DA Hummel launches safety, crime prevention effort

Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel announced Tuesday a project called DeschutesSafe, a plan to engage county residents in a dialogue about public safety and crime prevention.

“Working together we can enhance our already stellar crime prevention efforts,” Hummel said, issuing this overview of the 18-month project:

Communities across the country are developing and implementing data-driven processes and evidence-based strategies that reduce crime and save money. These initiatives are called Strategic Crime Reduction Efforts (SCREs). Three key findings from a recent review of SCRES: (1) communities can reduce crime and violence through data-driven processes and evidence-based strategies; (2) effective implementation of these processes and strategies is central to crime reduction; (3) implementation of strategic innovations is difficult and often met with resistance.i

In Deschutes County we have many examples of innovative crime prevention programs: Juvenile Community Justice’s first time MIP and marijuana program, our jail’s G.E.D. program, C.O.P.Y., specialty courts, the domestic violence child safety project, the crisis intervention team, Heart of Oregon Corps’ YouthBuild program, and many more. But as good as we are at creating programs, we can be better at coordinating efforts and using data to evaluate and fine-tune our efforts.

By working together as a community, leveraging resources, and using data and evidence-based strategies, we can become even better at preventing crime and keeping our community one of the safest places in the country to live, work and raise a family. DeschutesSafe is a 1 year program to set us on this path.

1. Community Education: (6 months)

–Pre-work will be done by community experts and coordinated by a consultant in partnership with a community advisory board ii.

–Important for stakeholders to be informed of all relevant facts and data prior to commencing discussions about potential enhancements to community safety programs.

–Relevance will be broadly defined. Traditional public safety data will be discussed iii, but we’ll also discuss drivers of crime more broadly: high school graduation rates; poverty rates; number of people with mental health issues who are not in treatment; drug and alcohol abuse/addiction rates; quality and capacity of our community treatment programs (for violence, mental health, drug/alcohol); and much more.

–Community sessions will be held throughout the county with a representative sample of our community. Focus of the meetings will be primarily to inform the community of the status quo.

2. Community Dialogue: (6 months)

–During public sessions with a representative cross section of our community, in addition to discussing the current crime prevention programs in our county, facilitators will share with participants innovative crime prevention programs from other communities.

— These programs will not be presented because they are necessarily the “right” programs for Deschutes County. They will be presented merely to provide examples of programs other communities developed to address their needs. Deschutes County will develop the program(s) that are the best fit for us. Examples from across the country include:

o Intercept program: L.A., California: (diverting mentally ill from criminal justice system)
o B-SOBR: Beaverton, Oregon: (zero percent recidivism rate for repeat DUI offenders).
o Home visitation programs: Nationally, including Marion County, Oregon: (helps parents of children from birth to age five tap the resources and develop the skills they need to raise children who are physically, socially and emotionally healthy and ready to learn).
o Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD): Seattle, Washington: (a pre-booking diversion program that allows officers to redirect low-level offenders engaged in drugs or prostitution activity to community-based services instead of jail and prosecution).
o Cite-and-release risk assessment for police: Arnold Foundation
o Pre-Trial risk assessment for prosecutors: Arnold Foundation
o Violence Reduction Assessment Tool (VRAT): Michigan State University: (a planning and resource tool to identify assets and gaps with the goal of supporting the effective implementation of evidence-based SCREs).

–Participants will provide input as to whether any of these programs are appropriate for Deschutes County. Participants will also suggest their own ideas for crime prevention interventions.

–At the conclusion of this phase, the professional facilitators and community advisory board will assess if any crime prevention interventions garnered wide support in one or more communities in Deschutes County. If one or more interventions has wide support, the community advisory board will decide whether to recommend implementation of the intervention(s).

3. Implementation: (Within 6 months of completion of phase two)
–If the community advisory board recommends one or more interventions for implementation, the recommendation will be taken to the appropriate governing body (Board of County Commissioners or city council) for vetting.

–If the appropriate governing body approves the intervention(s), the Deschutes County District Attorney’s office will apply to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) of the U.S. Department of Justice for an implementation grant.

— Action Research will be used during implementation. Action Research is a BJA best practice. Action Research involves a researcher being imbedded in a project to gather data during implementation of the project and to suggest iterative changes to the project based on real-time analysis of project data.

i http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=3484&issue_id=92014
ii Community advisory board will be inclusive, representative of the population that lives and works in Deschutes County and will include, among others: law enforcement; community justice; youth; drug/alcohol/mental health professionals; education experts; poverty professionals; the business community; neighborhood associations; government officials. It’s expected that an executive committee of the board will be selected to oversee day-to-day operations. The board at large will meet approximately every two months.
iii For example: crime rates for all types of crimes, broken down by age, gender, neighborhood, ethnicity, etc.; average jail population; number of annual cases processed by each police agency and by the district attorney’s office; number of cases annually handled by parole and probation department; number of annual cases handled by county juvenile department; annual costs to process all of these cases; and all other traditional public safety data.