Supreme Court Justice Kenny Griffis speaks at the 2021 Neshoba County Fair on Thursday.
Griffis started his speech by stating that it’s an honor for him to be at the fair and reminisced on his career.
“When I first started my career as a judge I came to Neshoba County and I asked for your vote.”
He then went into describe some of the success they’ve had in the court.
“Over the last 10-15 years we’ve been working on Access to Justice, trying to help the poor have access to civil litigious. The first year we were ranked 52nd.”
Throughout the last year, they’ve moved to 34th place.
Throughout COVID, they made sure that people in jails were protected from the pandemic. Griffis thanks everyone, the courts, law officers, who helped to keep the courts open during the pandemic.
Griffis then goes on to state that drug intervention courts work and saves people and offers redemption.
“Drug courts have saved Mississippi over $560 million in incarceration costs. Participants have paid over $15 million in fines and fees to drug courts.”
Justice Griffis states that through drug courts, they have saved the state of Mississippi over $400 million.
He ended his speech talking about criminal justice.
“There’s a lot of people that talk about criminal justice and say what we need to do is defund the police. And that is absolutely ridiculous. What we need to do right now is increase our funding for law enforcement. We need more law enforcement officers, we need to pay them better, we need to train them better, and yes we need to expect more from them,” stated Griffis.
Anne Summerhays
