Missoula Crime Report: Losing Patience With ‘Career Criminals’

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 17 new felony complaints this week, which is seven more than last week and right around the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, there were five cases of serious domestic violence. 

“A couple of those involved weapons and pretty much all of them involved drugs or alcohol,” Jennings said. “That's usually the pattern we see with domestic violence. We are constantly working on that with our colleagues in law enforcement and crime victim advocates and other support systems to make sure, first, that victims are safe, that defenders are accountable, but that they also get some sort of rehabilitation so it doesn't happen again.” 

Jennings said their goal is to prevent crimes from happening again in the future. He also wanted to highlight the fact that they have been seeing an alarming number of shoplifting and burglary cases lately.  

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Going After Repeat Offenders

“We had a really interesting conversation last week with the City Council about some of these low-level offenders that just keep doing stuff again and again and again,” Jennings said. “It's not always so serious that we want to spend taxpayer money to hold them in jail forever because that costs about $135 per day per person, but on the other hand, they're really disrupting retail operations. They're not following the laws that everybody else is following, it's really hard for employees, and some of these businesses are losing money.” 

Typically, big box stores can eat some of that cost, but Jennings said this is happening in mom-and-pop stores across Missoula. 

“I believe in second chances and I even believe in third chances,” Jennings said. “I often can see that people are getting into criminal activity because of other things going on in their lives. I love to use the criminal justice system to try and give people a hand up and see if we can straighten out the problems that they were having and get them to be law-abiding. That's always an effort that we have, and those are some of the things that I've embraced as far as the words reform.”

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports 

Enough is Enough

However, Jennings said he doesn’t believe in fourth, or fifth, or 20 chances. 

“There is a point where someone is demonstrating that they're a career criminal,” Jennings said. “We've given them an opportunity to change, we've tried to give them help, we've tried to ask them to work on their addiction issues, and they won't do it. At those points, I lose patience, and we don't have any other options for them, so we will hold them accountable. Enough is enough on those folks, that's how my office views it. We give them those initial chances to try and do better, but there is a point where if they can't be safe in the community, we'll look into other alternatives, and that's Department of Corrections treatment or sometimes prison.” 

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office provides a weekly crime report every Friday morning at 9:00 on Talk Back.