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Tempe-run program helps people charged with misdemeanors offset fees, get back on track

Tempe City Hall
Jean Clare Sarmiento/KJZZ
Tempe City Hall.

More people who've been arrested on misdemeanor charges in Tempe are being connected to job help, counseling and other services through a city-run incentives program.

After they’re charged, some people are referred to Tempe’s Community Supervision, which administers diversion, probation and home detention programs.

Crimes often come with court-ordered fines and fees. Tempe Community Health and Human Services Director Tim Burch said those can sometimes feel insurmountable to students or low-income families.

“So our program manager created this incentives program to help encourage individuals to still complete their community supervision, but by offering them alternatives so that the fines and the fees weren’t a barrier to someone completing their alternative sentencing diversion program," Burch said.

Participants can instead get free counseling, do community service or attend substance abuse classes.

“These things are shown to reduce recidivism and promote public safety and really help people get back on track," Burch said, "and after all. that is the real focus of these diversion programs.”

About 1,500 people have taken advantage of the incentives in the last two years. That’s about half of the people who were referred to Community Supervision.

Senior field correspondent Bridget Dowd has a bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.