Eugene weekly., January 31, 2019, Page 9, Image 9

City officials claim Community Court
has brought about big changes in
the way Eugene treats the homeless.
The court's own numbers
tell a very different story.
B Y TAYLO R PE R S E
AND M O R G AN THE O PHI L
JUDGE WAYNE ALLEN
IL LUS T R ATION BY CHEL SE A LOV E JOY
T
wo years ago the city of Eugene, with much
fanfare, announced it would do more to help
the homeless and others who are repeatedly ar-
rested and ticketed by Eugene police for small-
time crimes.
The idea is called Community Court, which
gives defendants a way to avoid fines and jail time by en-
rolling in a program that connects them with mental health
services, housing and ways to find work.
City officials predicted that Eugene’s new Community
Court would also help clear the city’s Municipal Court of
so-called “frequent flyer” offenders whose repeated crimes
and misdemeanors cost taxpayers.
“This is a way to reduce the costs, and benefit, we hope,
the people that find themselves caught up in these kind of
behaviors,” City Manager Jon Ruiz said at the time.
City officials have since claimed the program is work-
ing. “The people who have engaged and opted into the pro-
gram have very positive stories and positive things to say,”
Cheryl Stone, the city’s court administrator who led the
effort to create the program, tells Eugene Weekly.
Stone also says that Community Court tends to reduce
the number of people cycling back through the courts.
But the court’s own records reveal that might not be
the case.
Data from the city’s courts show the recidivism rate —
how often people reoffend after being convicted of crimes
— has not changed for those who have successfully com-
pleted the Community Court program, according to an
analysis done by EW and the Catalyst Journalism Project at
the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Com-
munication.
The results raise serious questions about the effective-
ness of the program, which the city helped pay for with a
$200,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant.
The numbers also raise questions about the veracity of
statements made by city officials about Community Court
and their unwillingness to release public records that shed
more light on what’s really happening with the program.
Our analysis tracked nearly 800 defendants eligible for
Community Court between September 2016 and the end of
June 2018, when the federal grant ran out.
The analysis shows Eugene’s Community Court pro-
gram has fallen short of its promise:
• Very few people complete the program. Records show
only 17 percent of defendants eligible for Community
Court have had their charges dismissed by “graduating”
the court after staying out of trouble for a period of time,
performing community service and checking in with or-
ganizations that can hook them up with the services they
may need.
• Nearly 30 percent of people who completed the Com-
munity Court program have since been convicted in the
city’s courts, a recidivism rate far higher than city officials
have made public. In fact, these Community Court gradu-
ates are being convicted of crimes at the same rate as be-
fore they entered the program.
• Overall, Community Court isn’t reaching the people
who need it most. Defendants who failed in the program
or simply opted out are showing up in court more often,
creating an even bigger caseload than before.
THE HOMELESS IN COURT
Eugene faces a homelessness crisis, and the city has
responded by turning many people without permanent ad-
dresses into criminals.
Only about 1 percent of the city’s population is home-
less, yet 25 percent of the cases the city’s Municipal Court
prosecutes for non-driving violations are against people
without permanent addresses, as an EW investigation re-
vealed last year.
Police reports and court records show some of these
charges include assaults and other crimes, but others in-
clude violations are for sleeping in parks, “loitering” under
cover while it rains or other simple actions many homeless
people take to simply survive their day.
The Municipal Court can order jail time or levy fines
that often stack up into the thousands of dollars — debts
many homeless will never be able to pay.
City officials realized the Eugene Municipal Court was
dealing with the end result of a deeper community problem
and that the traditional approach of levying fines or send-
ing people to jail wasn’t working.
“It’s just a step that ends the case,” Municipal Court
Judge Wayne Allen tells EW. “It doesn’t end the problem.
We’re trying to see if we can end the problem.”
Searching for a solution, Eugene officials looked to
Spokane, which has been operating a community court
since 2013. In 2016, Eugene was one of 10 cities chosen by
the Center for Court Innovation, a New York-based non-
profit, to receive $200,000 federal grants to set up com-
munity court programs.
The Eugene court deals with offenders accused of com-
mitting non-violent, minor crimes and violations within
the entire downtown police patrol area in Eugene. Defen-
dants who qualify for the Community Court can opt in to
the program rather than go through the traditional Munici-
pal Court process.
Each defendant in Community Court is given an indi-
vidual case plan that outlines what they need to accomplish
in order to graduate the program and avoid conviction, jail
eugeneweekly.com • January 31, 2019
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