First year of Washington County’s deflection program shows progress, areas to improve

Oregon voters passed Measure 110 in 2020. The goal was to decriminalize small amounts of street drugs and move users into treatment.

That goal was ultimately not realized, and in 2024, the legislature changed the drug laws. They implemented a new program: it let counties set up deflection programs to direct people facing misdemeanor possession charges away from the criminal justice system and into treatment.

Most counties set up these deflection programs, and some, like Washington County, kicked off their program as early as they could: Sept. 1, 2024.

Now, a new report is out that details how many people in the county went through the deflection program, or otherwise received treatment and social services to support their sobriety.

We’re joined by Danielle Farr, the senior program coordinator of Washington County’s deflection program.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Oregon voters passed Measure 110 in 2020. The goal was to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of street drugs and move users into treatment.

That didn’t really happen, and in 2024, Oregon lawmakers recriminalized possession. But the original goal remained the same to shift substance use disorder response away from the criminal justice system and into the behavioral health world. To do that, lawmakers said counties could set up new deflection systems – most counties did.

Washington County has released a report that details how the first year went. Danielle Farr is the senior program coordinator of the county’s deflection program and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Danielle Farr: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: About 1,200 people were cited for possession of controlled substances in the first year that we now have data for. Of those 1,200 or so, 226 were deemed eligible for deflection. What does it take in Washington County to be eligible for this?

Farr: That’s a great question. So, eligibility for Washington County deflection has a couple of expectations. One of those is you have to be currently cited with a possession of controlled substance. There’s some co-charges that have been made allowable throughout this year as we’ve grown. The other piece is you have to be not on probation.

Miller: For some other offense?

Farr: Correct. And also, you have to not have other charges that are pending. The idea is to divert people from the criminal justice system, not create a parallel path and have them to have to satisfy two different things at the same time. Most of those 1,200, I think over 500 of those, had some sort of pending charges of other cases.

And I think it’s important to know that deflection is just one tool. That same law that recriminalized drug use, or drug possession anyways, gave us four different pathways. Deflection is one of those. Conditional discharge is also available. When you’re looking at those 1,200 citations, what you’re seeing there is our commitment from our DA’s office. They touched every single one of those cases to review for eligibility. We’re not waiting for law enforcement or individuals to refer to deflection. Every single case is potentially eligible and screened.

Miller: I’m glad you mentioned that deflection is not the only piece of this. Do you think it’s getting too much attention when we have these kinds of conversations?

Farr: “Too much” is a challenging phrase. I don’t think it’s getting too much attention. I think it’s exciting. I think we’re doing great work, but I think the other work also deserves some attention. There’s some great work happening there that doesn’t have the kind of champions that the focus on deflection has brought.

Miller: Well, let’s continue, for today, the focus on deflection because the numbers ... I sort of almost think about it as funneling as we go, it’s helpful to drill down. Again, there are about 1,200 people cited for possession of controlled substances. Of those, about 220 were deemed eligible for deflection. Of those, 90 people actually engaged with the program.

What are the reasons that someone who is eligible for diversion might not have taken part?

Farr: The biggest reason folks that are eligible for deflection, the reason they don’t get into deflection is we can’t find them. Our model requires that we get to them, we do an intake, we invite them, we tell them what it is, but if we can’t connect with them, we can’t offer it. So, of those 90 people that we served, only four of the people who were offered deflection said they weren’t interested. Everyone else, we lost track of.

Miller: What do you mean? So, someone is arrested. At that point, do they hear about deflection? At what point do they fall off the radar?

Farr: They fall off almost immediately. So they’re given a card that says, hey, deflection might be a good opportunity for you. They’re also given a court date, and those folks did not attend their court date, nor did they give our phone a call. We will use every opportunity to go out and try to connect with them. We’ll check the citation location. We go out to any address on file, we’ll call any phone number on file. We’ve even, on occasions, connected with the citing officer to see if they know any patterns of behavior that might give us that opportunity to serve.

So we connect every way we can, but it’s a population that has a lot of risks, and it’s not a simple group of folks that you can’t just look them up on Instagram and connect as easily. So it’s a…

Miller: How many of them do have a fixed address? Looking them up on Instagram is not easy, but what about a home?

Farr: Our population, 75% of them, identify as unsheltered or homeless in some capacity, whether they’re staying with friends and family or living in a car, a tent or a shelter. Seventy-five percent of the people that we’ve served have some sort of homelessness.

Miller: And the people that you might not be serving, for all you know, that’s maybe an even higher percentage?

Farr: I would speculate so, yeah.

Miller: Deflection is often talked about – and this is sort of a gross way to do it, maybe not textured enough – as a program of carrots and sticks. What are the carrots in Washington County and what are the sticks?

Farr: Well, I think we would love to think of the treatment, access, and care and support as a carrot, but perhaps that’s maybe just a neutral, because it’s not always what they were exactly looking for. The stick, of course, is the deferred prosecution. If they don’t complete deflection, they will have that charge. That arraignment comes back around, and they’ll go, most likely, to one of the other three paths.

