Crime dramas are often described as ripped from the headlines, and you could say the same about many of the law and order proposals introduced in the general Assembly.

Almost any high profile act of violence, any major white collar scandal, or any perceived threat to public order here or elsewhere is likely to trigger a legislative response, be it punitive or preventive.

Hi, I'm Jon Schwantes, and on this week's show, we'll focus on policymakers abiding interest and public safety, at least as they see it.

Indiana lawmakers from the statehouse to your House.

Indiana Lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations, with additional support provided by ParrRichey.

States across the country saw another drop in violent crime in 2025, with homicide rates down 21% compared to the previous year.

An annual report issued by the Council on Criminal Justice cites a complex web of factors that may have contributed, including a decrease in substance use, as well as an increase in time spent alone among young adults.

Indianapolis ended 2025 with a 45% decrease in murders, compared to a record high back in 2021.

Similarly, property crimes including motor vehicle thefts, burglaries and shoplifting have also decreased by significant margins in Indiana.

Proposed constitutional amendment moving for the General Assembly would expand judges power to deny defendants bail.

Currently, the state constitution guarantees bail for defendants charged with crimes other than murder or treason.

Supporters of the amendment, including the Fraternal Order of Police and the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys counsel, argue it protects the public from the most dangerous criminal defendants.

Opponents, however, such as the ACLU and the Indiana Public Defender Council, challenges subjectivity in sentencing that could vary across judges.

If the joint resolution passes both chambers, voters will decide on the amendment in November.

Legislators also consider bills this session that would expand the application of the death penalty through firing squad and nitrogen hypoxia.

Other bills addressing capital punishment included House Bill 1432, that would establish a process to determine whether a defendant on death row has an intellectual disability.

And HB 1287 would require the warden of the state prison to select an execution team consisting of members of the general Assembly who have volunteered.

Indiana currently has five inmates on death row after executing 2 in 2025.

Heated redistricting debates last fall led to an increase in threats of violence and intimidation against various public officials.

This prompted anti-Nazi legislation that defines and criminalizes individuals who share private information with malicious intent to harm them.

In January, a Tippecanoe County judge and his wife were shot at their home, allegedly by disgruntled defendants.

Loretta Rush, the Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, decried the shooting and reaffirmed that violence has no place in our political system.

Joining me to talk about crime and public safety are Republican Senator Aaron Freeman of Indianapolis, chair of the Senate Committee on Corrections and Criminal Law.

Democratic Representative Mitch Gore of Indianapolis, ranking minority member of the House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code Zach Stock, legislative counsel for the Indiana Public Defender Council.

And Courtney Curtis, assistant executive director of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council.

Thank you.

This is.

I'm glad you're here, but this is going to be daunting because there's a lot to get through, and I fear we're going to leave a lot on the editing room floor as it is.

But we're going to try.

Let me ask you, Senator.

We've seen crime inching downward in Indiana and in Indianapolis, really, for the past 3 or 4 years.

I think violent crime in this city spiked in maybe 2021.

It's been down.

That doesn't seem in any way to diminish legislative appetite for crime.

Anti-Crime, public safety legislation.

Why?

Why is there not a correlation there?

I think if you looked at the agenda of both the House and the Senate corrections committees, lots of bills were filed and we didn't get through them all.

Like, I mean, I didn't hear all the bills, couldn't do that.

Didn't have the time to do that.

Look, I think, hopefully there's universal agreement here among all of us that public safety is critical.

I mean, I think that's the first and, you know, ultimate goal of government is to make sure their citizens are safe.

So I think, you know, 150 people in the legislature are always going to have good ideas to bring those issues forward.

And I you know, I don't begrudge anybody for doing it.

I mean, I certainly carried my share this year.

You know, bails at the top of that list.

There's going to be a constitutional amendment this year, on the ballot that citizens will get to weigh in on.

You were coauthor of that?

It'll go to voters in November.

And we took a look.

It was a deep dive, two year summer study.

I mean, everybody here weighed in on that.

Tried to bring everybody together to to come up with a great product.

And, look, I hope at the end of the day that we can in a good way, look at those repeat violent offenders and ensure we're doing everything we can do to make sure that they're in jail where they belong.

And just for those who haven't been following it, this under the Constitution, as it stands now, unless you're accused of murder or treason, you have to be.

You get out on bail.

Right?

This would, of course, if voters agree, say, okay, if you if there's no way to keep you from harming the public, if you're a risk, then that's right.

All bets are off.

And then there's a trailer bill to that Senate bill, too, which gives the judges some, direction in terms of what we're looking at constitutes that kind of risk score.

