Idaho deals with serious prosecutor shortage

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - The Gem State is seeing a serious shortage of prosecutors.

The shortage could affect the justice system’s ability to put criminals away, and those in charge say it can’t be fixed anytime soon.

It’s a nationwide issue, said Bonneville County prosecuting attorney Randy Neal. It’s affecting public defenders, law clerks, and the private sector too. But Neal believes prosecutors might be getting hit the worst.

“Our career prosecutors are retiring, and there are very few attorneys to fill their spot,” he explained.

“We’re authorized for ten in our criminal division,” he continued. “We’re at six. So we’ve got four vacancies there.”

Attracting candidates isn’t the issue.

“I mean, I don’t know where we get them,” Neal said. "They don’t exist.”

Neal said he recently went to an Idaho law school in an attempt to recruit talent.

“But we saw, out of the 220 persons in the campus, that those that were interested in focusing on criminal law, we had about eight students,” he asserted.

Young lawyers used to need public sector experience before they could go private, Neal said. Now he has to compete with private firms for talent.

“We’re seeing folks that, in their first year, may get a $20,000 bump in their salary, which is what I took five years to get,” he explained. “Retention now, y’know, we may pay $15,000 to keep somebody here. We may pay $5,000 to get somebody here.”

“Right now it’s not affecting the taxpayer,” he continued, “because we have a budget for this many salaries and we have this many vacancies. But when we start getting those vacancies filled, at some point, that budget’s gonna have to swell to keep those numbers.”

In the meantime, Neal is making do with his current manpower.

“But now, I’m doing four times as many cases as I was as a deputy prosecutor,” he said. “And that’s across the board with the folks that are working here as prosecutors.”

As a result, case loads are becoming more selective.

"Some of the misdemeanors and the infractions that normally would have more emphasis on them,” Neal said, “I mean, we’re just not going to have the ability to take all of those to trial.”

Neal said Bonneville County hasn’t seen a serious impact on its ability to prosecute because the rest of his office, prosecutors aside, is fully staffed. However, his assistants are being given more responsibilities than ever before.

Local News 8 asked Neal what he thinks it will take to address the shortage.

"Boy, if I had the answer to that question,” he said with a sigh.

Neal thinks it’ll take a cultural shift involving a greater emphasis on the honor in pursuing justice.

“So solving the problem is probably not going to happen quickly,” he asserted. “Right now, we’re looking to manage the problem.”