Last year, city voters passed a 0.1% sales tax increase to fund new community safety initiatives. Mayor Lisa Brown's administration planned for about $2 million of that new revenue stream over the next two years to be designated to Spokane Municipal Court to fund case management and electronic home monitoring.
Those services are part of the Community Justice Services department within the court. Director Michael Diamond says the department has reduced the rate of recidivism, that is, the likelihood of someone to commit another crime, by 20% in the last four years, and by 30% since 2018 when he started.
“We’ve moved from roughly a 74% recidivism rate down to 44%,” Diamond says, by “applying a unique supervision strategy to each individual based on their individual risks and needs.”
The complex, intensive case management that Community Justice Services provides takes plenty of employees. The department had 15 staff members in 2018, expanded to 18 the next year, jumped to 24 staff members in 2021, and then to 32 staff members in 2023.
In October 2024, 11 of the most recently hired employees received potential layoff notices, as part of the 29 notices the mayor sent out prior to the citywide vote on the sales tax. After the sales tax passed, most of those layoff notices were rescinded.
“This expansion allowed us to keep 10 of those 11 positions,” Diamond says. “We still lost a community justice specialist, and the [Municipal] Court lost a court clerk. Even though the tax was passed, it still did not provide full funding for benefits and personnel for every position within the court and Community Justice Services.”
Community Justice Services used to be called the Spokane Municipal Court Probation Department. But since Diamond took the role of director, he’s helped reimagine the department’s functions and goals.
Community justice counselors take on robust case management, from pre-trial risk/needs assessments to post-sentencing GPS and alcohol monitoring. All the electronic home monitoring services are provided in-house, which is less expensive for the city than contracting them out to a third party, Diamond says. Spokane Municipal Court is one of nine courts in the state, out of about 250, that have in-house monitoring, he says.
His department is also an official partner of the state Department of Social and Health Services. Staff can help get people signed up for health care, food assistance, housing and free phone services.
“We’re addressing at all times the 'why,'” Diamond says — why people commit crimes, and what might keep them from doing so in the future.
Community Justice Services only serves Municipal Court, which handles criminal misdemeanors such as simple drug possession, lower-level domestic violence charges or driving under the influence, as well as civil infractions like speeding, and traffic or parking violations.
“If you are convicted of a DUI — look in Seattle, look in Clark County, look in Chelan County, and that sentence is identical. There are sentencing guidelines set by statute, ” Diamond says. “What makes us uniquely different is we utilize a series of nine different assessment tools to identify individual issues that’s going on.”
A community justice counselor might find that that DUI, for example, was related to an underlying mental health issue. If you don’t address that issue, the use of illicit drugs or alcohol will probably continue, Diamond says, and increase the likelihood of that person committing a new crime.
“So we’ve moved away from what you would call a cookie cutter court system, and now we’re developing a court system that is targeted and specific for each individual moving through the court system,” Diamond says. “We’re able to uniquely do that here in Spokane, because we have our own pre-trial service unit.”
That pre-trial unit will call people one week before their court hearing, then again three days and one day before to remind them to show up. They ask them if they need a bus pass to get to court. They meet defendants on their way into the courtroom and try to get them to voluntarily engage with resources.
Then, after sentencing, judges direct defendants to visit counselors on the floor just above the courtroom to do whatever their sentencing requires, such as setting up electronic home monitoring or setting a meeting with their public defender.
During probation, community justice counselors are also uniquely authorized to address “technical violations” of probation rules.
“If you came into the office today [and] said, ‘Michael, I drank and I smoked and I used heroin over the weekend,’ in the old form of probation — and it’s still how it exists in 90% [of other courts] in the state — you would immediately be placed on a violation that would be filed with the court,” Diamond says.
But Community Justice Services takes a different approach.
“Our first question is, what time did you wake up that day? What happened between waking up and going to the store and buying a bottle of alcohol? What led to that event? What stressors were going on in your life?” Diamond says.
“We’re less concerned about that particular use and more concerned about [how to] prevent future use," he says. "Address that individual use, and all you’re doing is punishing someone without providing them the help, guidance or behavior change to make a difference in the future. So that’s kind of the shift in mentality, and why we’re Community Justice Services and no longer Municipal Probation.”
"We have one of the highest average daily populations of electronic monitoring in the state," Diamond says. "Our average daily population is 104. We can handle up to 180. So we are already in a position to handle a reduction of jail sentences and move towards more community housing or custody, which then allows them to continue to work, to engage in substance use counseling, and to continue in education. But they're under strict requirements to attend a service, return home, attend a service and return home. It is an arrest event."
