JACKSON CO (WSIL)---Cases have been piling up over the years, of victims who file their cases for sexual assault in Jackson County.
In 2015, the Belleville News Democrat reported 87% of felony sex crimes reported to police in a 9 year period never reached a courtroom.
That report also found only 8% of sex crimes in Carbondale were prosecuted.
"That's an alarming rate. And I wanted to find out why that was," said Jackson County State's Attorney, Joseph Cervantez.Â
Cervantez decided to change those numbers.
"The fact of the matter is they are difficult cases to investigate, and they're difficult cases to prosecute, and so what we wanted to do is spend the last year finding out why that is and how we can change that," he said.
Cervantez is working on prosecuting more cases, indicting charges on three more individuals over the past week.
But he doesn't want to stop there.
"Going forward, change the way we do business to make sure that we're paying attention to victims in the community and that we're doing everything we can in our office to pay attention to felony sex crimes and prosecute them effectively," Cervantez added.
Starting this summer, Jackson County's Special Victims Unit will begin, focusing on cases like sexual assaults and battery in an attempt to balance the number of cases filed versus cases prosecuted.
"This is to specifically address that number and to see if we can pay more attention to victims, more attention to these investigations and more attention to the prosecution of them," said Cervantez.Â
And even though he said these cases are difficult to prosecute, Cervantez said it's important for victims that they try.
"We wanna make every that we can to do what we can to not just prosecute but to prevent it from happening again. And I think the prosecution of one case can deter several other cases from ever happening," he said.Â
