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In my 25 years as a Superior Court judge, I often had to sentence someone and had no option of any viable community-based care. The default was either county jail or state prison for many people who, in hindsight, could have flourished under care in the community. In , I was asked to step out of retirement to direct the newly-founded Office of Diversion and Reentry.

I saw great possibilities.

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I already knew about the lack of tools in our criminal justice system to address the needs of those with mental health needs, substance use, and homelessness. Now new tools were within reach. We succeeded in developing that unique model. Over the next three years, based on the excitement of our initial successes, our portfolios of work grew significantly.

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That team also created our Overdose Prevention program, which has placed the overdose-reversing medication naloxone in communities and at the jails. Our Reentry Division provides navigation to reentry programming through trusted peers with lived experience for individuals who have had justice-system contact. They are breaking the vicious circle between incarceration and homelessness.

That most people in these situations want to change and want support. Those lessons have transformed my understanding of effective intervention to prevent violence and suffering in our communities, and they must continue to shape the transformation of our justice system. If our model of care was going to work, we needed to build partnerships with the communities hurt the most by overincarceration.

We at ODR have been blessed by exceptional trust and support from these communities, and we have learned immeasurably from working with them. When COVID hit, the strength and resiliency of those partnerships allowed us to move vulnerable people into community care and protect them from infection.