Business View Magazine | July 2019

312 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 recommended by a steering committee we put together, consisting of between 15-20 people representing community organizations, as well as members of the criminal justice system itself, from the district attorney to the sheriff. Thus, we had community engagement throughout that process. We had four to six public meetings for input. We also provided updates through this process. “As of January, all three scenarios were vetted by the steering committee. One scenario focused heavily on facilities and corrections, and accountability; another focused more on the programmatic social services end of the spectrum; and the third, what we call our best practices scenario, was a combination of programmatic activities, prevention activities, and corrections and accountability. The Board leaned heavily in favor of the balance of both corrections accountability and programmatic/social service components. “Phase Two begins focusing on the implementation of those best practices recommendations. It looks at creating a sobering center, creating a respite center for mental health issues related to those who come into contact with our criminal justice or law enforcement folks, the facilities necessary to support those programs, and also on trying to have a jail that has additional capacity and room for programming activities. Right now, on any given day, about half of our jail population is housed in a community about three hours away from us, in a facility called NORCOR (Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility). We take our inmates there that we can’t hold in our own facility because it has significant programming activities – mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, parenting classes – a wider spectrum of program activities which our community believes is important as part of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, our facility here does not have the capability to host any of those programs due to its limited size. “Scenario One consists of substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, respite care center, sobering center, transitional housing, pretrial services, work release center, electronic monitoring, in-custody mental health treatment,