Again, crime is down.

You you know, first hand you're you're a police officer, and your day job, your major with the, with the sheriff's office here.

So you see it day in and day out.

You've seen crime stats go down, but still this high volume of legislation, including a constitutional amendment, which is now passed two successive sessions of the General Assembly.

It's not an everyday occurrence.

Why?

Why the uptick in this kind of legislation or some things are absolutely necessary.

I think government should always be trying to find ways to make things more effective and more efficient.

So you have a little bit of that.

Some things.

It's red meat for the base.

And, you know, that's just politics.

And some things are things we just really like to get done.

Maybe even if it's not strictly necessary.

I would have liked to, see a little bit more, attention paid to, some ways to, get people out of jail.

The folks who don't need to be there.

For example, I filed a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.

I just learned, over the summer study committee that we talked about that, simple possession of marijuana, again, is the number one misdemeanor being filed in Indiana.

And that was concerning to me, because I know that we do have repeat violent offenders and violent criminals that that need to be in our jail.

So, a little bit more attention paid to that would have been fine.

But, we do have some good legislation moving and, some that naturally we're going to disagree about just by the nature of things.

And on the subject of, of you guys are making the my job easy.

You're bringing them up and I can just respond to them.

But hemp and cannabis, not only is the General Assembly not predisposed to lessen penalties, if anything, it's enhancing penalties on a lot of the, the, products that are now available, in fact, convenience stores, gas stations and so forth, that would be perhaps off limits.

So why are we seeing, there seems to be more momentum, on the side of lock em up and throw away the key, or find offenses that we can lock them up, even for a short period of time.

Is it is this red meat, pandering to the base?

As I just heard, a certain member of the General Assembly describe it as well.

I don't know about that, but I do know that, you know, crime is in our face all the time, right?

We it's in our algorithms.

It's it's in the newspaper.

It's.

If it bleeds, it leads.

It's, 5:00 news, and it's upsetting.

You know, I don't know how a normal person can watch the news and not be upset.

And outraged by some of the behavior that that we see in the community.

The problem is that crime is such a multifactorial issue.

You know, it's poverty, it's education.

I don't want to overstate this episode of Indiana lawmakers, but in a way, everything that General Assembly does is criminal law related.

Whether we're improving education, whether we're making sure people have appropriate health care, child care, those are all the factors that lead to somebody eventually becoming in the criminal justice system.

But your question was, why?

Why do we see it?

I think it's easy.

And we want to do something.

All of us want to do something.

And creating a new crime, extending a sentence.

Using the jails that we have in all 92 counties, it's kind of a go to lever to pull.

And it's fine ish.

You know, we just have to remember that being tough on crime is also being tough on taxpayers.

And borrowing that that's not mine.

Not trademarked.

But every increased sentence, every new crime, every jail, bad cost to taxpayers, a lot of money.

Courtney, Zach mentioned that, one reason there's a response is it's in our faces all the time.

Talked about the news coverage, the algorithms and so forth.

And it does seem that a lot of the higher profile bills that get introduced in this arena, you can almost draw a direct line to a high profile crime.

I mean, this session, certainly the tragic, death murder of, Hayley Busby, 17 year old, young lady from fishers, tragic circumstances.

We've seen a couple bills amended to one on Amber alert, one.

Another one that would, deal with social media and young individuals access without parental notification or acquiescence.

Does that make your job, given that it's a a lot of cause and effect here based on events?

Tragic events, oftentimes, does that help your job in terms of ensuring safety and promoting public safety or make it more complicated?

Because then there's this sort of sense of outrage that has to be addressed in the moment?

No, I think it helps because, look, in the General Assembly and obviously I'm not a member, but regardless of whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, they're really trying to help people.

You know, they are taking time out of their time, out of their day jobs to come to Indianapolis and try to make our state better.

So I think when there are real life examples of either things we're doing right or things that we're doing wrong, I think that's helpful.

It helps guide us in our work as we're trying to determine, you know, what's the best solution for this?

So when you see something occur and you can have a face and a name to that, then it really helps you.

It it takes us away from the statistics and it shows this is a real life Indiana child who we want to keep safe.

And it makes you think about your own children and your neighbors children.

And it it really helps guide us and figure out what's the best path, what's the best way forward, because we're all trying to achieve the same goals.

How much, Senator is the are these cases a driver for you?

I mean, a lot of them are big organizational, sort of 30,000ft level, but a lot of them there is that seems to be that direct lineage or connection to these cases.

