Tucson Program Slashes Pretrial Misdemeanor Incarceration
Writing to the Board of Supervisors of Arizona’s Pima County on November 7, 2024, County Administrator Jan Lesher reported striking results from first-year operations of its Transition Center in Tucson: Since it opened in September 2023, the share of those held at the County Adult Detention Center (ADC) on misdemeanor charges dropped from 20% to less than 5%.
Using funds from 2021’s American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress in response to the COVID-19 economic disruption, the County’s Department of Justice Services (DJS) opened the program in a small office outside ADC. From 8:00 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday, four Justice Navigators (JNs)—described as “professionals with justice system experience” who are “trained as Recovery Support Specialists or Peer Mentors”—work under a Program Manager who has both “therapeutic training and justice system experience.”
The program is restricted to those arrested for misdemeanors that are also not related to domestic violence. JNs connect participants with housing, treatment and vocational services. But while waiting sometimes months for these appointments, they also receive “gap interventions”—“immediate treatment, housing, or detox,” as well as “basic needs like food or clothing”—to prevent a return to the streets for arrestees who are “typically unsheltered and substance-using.”
Some 1,100 people used at least one Transition Center service over the year, including 160 placed in housing and another 421 referred for treatment. Importantly, their 30-day rearrest rate was less than 10%, versus 27% for a control group. That two-thirds reduction in the risk of rearrest translated into 158 fewer bookings every month, saving ADC $940,000.
Most referrals initially came from DJS’ Pretrial Services division. But as the year progressed, an increasing number of jail releasees simply walked into the Transition Center or were dropped off by family or police. Two-thirds of those typically jailed for failure to appear after arrest are homeless; the program aims to provide a less punitive response to that fact. See: Pima Cty. Transition Ctr. 1st Year Report, DJS (Nov. 2024).
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