ANDERSON — Drug abuse in Madison County is not only impacting the crime rate but has caused a sharp increase in the number of children being abused and neglected, members of the Madison County Council were informed.
Amanda Craycraft, director of the Madison County Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program said Thursday that when she started in the office in 2005 there were 240 cases.
She said in 2014 that number climbed to 679, and it was 1,058 last year. Craycraft said as of September 1, the 2016 cases were up by 40.
There has been a 340 percent increase in the cases being handled by CASA volunteers.
“Madison County ranks fifth in the state in child abuse and neglect cases,” Craycraft said. “We’re behind the bigger urban counties of Marion, Lake, Allen and Vanderburgh.
“Right now the increase is drug related,” she added. “For a long time it was meth, but now it's heroin use.”
Madison Circuit Court 4 Judge George Pancol, who oversees child-related cases of abuse and neglect, estimated 90 percent of the cases are drug-related.
Craycraft said CASA doesn’t have enough volunteers to assign to each individual case.
“Last year there were 112 cases where the parental rights were violated,” she said. “Those children are placed for adoption.
“Our goal is to place every child in a safe, loving home that is permanent,” Craycraft continued. “Our hope is to work ourselves out of a job.”
During his presentation to the Madison County Council, Prosecutor Rodney Cummings said drug use is at the root of rising crime rate.
Cummings was asked by Councilman Rick Gardner, R-1st District, if drug use was the cause of the rising number of arrests and overcrowding at the jail.
He is requesting funding to hire a part-time legal secretary to assist with the processing of charging documents following arrests.
“We’re arresting and charging more people in the county,” Cummings said.
Cummings said the increase is a result of uneducated and unemployed people in the county with no other way of making money other than selling drugs.
“Drugs are a huge problem,” he said, “and it adds to the crime problem. There is a lack of opportunities.”
Cummings said because of the escalating crime rate in Madison County, a lot of professionals doing business or working in the county are moving to neighboring Hamilton County.
“It starts with the schools,” he said.
Commenting on the overcrowding at the jail, a facility designed to house 207 inmates which on Tuesday was housing 253, Cummings said it started in 2014 with the state adopting a new criminal code.
He said the change required the counties to house lower-level felons and misdemeanor inmates instead of sending them to the Indiana Department of Correction.
“There used to be a failsafe through the courts,” Cummings said. “The magistrate could release people from the jail when overcrowding became a problem. The judges are no longer allowing that. They don’t want felons on the streets.”
With the county council facing a tight fiscal picture for 2017, Cummings said when the new criminal code went into the effect, the state promised to provide some funding.
“That hasn’t taken place,” he said. “I’m trying to get the state to pay for a deputy prosecutor in the problem solving court."