I mean, you know, just this notion of ripped from the headlines, you know, we have policing new policing powers potentially for National Guard members in the National Guard.

We have, immigration crackdown where local, law enforcement agencies, county and municipal would have to comply with with federal crackdown means a lot of these things are what we see on the news or in the newspaper.

And now they're showing up in the General Assembly.

How much of that is at work here?

Oh, it happens, no question.

But I hope you and I hope that your viewers understand that the work begins.

I mean, we will in session, you know, the end of February and we'll probably take a good, hopefully month off or so.

And then look, Zach and Courtney are going to be getting calls for me saying, hey, I've got the next idea, or somebody is going to come to me with an idea.

And I mean, take bail, for example.

I mean, we spent two years together working on this.

But then there's always the look.

I mean, we just had a beech Grove officer that, you know, Mitch and I represent that area.

And, you know, he was just tragically killed.

Like, you always look at those situations and say, what if anything, could we have done better?

You know, the Haley Busby situation.

I mean, you look at that and you go, how tragic is this?

And what could possibly be put in the law to help this family and help families in Indiana and not go through this again?

Look, I just think that's normal.

I don't I personally don't think there's anything political about it.

I just think it's right and wrong.

You know, I was a deputy prosecutor in my day.

I mean, Courtney and I work together.

I mean, Zach and I, work together.

I just look, I think good intent, well intentioned people are trying to do the right thing, and these cases happen, and you just want to make sure they don't happen again.

Are are these good intentions yielding the kinds of legislation that you want to see?

I know there was not time for a lot of things to be heard.

You had one on gun safety and and increasing liability or accountability for guardians and parents to make sure that guns were locked away safely, didn't get a didn't move anywhere, short session and all that.

I mean, are the priorities where they should be.

Do you think?

I mean, you know, as a member of the super minority in the General Assembly, I'd say that, you know, ideally when I, when I see some things come across, you know, my calendar for committees, I think about legislation I or other Democrats have filed where I think, you know, perhaps our bills could have been prioritized over some of the things.

That's the nature of it.

As I said, you know, much of what we do is absolutely necessary.

You mentioned the the regulation of hemp.

I wouldn't describe that as red meat.

That that, I think was one of the absolutely necessary things we have to ensure that especially people under 21 can no longer access it.

And my other goal was to get it out of convenience stores again, because that's where kids can access it.

And we absolutely agree.

Yeah.

And so and but then there are the finer points about the industry as a whole and THC containing products where we happen to disagree.

But yeah.

I mean, on the topic of gun safety, for example, you know, it's happened twice now in Cumberland.

It happened in Beech Grove.

I think we all saw the video a couple years ago of this toddler running around with a handgun.

I am just of the opinion, and the NRA agrees with me that, when you are away from your firearms, you should lock them up so kids can access them.

And I think we should, make it a component of, neglect of a dependent.

If you fail to do that and the kid accesses it and harms themselves or somebody else.

And I'm hopeful that, you know, maybe, in the near future, we'll make some progress on that.

Something tells me that Bill will be filed again, next session during the every year.

This session?

Yeah.

We've talked a lot about aggravating factors and so forth.

You know, the legislation that would if you're wearing a mask when you commit a crime, it would be an aggravated if you're on your school property and you have possession of a handgun.

Certainly multiple times.

Then even if it's a juvenile look out there going to be enhanced penalties.

We've seen that the notion of, you know, enhanced penalties for battery against a school employees and health workers.

And we've also seen sort of this, this revisitation of capital punishment in our state, the firing squads, you know, different methods of execution.

Is there anything good come out of those, these discussions?

Well, I think if I could try to put a theme on all of those points, we're talking about, I would welcome what we're talking about.

Right?

We're talking about deterrence.

All of these questions are in the and it's it's it's the position of the public defender Council is a statement that Senator Freeman hears from from us all the time.

Representative Gore hears from us all the time.

Is that the certain the certainty of being caught as opposed to the length of punishment is, I think, generally regarded by criminologists to be the most effective deterrent.

The extensions of sentences, the enhancements of penalties, the death penalty itself.

There's not good evidence that those things are deterring crime.

Instead, we probably should talk about more preventative things.

And, representative Gore talked about guns, you know, yesterday, in the General Assembly or.

I'm sorry, I don't know when this will air, but there was the bill about, gun crimes Task Force, Senate poll.

This would expand it to Laporte.

Yeah.

Border counties.

Yeah.

And and Representative Stewart.

Well, I've made the excellent point that about how many guns the, the those task force have removed.

That's a very proactive piece of legislation.

I would argue that the grooming bill and I think Courtney can speak to this more.

