City, county partner to create community service court diversion program

LACONIA — City Manager Kirk Beattie told council about the recent approval of a pre-trial services program, in collaboration with city police, community outreach programs, Belknap County Courthouse, and Belknap County pre-trial services, at the July 13 meeting.

“If we’re going to have this partnership with Belknap County Courthouse, we certainly want there to be a benefit for the community out of it,” Beattie said.

Through this program, participants are placed with pre-trial services for a short period of time, and assigned community service work related to the issue for which they are being reprimanded. Once they complete their assigned service, the court is informed, earning them a “clean slate.”

This program is a diversion method, and alternate to jail time, replaced with individualized community service.

“We're finding a lot of people that are getting arrested, and ending up in jail when they don't need to end up in jail, and can't afford to get out," said Tricia Thompson, executive director of the Belknap County Supervision Program. "The cycle just continues and it's very costly to the county.”

While the program is not a "homeless initiative,” and was designed to help a broad variety of people, it is a major focus.

“If it's a homeless population that has encampments that need to be cleaned up, that's specifically what they're going to do,” Thompson said.

For people assigned to clean up encampments, the program will provide with trash bags, and manage waste disposal.

“Clean up your own mess, right? I mean, the cost that it saves the community by having them clean up their own mess is huge,” Thompson said. “Plus, once you hold people accountable to clean up after themselves, they tend to pay attention going further.”

By keeping people out of jail, city and program staff can engage with them in a more productive way, building trust and connecting them to resources, such as mental health services.

“If they need other help, we can guide them to other resources, without having to do it from jail. You know, anybody will agree to anything when they're sitting in jail to get out of jail,” Thompson said.

Having conversations about resources outside of jail is much more effective for establishing trust between officers and participants, according to organizers.

The city is the largest stakeholder in the initiative. Social services programs, such as Lakes Region Mental Health Center and the Belknap Community Action Program, are also heavily involved with ensuring community service assignments are completed, and connecting participants to resources, if needed.

“They had plenty of conversations with us, from the municipal side, to see what it would look like for us to be part of this, and did we support the program, which we certainly did,” Beattie said.

“We had to convince the county and the prosecutors that we could do this, that we could make it happen. Then we had to sit down and have brown bags with our judges,” Thompson said. “You have all the stakeholders and prosecutors in the room with the judges, and we’re pitching the program to the court, to get the court to buy in, and use it.”

Once all stakeholders were on board and paperwork was in place, Judge Christopher Keating made time to hear the proposal, and is “ready to do it.”

“When it all came out the other end, I think they have a program put together that has a real good chance of being successful,” Beattie said.

The program began earlier this month, with one client participating, so far.