Street roots., December 16, 2016, Page 4, Image 4

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Street Roots • Dec. 16-22, 2016
Michael Miyamura said the county’s Justice
Reinvestment Program saved his life. He was
facing 15 years in prison but was diverted
into intensive probation instead. Now he’s
been clean for two years and has started his
own carpentry business.
Community vs. incarceration
Multnomah
County’s
program to keep
high-risk
offenders out of
Prison is
working, but
politics and
money woes
threaten to
undercut its
success
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
ince July 2014, Multnomah County has
sent more than 600 offenders, who in
the past would have likely gone to
prison, into an intensive probation program
within the community instead.
The program is part of a statewide effort
to cut down on incarceration rates of people
convicted of nonviolent drug and property
crimes, while at the same time maintaining
public safety.
The county recently ran the numbers on
the first year of the program, and the results
are in: It’s working.
“We are reducing the number of people
sent to prison and not compromising public
safety,” said Abbey Stamp, director of Local
Public Safety Coordinating Council and a
member of a workgroup that helped put
together the report.
Unfortunately, a proposed repeal of the
Affordable Care Act and Oregon’s budgetary
shortfalls in the upcoming biennium threaten
the future of this program and could reverse
the trend toward incarcerating fewer
nonviolent offenders.
To avoid opening another prison, the
Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 3194
in 2013, creating a grant program to fund
programs in counties across Oregon aimed
at lowering recidivism rates and prison
usage.
With those funds, Multnomah County
created its Justice Reinvestment Program.
Now, eligible offenders facing likely prison
sentences are evaluated to determine
whether a probation program could be used
in the place of incarceration.
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Each participant, who agrees to join the
program voluntarily, is sent through an
in-depth pre-sentencing assessment process
to determine risk factors such as criminality,
community support, addiction issues and
mental health.
Once assessed, the judge, prosecutor,
defense team, and probation and parole staff
hold a conference with the defendant where
the group makes an informed decision on
sentencing that often includes probation
paired with a program plan tailored to fit the
individual’s needs. That plan can include
drug and alcohol treatment, mental health
services, housing and job placement, as well
as other wraparound services.
Of the 2,375 offenders who have gone
through the evaluation process to date, 22
percent were still initially sentenced to
prison. But the vast majority were sentenced
to regular or intensive probation instead,
with the condition that if they failed to
comply with the requirements, they could be
revoked to prison for the remainder of their
sentence.
To determine whether the program was
working, the report’s authors compared
offenders who were sent through this new
process to a control group of similar
offenders who went through the county
justice system before the program was
implemented.
It found that 42 percent of offenders who
would have gone to prison under the old
system were put on probation instead. But
the real win was the discovery that they
were no more likely to be re-arrested within
the first year after sentencing than offenders
the county was already putting on probation
before the program started.
According to the county’s report, 32
percent of participants in the first year of the
program were re-arrested and incarcerated, .
either for new crimes or serious probation
violations.
Lane Borg, director of Metropolitan Public
Defenders, said he was “ecstatic” the
recidivism rate “didn’t blow up.
“We took a much riskier group of people,”
he said, “and the recidivism rate was about
the same as we saw with the control group
that, in theory, had selected out these more
risky people and sent them off to prison.”
But he cautions against drawing too many
conclusions from this report.
He said it’s unlikely any future year will
mirror the program’s first, as everyone at
the table - prosecutors, defense attorneys
and the county’s Department of Community
Justice - are getting better at matching
offenders with the right programs and
identifying deficiencies.
One problem the county identified early
on was there aren’t enough providers of
some services needed by program
participants, such as in-patient drug and
alcohol treatment and cognitive therapy for
criminal thinking.
And, he warned, “that is only going to get
more challenging with the results of the
national election.”
He said if the Affordable Care Act is
repealed, “that’s going to jeopardize the
program.”
The Affordable Care Act funds drug and
alcohol treatment for individuals on parole
and probation, which freed up money for the
county to spend on other crucial services,
such as housing, he said.
If wraparound services provided to people
on intensive probation go away, they will be
more likely to fail the program.
treet Roots first spoke with Michael
Miyamura in March 2015 when he was
just 60 days into his sentence with the
county’s Justice Reinvestment Program. He
was at a ceremony for the initial group of
offenders to complete the first 120 days of
intensive probation. At that time he told us
that if they could do it, so could he.
Now, he said, the program saved his life.
“I’m still clean two years later,” he said.
“I’m working, I got my driver’s license - I’m
doing pretty good.”
He was homeless and addicted to meth
when he was arrested for stealing cars. If not
for the program, he said, he was looking at a
15-year prison sentence.
“The program is as hard as the individual
wants to make it,” he said. “If I can stay
clean, I can be an example for others to be
what they want to be someday.”
His only complaint was that when he
reached that 120-day mark, he was no longer
provided with housing.
Luckily, he had friends he could stay with
until he got on his feet. Today he has his own
apartment and is self-employed in carpentry,
a trade he learned long before drugs took
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