Gaal wants to get IU students involved in re-entry programs

Chris Gaal, the Democratic candidate for Monroe County prosecuting attorney, said he feels his experience as both a student and attorney for students facing legal action help him sympathize with their concerns.\n"For young people, you want to try to give them a second chance," Gaal said, "if they earn it." \nIn crimes without victims, he favors dismissing charges of first-time offenders who agree to diversionary programs and agree to stay out of trouble for a year.\nOne of the main reasons Gaal is running for prosecutor, he said, is because he disapproves of the current leadership of his opponent, Republican incumbent Carl Salzmann.\n"Rapes and robberies have been on the rise," Gaal said, "yet the prosecutor's office has been filing less." \nGaal pointed out that according to public files, 75 percent of misdemeanors filed in 2004 were dismissed without prosecution, along with 25 percent of felony charges. \nGaal also spoke poorly of the availability of such statistics. He said that Salzmann is unwilling to share relevant information with agencies in town, such as Middle Way House. \n"These groups should be viewed as an ally to deal with these problems," he said. "It's a public office; it's not a private possession." \nGaal said he sees the job of prosecutor as partly a community oversight role elected by the people. That is what he has been doing for the past seven years as a county council member, he said.\nRegarding overcrowding in Monroe County jail, Gaal said one way to alleviate the problem is for the community to help inmates dealing with addictions.\nNinety percent of jail occupants have addictions, Gaal said, a problem that could be helped by using willing and able resources in the community. Earlier this year he helped institute the position of transition coordinators -- people available to help with any problem, addiction-related or not, that a person leaving jail encounters when re-entering society. \n"A lot of our public safety problems are best served as community problems," Gaal said. \nBy giving repeat offenders valuable skills, he said he feels they would spend less time in the county's jail cells. Further utilizing the re-entry program for educational purposes, Gaal supports incorporating criminal justice students from IU in the process.\nAnother problem Gaal has seen in the jail is the presence of those with mental illnesses. \n"Oftentimes they do criminal things, and then just sit there," Gaal said. "That's not addressing the root of the problem." \nGaal is involved with Crisis Intervention Team, a program to train officers to identify such problems from the time people with mental illness are arrested.