to treat them fairly.”
PS: I’m with you Joe – I needed to vent. I’m okay now brother.
Joe, it is almost like a Saturday Night Live spoof of a woke government meeting – that is HOW overly woke it is!! The lingo is comical at this point. I would be laughing if I didn’t realize that the idiots requesting this stuff and paying for it with our money actually believe it, and they are running our county…
…and that gentle readers is your Daily Angle of the Dangle”! (seriously Dang – well said. I mean that).
We can’t incarcerate our way out of this, punishment only leads to recidivism. Rehabilitation too. One should tour a jail or prison before wishing that on nonviolent offenders.
2/14/2025 “Earlier this week, Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon detailed significant prison staffing shortages in a hearing held by the Florida Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice. Since January 2021, Florida’s prison population has increased by about 8,000 people – but staff levels have remained flat. In response to the growing prison population, the Florida Department of Corrections had to open up 53 housing units, which are staffed through an unsustainable combination of overtime for existing correctional officers and supplemental National Guard troops. In the next two years, an additional 3,000 people are expected to enter Florida’s prisons – an influx that will require 18 more housing units and 461 more staff positions, further exacerbating the staffing shortage.
For corrections officers, staff shortages can lead to long shifts, mandatory excessive overtime, dangerous working conditions, and extended time away from family, which contributes to increased stress, burnout, and other adverse mental and physical health impacts. For incarcerated individuals, prison staffing shortages lead to lockdowns, housing units being consolidated, limited access to educational and rehabilitation services and programming, and delayed medical care. Understaffing also threatens the safety of the institution, its employees, and those incarcerated, while severely limiting the availability of treatment and rehabilitation programs that prepare incarcerated people to successfully return to their homes and communities.“
When faced with the choice between more incarceration and more innocent victims, I’ll choose incarceration of convicted criminals every single time.
Society needs to protect innocent people, particularly in the disadvantaged communities, who are victimized by both violent and quality of life criminality through no fault of their own.
Maybe they should consider shortening the length of time people spend on death row.
That’ll save on the need for more units, more officers, less public safety threats….
Maybe they should remove the ‘revolving door’ they use for the criminals.
Okay, so let me get this straight- the County paid a lot of money to a consultanting group who recommends that we stop reporting probation violations to the court. People placed on probation have violated the law and have been given a chance at probation instead of incarceration. From what I can tell, this article shows that the County Commission is going to adopt this suggestion. How do we expect to deter crime, keep our community safe and hold people accountable when criminal defendants break the law, are given a second chance and then violate probation (those violations will never be reported). This is placing the needs and best interests of criminals above law abiding citizens of this County. This is shameful.
Director Claudia Tuck said, “When our staff go to conferences across the state, they’re regularly asked, ‘Why are you doing treatment courts under County government?’ Across the board, it’s all under the courts. We’re the only County, as they said, that is doing that. And they’re always asked, ‘Why is the County doing that?'”
Prizzia said the treatment courts were created because of “us being advocates for having more diversionary tactics and more diversionary courts,” but County Manager Michele Lieberman said the courts had asked the County to do it, “and we haven’t said no… In every other County, the [Department of Corrections] is handling those and overseeing those.”
The only County in the State.
Didn’t the SBAC get special mention for also being the “only County in the State” recently?
Time to stop wondering.
It’s a magnet for lawyer corruption, so UF law skool grads can pay off their student loans faster. Guaranteed.
I believe we just had a letter to the editor warning us all that the City and the County governments are ” funneling money to ‘public-private partnerships’ ” and here is another example of that … look at the website for ” The center for effective public policy”. Under resources is some doozies … Like
“Gender Justice Pretrial Toolkit
A Model of Participatory Pretrial Justice
for Women and Gender-Diverse People”
Or this one:
“Jail Tip #5: Use Gender Responsive Assessment Tools”
I wish I had the time to look up the political affiliation of every person on the “About our Team” page but I have a full time Job.
We need to stop wasting money on “consultants” and start to just hold people accountable, including the commissioners who keep rubber stamping the hiring of the consultant firms.
What a Joke, how much money was spent on a DEI report? People on Probation are treated differently than Pre-trial. Probationers have been sentenced by the Courts, and any violation must be reported, or the Officers are not doing their job. Depending on the extent of the violation the Court can continue the Probation. The problem with Court Services is the Director, for years. Did this report take into account that a violation could be a person on supervision making contact with a victim of domestic violence?
Most people under supervision were not arrest in church on a Sunday. An issue that should be brought out is the slow process.
Public Defenders that keep continuing a case. Many times, because of overloaded with cases. And as the people remain in jail or under supervision the more likely they are to plea deal. Don’t know where Center for Effective Public Policy is from, but states have different laws. Did they speak with the Court (Judges) on how they felt about not reporting violations. I personally know that the people that work in Court Services are good people. They don’t receive bonuses for violations. But obviously they know the law better than Center for Effective Public Policy. Work on getting a Director. How many Commissioners have actually been to Court Services and sat done with the folks that work there? In the past Court Services has gone the extra mile by working with Grace Market and setting up offices there in order to avoid violations by meeting with people there. Get A DIRECTOR GET A DIRECTOR. Sad report but the County Manager knows the real problem.
They’re pushing the same policies and programs that result in events like public transit riders having their throats slit.
It’s a most important industry to the ACLUSPLCDNC Party 👿👹🤡💩👺
The typical liberal trick is to never mention the victims of the crimes but instead turn the criminals themselves into the victims. This way they never have to feel sorry for others, only themselves. They never have to learn how to adapt to live in a lawful society because it’s society that failed them. They never have to learn how to work because as a victim they’re obviously too traumatized. But at least they’ll be respected and thankful even if they’re getting absolutely nothing helpful from this, right?
AC needs to focus on these 3 things close Grace and St. Francis House. Remember Ranger Smith says don’t feed the bears. build a bigger jail to keep more people locked up longer. A bigger faster bus that can drive these felons to Lake Butler and Lowell on a express route daily. These 3 things will fix all of AC’s problems.