TRENTON —The Department of Law and Public Safety pulled in more money through litigation last year but opened fewer criminal cases, according to an annual report released today. The state also paid out much more money to settle lawsuits last year: $51.7 million, up from $37.2 million in 2009. However, that was still eclipsed by the amount of money...
Attorney General Paula Dow during a press conference in Trenton on MondayTRENTON —The Department of Law and Public Safety pulled in more money through litigation last year but opened fewer criminal cases, according to an annual report released today.
The state also paid out much more money to settle lawsuits last year: $51.7 million, up from $37.2 million in 2009.
However, that was still eclipsed by the amount of money the state won through litigation: $195.9 million, up from $149.9 million the year before.
Environmental and securities fraud cases led the pack with some of the biggest bumps, thanks to a handful of big-ticket settlements. There were steep drops in other areas, such as pension security fraud and consumer fraud.
Spokesman Lee Moore said the issue is timing.
"In any given calendar year, the numbers may change based on whether or not certain cases that have been in litigation for years happened to resolve in that particular calendar year," he said.
The Department of Law and Public Safety, headed by Attorney General Paula Dow, has 8,239 employees and faced declining manpower in recent years. Gov. Chris Christie proposed cutting the department’s funding by $5.04 million, to $555.37 million, in the upcoming budget. However, the State Police may get its first new class of troopers in two years.
"Department-wide, we engaged in a thorough self-examination designed to eliminate waste and reduce costs without compromising effectiveness," Dow wrote in the report. "At the same time, we successfully prosecuted public corruption, violent street gang activity and other crime, protected consumers, combated bullying in schools, issued policy reforms that strengthened public safety, helped reduce traffic fatalities and brought hundreds of millions of dollars into state coffers through civil litigation."
The Division of Criminal Justice pursued 27 percent fewer cases last year, but the overall number of defendants remained roughly steady. In 2010, 1,015 defendants were charged in 675 cases, down from 1,181 defendants in 929 cases in 2009.
Criminal Justice Director Stephen Taylor acknowledged that fewer resources have required him to triage cases, sending some to county prosecutors for follow-up. But he also said the numbers reflect a conscious shift toward handling fewer but more complex cases with multiple defendants.
"I don’t want to expend my diminishing resources on doing third-degree possession of cell phone cases," Taylor said. "What we do focus on, by contrast, is cases like Luis Roman, a jail guard who was smuggling drugs and cell phones into Northern State Prison." Authorities charged 35 others in that case.
The number of defendants facing corruption charges declined in 2010, from 85 to 24. Taylor said that’s because corruption arrests from the prior year became lengthy prosecutions, tying up resources.
He said it’s more important to focus on the quality of cases, rather than the sheer number of them.
"I want to dissuade people from focusing too much on statistics," he said. "They can be manipulated and they don’t really tell the whole story of whether justice is being done."