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It's far more lopsided than it appears in those numbers. In Missouri, most prosecutions are handled by a county's Prosecuting Attorney's office, which are fund
by Digory 10y ago
It's far more lopsided than it appears in those numbers.
In Missouri, most prosecutions are handled by a county's Prosecuting Attorney's office, which are funded by each county's budget (largely property taxes).
There are 115 counties, including St. Louis. In larger counties, those offices will have 150 employees and $10 million budgets. The counties sometimes pay for office space for the Public Defender, but they're not paying salaries. The $35 million for Prosecution Services in the state budget is to fund a small office that helps coordinate the county efforts statewide, and helps prosecutors in small counties who are overwhelmed by unexpectedly complex cases.
So the $40 million for defense state wide, which will be dwarfed by the combined budgets of the Attorney General and county prosecutors.
- NolF 10y agoThat's very informative. I had a quick look online and found a tabulated by county for 2015 prosecution budgets 43.8m at the county level [0]. Which basically prosecution would have double the budget plus the work of the local PDs etc. [0] https://fusiontables.google.com/DataSource?docid=1NURUkUA8qQXAW-hwtNXRAEks7VHl_iLPCjoVVNE#rows:id=1 https://fusiontables.google.com/DataSource?docid=1NURUkUA8qQ...
- Digory 10y agoI read your table as 60m in county budgets, and another 16m+ in "other" (which is not necessarily the state budget). So to get the magnitude right, you'd take budgets for police + 75m for prosecutors at the county level, plus the state-level budgets of the Attorney General, Prosecution Services, and the Highway Patrol (which operates as our state police as well as a bureau of investigation). That's not to say that 1:1 parity is necessary or desirable for real justice. But it's misleading to compare just the state level budgets and assume it's even roughly equal.