The grooming bill is a proactive approach.

We're trying to capture a behavior that is unacceptable and criminal and harmful, but not nearly as harmful as the behavior that it's going to lead to.

So in all of these bills that we talk about being filed, you have this mix of reactive I think, and proactive.

It's always our position to be more proactive.

And I I'm guessing Courtney, that would be you'd say preventive is is the answer here.

And grooming might be one that would keep people who have a pet collection for child offenses or pedophilia to keep them away, either virtually or literally.

I mean, do these things, is this where we need to be focusing our attention as lawmakers?

Yeah, I don't want to, you know, it's not an either or.

Yeah, right.

And so each session, I think that the lawmakers are looking at what's all encompassing.

And, you know, so for instance, you mentioned that there's an enhancement if you're carrying a handgun on school property.

That is because we are trying to be able to take that handgun away before worse things can happen, like what happened in Noblesville, you know, a decade ago or so.

That's kind of a preventative measure, right?

If we have that on the books, then we can take your handgun from you before you commit a crime with it.

And there can be a serious punishment to that.

So, you know, some of these things are forward thinking sometimes.

And an increased punishment is also forward thinking.

The grooming bill is definitely, you know, one that we should be proud of.

You know, if it passes out in, in its current form and I think it's going to then we should be really proud of that.

It is only a misdemeanor, but it allows us to intervene when we are in the grooming stage, which is when the perpetrator is establishing that relationship, establishing trust, picking out a victim, and allows the child to, you know, have some sort of knowledge that this is not okay.

It allows parents to recognize those red flags in advance, and hopefully children will disclose before we get to, yes, that ultimate horrible crime.

You know, go ahead and show one more thing on the grooming bill.

I think since he's sitting here right next to me, Senator Freeman deserves a lot credit about on and Senator Janelle, the author, there is a lot of precision work on that bill.

Yeah.

To Senator Freeman's point about when things get started, it was not just a reactionary thing.

And, the prosecutors, the defenders, the victims, the senator, we all sat down to work out a very tight, manageable, workable, preventative measure.

It was a good it is a good thing he's going to want to catch that IOU.

And at some point, these two don't get enough credit in there.

Agencies don't get enough credit.

Look, we're citizen legislators.

I mean, I hope Mitch agrees, right?

I mean, he's got a profession in a career that I respect because I, you know, I'm not in his world.

I'm a lawyer.

I mean, we depend on, you know, Courtney and Zach and their I mean, all the time.

And I encourage legislators when they call me and say, hey, I have a Bill idea.

I mean, oftentimes the first thing I say is call Courtney and act and tell me where they are and get, you know, try it because it's easier, right?

I mean, and I refer to bail again, like, I'm sure we started that.

And you would have thought, there's no way we're going to come to common ground.

Now, I'm not suggesting Zach loves everything in all of the bills, but I but his work and his agency's work led to a very good product that ultimately everybody agreed to.

And to continue that commercial, both of their agencies or many times or the people they represent are understaffed.

There aren't enough attorneys with those skill sets to go around.

And we've seen bills this session that would change, for instance, residency requirements so that there could be more public defenders in Marion County, presumably other counties.

And I know that's been an issue, the notion of shortage of skilled prosecutors who are willing to put in the hours for the money that's available or important things to it.

And dovetailing with that is the notion that even though crime is down generally in the state, one demographic seems to have experienced a dramatic uptick.

And that is public officials, whether they're court officials, we saw talk about ripped from the headlines shooting of a tragic shooting of a judge in Canoe County and his wife, fortunately, they survived, but that's having legislative repercussions.

Also, we saw the doxing bill because at least a dozen cases where in the debate over redistricting, the mid cycle redistricting, people who tended to be voicing opposition to that were getting Swat calls, bomb threats, you name it.

Are you feeling, more in harm's way?

And are these kinds of things necessary to make sure our system actually continues to, to function?

The criminal justice system?

Yes, certainly.

It was definitely a, a distressing time, I think, for, members of the General Assembly and obviously, you know, separately, but just as important, that judge and his wife, you know, I think one of the things that we have to do every year and in this touches on that a little bit is we have to respond to what technology does.

Right.

The ability to look up some of these, personal information and then spread it widely and in encrypted ways and backchannel ways that that end up resulting in somebody being threatened or somebody actually being harmed.

It's, yeah.

I think it was a scary time for all of us and our families.

And, certainly worthy of the response that that came this session.

Any I we're I don't want to run out of time before I give each of you an opportunity to say, you know, if it didn't get accomplished this session, you'd love to see it happen, down the line.

