Penobscot County will use an online diversion program this year to keep people out of its overcrowded jail.
Funding for the program, Advent Diversion, was approved by County Commissioners Dave Marshall, Dan Tremble and Andre Cushing on Wednesday. It costs $1,200 to fund it for one year.
Diversion programs are alternatives to jail time or fines and can include online classes, like the ones funded on Wednesday, and rehabilitation or treatment programs.
The Penobscot County Jail’s overflowing population has for years forced inmates to be boarded out to other facilities in the state. That has led in part to the county’s ongoing financial crisis as it covers the soaring costs to pay for those inmates at other jails. The diversion program could lower the number of inmates going into the facility by offering a class instead of jail time.
It’s “hard to quantify” how many cases the program will divert from the jail, but it could affect most of the cases tried, Deputy District Attorney Chelsea Lynds said.
“What I think it would really help with is cases where, historically, they would have been worth a couple days in jail,” Lynds said.
Diversion programs have been discussed before, but the jail funding shortfall and rising jail population accelerated the idea, Lynds said.
The program offers classes for multiple offenses, Lynds said, including impaired driving and bullying for juveniles.
Defendants will be required to pay the class costs, which start at $75. The District Attorney’s office can raise the fee, but there are no intentions to make revenue from the classes, Lynds said.
Commissioners briefly discussed the option of raising class fees to cover the $1,200 needed to fund the program for a year, but ultimately unanimously approved the funding without making any decision on the fee structure.
Cushing said the service would benefit the county, but that the funding could be revisited later.
“I’m prepared to, maybe, on an annual basis, look at this, and then we can consider it for the future budget,” Cushing said.