Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Solicitor Fifi Stone asks council to fund prosecution, victim services and diversion programs
Loading...
Summary
Solicitor Fifi Stone told the council her office's FY27 request supports a career criminal unit, a county-based victim services center including pediatric forensic exams, and diversion programs. She provided conviction and service statistics to justify personnel and program funding.
Solicitor Fifi Stone presented her office's budget request to Beaufort County Council, linking the ask to three core operations: career criminal prosecution, a county-based victim services center with forensic pediatric exam capacity, and diversion courts and programs.
Stone said the career criminal prosecution unit — staffed by experienced prosecutors, investigators and analysts — focuses on a relatively small group of defendants who account for a large share of crime. She said the unit "has been responsible for 544 career criminals being incarcerated. They have resulted in 70 life sentences and their conviction rate is 91.7 percent." Stone added that, of that multi-county caseload, Beaufort County accounts for a substantial share: "In Beaufort County alone, that's 243 career criminals, 24 life sentences, and a conviction rate of 91.7 percent."
On victim services, Stone described a 3,500-square-foot victim services center that co-locates partners such as Hope Horizons and Lowcountry Legal Assistance without charging rent, and a children’s forensic-exam and interview capability that avoids sending children to Charleston for exams. She said 2,518 victims have used the center to date, about 30% of whom were children; she reported 58 pediatric assault exams and 689 forensic interviews.
Stone discussed diversion programs — multidisciplinary courts for drug, mental-health and veterans' cases — and said the programs produce a 70% success rate for people who complete them and a 9% recidivism rate in the pretrial intervention program. She told council that her budget request is intended to retain experienced prosecutors and to pay county-based staff appropriate to local living costs, noting she converted county attorney pay scales into comparable prosecutor pay bands to justify requested salaries.
Council members asked how the solicitor’s request relates to public defender compensation; Stone said she is not advocating to tie her request to the public-defender budget and suggested each office should justify its own funding needs.
The solicitor asked that council consider the request mindful of county public-safety priorities and offered to work with County CFO Pinky Harriet on funding allocations.