And I'll just go go through here.

Senator.

What what do we need to do as a state?

That's an open question to a very complex topic.

Yeah.

For me, it's easy.

And I hope, you know, Mitch mentioned it earlier.

Look, no one in the legislature in 2018 when we tried to change the definition of him to comply with what the farm bill did, did any of us think you would go to a gas station?

And every gas station has a neon light with basically marijuana in front of you?

That, by the way, our kids are buying?

I hope that look, my hope is the Indiana House, passes Senate Bill 250, not because it's got my name on it.

It's, you know, look, we got to address that issue, whether it's got Mitch Gore's name on it or mine.

Don't care.

That issue needs to get solved.

We need to get that stuff out of our kids hands.

Zach, on.

I mean, I think it's got to be mental health investment and investment in mental health infrastructure.

We've started it.

I think it's just the tip of the iceberg.

I mean, Senator Kreider and among many others deserve a lot of credit for getting that that ball moved down the field.

But I think we're like at the ten yard line.

We're not we got 90 yards to go and that includes building regional mental health facilities that that includes, just more people to call, more people to show up in an appropriate manner.

So I think it's got to be a mental health investment.

Courtney Curtis I mean, I'd love to echo what Senator Freeman said about the hemp bill, but I will say that we're enormously proud and happy of all the work that's gone into, Senate Joint Resolution one, which is the the, bond issue and the constitutional amendment.

I hope that it I hope that the voters are for it.

It allows us to have a more surgical look at who should be behind bars and who shouldn't, as opposed to this kind of blunt force, you know, approach for everyone almost at a time.

But I'm sure the last words will be golden.

No pressure.

Well, I mean, Zach's theme, mental health, but but coming from my experience in my day job, I would say if we could just find a way to let cops do the job that they wanted to do, the job that they signed up for were not mental health counselors.

It's not appropriate for us to be, increased funding for mental health.

The issues surrounding what are we going to do with our homeless neighbors?

You know, I don't hear each topic.

Yeah.

I mean, notion of criminalization, of homelessness.

Yeah.

I don't think jail's the answer.

So if we could just get back to letting cops fight crime.

And not be the answer for all of society's ills, and invest appropriately in some of the things that would fix those issues, that that's my long term vision and goal for what we can do in this area in the General Assembly.

All right.

We'll have to leave it there.

We'll call this chapter one in an ongoing saga.

You next week.

Exactly.

Thank you all again.

My guests have been Republican Senator Aaron Freeman of Indianapolis, Democratic Representative Mitch Gore of Indianapolis, Zach Stock of the Indiana Public Defender Council, and Courtney Curtis of the Indiana Prosecuting attorneys Council.

Time now for our weekly conversation with analyst Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of the newsletter Indiana Legislative Insight, part of Hannah News Service.

And toward the end, we we got finally to the notion of homelessness and the criminalization of homelessness, or at least banning street camping.

I think, is the more proper way to refer to it.

How significant is that proposal?

Well, I think you're going to see some kind of compromise, and we've seen a lot of compromise on a lot of bills this year.

We we entered into this session with the idea of, of either criminalizing something or legalizing and regulating something in a few different contexts.

We heard about that, recently on the show when we talked about the sweepstakes gaming, and they they couldn't decide quite what to do with it.

So they kind of settled in the middle, at least to this point, and said, well, we'll just impose some civil penalties on it and we're not going to criminalize the activity.

So there are three ways to kind of get around some of these things.

And we're in the final stretch run here, the session.

What can we expect?

There wasn't a whole or there weren't a whole lot of imperatives coming into the session.

There weren't things that they absolutely had to do this session.

And I think they've they've gotten the big things out of the way, even on some of the important issues in terms of public safety.

We've we've gotten through some of that already.

And I think you're looking at some bills being killed in the final days.

If they can't agree on some specific language rather than make things worse.

So we'll be out of here on time.

No ifs, ands or buts.

Looks like it.

All right, Ed, as always, I appreciate your insight.

Thank you.

Jon.

Indiana espouses home rule, but state lawmakers have advanced township consolidation, cut into local tax revenue and tied the hands of city and county officials by preempting local action on a growing list of weighty issues.

On the next Indiana lawmakers.

Well, that's it for this week.

I'm John Schwantes, and on behalf of everyone involved in the program, WFYI, Public Media and Indiana's other public broadcasting stations, I thank you for joining us.

And I invite you to visit wfyi .org for more statehouse news.

Until next week, take care.

Indiana Lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations, with additional support provided by ParrRichey.