Marshall County Chief Probation Officer James Bendy asked both the Marshall County Commissioners and the Marshall County Council members during their separate meetings to submit a grant application to the Indiana Office of Court Services.
Bendy said, “Last year the county received, in total grant dollars from that grant, $144,000,” stated Bendy. “That covered the cost of our pre-trial intake person who does all of the pre-trial assessments of those that are arrested prior to sentencing, and also it allowed us to have a probation officer.”
The same amount will be applied for this year.
He added that a lot of things were able to put in place in the first year that included a new pre-trial officer, as well as implementing evidence-based practices, release matrixes, and different policies, plus guidelines in Criminal Rule 26.
“It’s a competitive grant. They don’t give it out to everybody. We were lucky enough to get it last year. We had a couple meetings with them. They came up and reviewed our process after only having done it for amonth. They thought that we were a good candidate to help them along with helping other counties and see where we progressed from there. So, actually only taking money since July we’ve been doing it full-blown for seven months.”
Both the commissioners and the council members approved the grant application request with a unanimous vote.
