Assistant DA Saleme gives Rotarians overview

Assistant District Attorney for the 16th Judicial District Court of Louisiana Tony Saleme gave a presentation Tuesday to Franklin Rotarians concerning the several and various programs offered by the 16th JDC, as well as the functions of the District Attorney’s Office.
“In our three-parish district,” Saleme said, “we are charged with processing all the felonies and all the misdemeanors that are not covered in city courts.
“The District Attorney has charge over all of those prosecutions.”
According to Saleme, back in the 1990’s the Louisiana Constitution was amended, giving victims certain rights in criminal cases.
Saleme said that then District Attorney Bernard E. Boudreaux Jr. made sure that Victims Assistance Coordinators were present in each of the division offices.
There are two VACs within each of the three parishes in the 16th JDC, and Saleme said they act as liaisons between the victim and the criminal justice system.
The 16th JDC also has its own probation system.
“The Department of Corrections supervises probation and parole for felonies, but they do not do that for misdemeanor cases,” Saleme said. “So, our district attorney’s office stepped up and formed its own probation services department.”
He went on to say that in 2018 the PSD saw almost 9,900 probation cases, whereby over 20,000 hours of community service was overseen, and over $100,000 was collected as restitution.
He also spoke of a program called Pretrial Diversion.
“If you are a youthful offender who may have exercised poor judgement,” Saleme said, “rather than saddle somebody like that with a conviction which may impair their ability to further their education or to get certificates or licenses for work, we have a pretrial diversion program.”
He said that with the PDP in 2018, the DA’s office saw 7,100 diverted cases whereby they oversaw over 19,000 hours of community service, and collected $64,000 in restitution.
Touching on other programs offered, Saleme mentioned Drug Court, explaining that it is designed for adult offenders in drug-related cases, to subvert the sentences which might otherwise be situationally unsympathetic. The victim has to assent and the offender must fall within the parameters of acceptance into the program.
The three-phase, two year program affords room for failed attempts at graduation, offering only a few days of jail in a circumstance where an extended stay might have been otherwise executed.
“It’s not a perfect program,” Saleme said. “But, the recidivism rate to offender rate is a lot lower in drug court than it is for those who are going through regular probation.”
He reported that in 2018, the 16th JDC DA’s office had over 2,500 participants in the drug court program.
Another program Saleme spoke of was the Non-Support Division, “the District Attorney’s Office with assistance from the State of Louisiana helps in collecting child support.”
Their services are free, and in 2018 they collected over $23 million throughout the 16th JD.
Of the DA’s family service programs, he began with the Truancy Assessment Service Center, which he said was created around the years of 2000 and 2001 through a grant from Louisiana State University.
“Basically,” Saleme said, “we are checking for kids who are missing school without excuses. It is a prevention-based program. We get our referrals from the schoolboard, when someone has five unexcused absences or two out-of-school suspensions.
“What we do is we have case workers and counselors to create an informal family plan, if necessary.”
The other family service program is Family Needed Services.
He said the program is a system comprised of a panel of professionals which takes recommended cases from the local school systems; truancies, “ungovernables,” and runaways, in an attempt to develop a “service plan” to keep the child out of juvenile court, which is the next progressive step.