Topeka, the capital of Kansas has just voted to decriminalize domestic violence, along with a list of other misdemenour crimes.
Domestic battery is still a crime under Kansas state law and offences occurring in Topeka would normally be prosecuted by the Shawnee County DA. However, the DA’s office has not been prosecuting misdemeanours for some weeks, due to lack of budget.
The DA’s move was seen as an attempt to force the city of Topeka to prosecute the domestic battery cases, however they apparently do not have the resources either. Instead, they responded with their own political tactic: decriminalize domestic battery and other offences so the county will have to find the budget to handle the prosecutions under state law.
Unfortunately, Topeka City Council’s tactic does not yet appear to have succeeded, meaning any people arrested for domestic violence are held for 72 hours, then released.
Given that city councils’ responsibilities are mostly things like urban planning, garbage collection and issuing parking tickets, one might ask why they would still have the responsibility of prosecuting assaults. This should have been made the clear responsibility of the county under state law, obviating the motivation for this farcical situation.
There are ways communities could free up funds to prosecute assaults:
- Stop prosecuting people for possessing small amounts of drugs for personal use. If you don’t want to legalize personal use of some drugs, at least make the penalty for possession a fine. How driving 30km/h over the speed limit on a suburban street is just a fine but puffing on a joint gets you a criminal record is beyond me.
- Stop jailing people for personal use of drugs. Steer them into treatment instead.
This farce should be an object lesson to both sides of politics: we need a strong economy to provide the social structures which many of us take for granted, such as the ability to see someone who bashes you up prosecuted for assault.
Waste money on stupid wars of occupation when a coup would suffice, on filling jails with non-violent drug offenders, on welfare for middle class whingers, or on stimulating consumer spending instead of industrial capex and watch your budgets for courts, police, hospitals and schools evaporate.
Of course, if Topeka just criminalized answering back and general lippiness, they wouldn’t be arguing over who will prosecute domestic battery.
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