This local article, headlined “King County Council OKs plan to let community groups decide some punishment — not judges,” reports on a notable new diversion program just approved in Seattle’s county. Here are the interesting details:
The King County Council on Tuesday voted Tuesday to approve funding for a groundbreaking criminal justice diversion program that will let community groups decide what punishment — if any — should be handed out for a select group of accused felons.
The county council voted 9-0 to approve a program known as Community Restorative Pathways, adding funding for it in the county’s $12.59 million biennium budget. Instead of facing a judge, juveniles and adults accused of a first-time, non-violent felony offense will be offered an alternative where a non-profit community panel will decide how the accused person can be held accountable for their crime.
Suspects accused of violent crimes and crimes against persons would not be eligible for the diversion program, and if the offender fails to follow through with the community groups recommended punishment or accountability, the original criminal charges could still be pursued in court.
“We can send that person instead (of jail) to a community accountability group, who will define what they think accountability means,” said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. It’s a new concept for King County Superior Courts and the King County Prosecutor’s Office, which has 7,000 cases waiting for disposition, double the amount in a normal year. Accountability would not include jail or even a conviction, said Satterberg, who declined to define what accountability means.
“That’s up to the community groups,” he said, adding that it would target 800 juveniles and 1,000 adults to start. “These are low-level felonies, property offenses, no domestic violence, no sexual assault cases (and) decisions you would make if you were in my shoes.”
The program is slated to begin in mid-2021 and be implemented no later than the start of 2022. The budget for the program is set at $6.2 million, money that would have gone to the King County Sheriff’s Office.
King County Executive Dow Constantine proposed the idea along with Satterberg. Constantine has pledged to phase out the King County Jail after the pandemic is over, what he described as a cost-cutting move. “Locking people up is very costly and it’s not affirmative for people’s lives,” King County Councilmember and Budget Chairperson Jeanne Kohl-Welles told KOMO News just before the budget vote. “But we also have to make sure to protect the public, so this is hard, it’s not going to be easy.”