But for carrots, we offer not just that peer-delivered case management – which is warm, inviting, resourceful – it’s a deep investment. It’s not just looking for how we get you across the finish line and deflection, but do you need food? Are you safe? Do you have insurance? So that’s an opportunity to meet all of those things.

We’re about to roll out another series of incentives through gift cards, just for mastering those mini sprints. Recovery can be a marathon. And it’s hard to get excited about a marathon, but if you can reward each of those sprints, like completing their assessment or meeting with their case manager, each of those mini awards can keep people engaged and get them in shape to do that whole marathon. And it feels much more bite-sized and capable of doing

that.

Miller: To go back to those numbers, to keep going down this sort of funneling, of those 90 people in the first year who took part in the program, 24 completed it successfully as of the writing of that report. But it does note that’s 27% … not a great number, it would look like, from the outside, although we’ve heard over the years that drug treatment programs don’t have the kind of success percentages that you might hope for in a middle school classroom for grades, for example. But it is worth noting that in that end-of-year report, some people were still active in the program.

So, does the successful completion percentage look particularly different now?

Farr: It is looking better, right? This is a six-month program and measured at the one-year mark. Ostensibly, we’ve only had 50% of those folks have the opportunity to complete. So, yes, we have, I believe, closer to 50 completions at this time. We continue to make progress.

I also want to note that our success criteria is pretty high. They have to complete that assessment. They have to be meaningfully engaged in treatment because success means all of their charges are dismissed. Success doesn’t necessarily capture all of the things that they’ve done. So, when we look at maybe that deeper value of success, 25% of our population that we’ve served so far are treatment naïve. They’ve never engaged in any treatment before. So, even if they don’t fully complete deflection, they may have had their first assessment, which there can be waiting lists for. That can be a big barrier to ongoing care. They may have never had a great relationship with a peer provider before, and now they have. They may not have had insurance before, but now they do.

So when they go to that next path, whether that be conditional discharge or wherever that is, they’re starting up with a leg up. While it’s not in that binary – completed/didn’t complete – we see that they just exited. They got a lot done.

Miller: Failure to appear in court has been identified in the report as a significant barrier to success in completing the program. What does that mean and what can you do in response? How can you tinker with this program to better help people?

Farr: That failure to appear, the biggest impact that that has is for those folks that we’ve identified as deflection eligible – I think it was upwards of 200 – we only got to really meaningfully invite 90 of them. That failure-to-appear number is the bulk of that gap. So, we had recently expanded our FTA grace period. Which means maybe you missed that court date, but if we’re able to connect with you and invite you again, and you say, “Oh man, I was just having a hard time …”

Miller: So it’s like a second chance?

Farr: Correct. We’ve expanded that second-chance window to up to 30 days now. We also are expanding our program from not just the citation, but non-citation pathways. So that expansion of that window, having just more people in the field doing the work and out in the community being a warm face of it. We also ensure that every first contact has the opportunity to provide a cell phone with people. And the idea is if they know about their court date, they’re probably more likely to get to it.

Miller: Meaning, the first time you talk with each person, that outreach person has a cell phone that they can give, a Washington County program-purchased cell phone that they can use. And what’s the idea of that cell phone? What are you hoping that will actually change or let people do?

Farr: The biggest part of it is just creating a connection with the individual. And connection, of course, has a ton of different benefits, whether that be letting them know that their bed at residential treatment is available or letting them know you’re on their way to pick them up for their ride. But also, if they don’t successfully complete the program, we can let them know when their court date is and make sure that they’re able to connect. It’s just a connection to the program and to all of their providers. And it’s $30 for a cell phone versus hours and hours of trying to find somebody or make something else work. It’s a really low-cost, high-power intervention.

Miller: How do you define success at this point? I was interested to hear the ways in which you are saying that even taking part in this, even if someone is not on the list of successful completion … And it is worth saying, by the way, that successful completion in Washington County, there is a higher bar for completion in Multnomah County – we’ve talked about that in the past. For Portland area listeners, it’s worth keeping that in mind.

But you were saying there are more benefits that may not be as obvious, that are not captured in that single number, the completion number. More broadly, what does success here mean?

Farr: Well, I think it depends on your lens. Deflection is a program with a lot of important partnerships. We have our DA lens, our sheriff’s office lens, our community and behavioral health lens. So I think success measured in different areas can look a little bit different. But overall, it’s a diversion from the criminal justice system. Whether that is the fact that it keeps costs down or keeps beds available, or it just keeps their humanity and access to housing intact, that diversion from criminal justice involvement is the success.

And whether they fully complete deflection or not, we believe that we’re reducing that. There’s a years-old University of Washington study that says for every one dollar you spend in a high contact deflection model, you save four for all of those reasons. So we lean into that high contact approach so that we can maintain fidelity.

Miller: Danielle Farr, thanks very much.

Farr: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: Danielle Farr is senior program coordinator of the Washington County Deflection Program.

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