Diversionary court helps young offenders in North Las Vegas

The defendants at Southern Nevada’s first community court seemed confused.

All five young people summoned to Judge Kalani Hoo’s courtroom on Feb. 11 faced low-level drug and burglary charges.

That means each, at one point or another, had walked into North Las Vegas’ Justice Court expecting probation or prison bars.

But Hoo, together with a handful of public defenders and nonprofit social workers, is doing his best to ensure community court-qualified defendants see neither.

His new diversionary court will accept only nonviolent 18- to 25-year-old offenders without a prior felony or gross misdemeanor conviction who are willing to complete the court’s rigorous educational, community service and drug testing program.

Hoo, who conducts the biweekly court in small stretches of downtime between his regular Justice Court docket, predicts the program will help streamline participant access to literacy programs, substance-abuse treatment and job training, all while saving the city more than $160 per inmate per day.

The yearlong program is modeled after systems set up at dozens of similar diversionary courts around the country. It was made possible by legislation passed by the state Legislature in 2013.

To Gabriel Valdivias, the court represents something close to a clean slate.

Valdivias, one of the first batch of defendants ushered into community court this month, will have to start working on his GED and get himself enrolled in job training before his drug possession charge can be commuted to misdemeanor disorderly conduct by the end of this month.

Reached minutes before court was brought to order, the 21-year-old said he would be more than happy to comply without whatever else the new court requires.

“I’ve got five kids to feed,” he said. “I had a job, but with the schedule they gave me, I couldn’t go to court.

“They’re going to help me get my GED, help me get a job. … I guess this is just a way to get a second chance.”

One of the offenders diverted to this month’s inaugural court session would have faced probation and a lengthy stay on house arrest in a typical criminal justice courtroom.

Another faced thousands of dollars in fines and a two-year jail sentence without acceptance into the fledgling program.

Austin Burns, a 19-year-old San Antonio native facing his first felony charge, was just happy to have finally met a public defender.

Burns said he had been bounced from courtroom to courtroom in the months since he and a co-defendant were brought up on multiple burglary charges.

He never really liked his chances of avoiding jail time until this month.

“Its been a long 19 years for me,” Burns said. “I’ve been on my own since I was 15. “I’m homeless, so I’ll do whatever it takes to stay out of jail.”

His public defender, Bita Khamsi, said the new court guided by staff from nonprofit Nevada Partners isn’t costing city taxpayers a dime.

Khamsi said similar courts have helped reduce jail sentences by more than a third in several jurisdictions around the country, saving taxpayers millions of dollars on incarceration costs in the process.

She and a dozen other public, private and nonprofit court partners expect the program will help drive down recidivism rates, citing statistics that show court participants’ commit 10 percent fewer new crimes than those prosecuted in a traditional courthouse.

It could also prove to be a boon to some of the city’s most cash-starved and personnel-stretched agencies, who will soon be able to draft court participants into tasks such as boarding up abandoned houses and cleaning area parks.

The idea, Khamsi said, is to give low-level offenders a chance to invest in their own community.

She couldn’t think of a better place to start than North Las Vegas.

“We’re targeting 18- to 25-year-old’s — the ones just aging out of the school and juvenile system — because that’s when they’re just starting to lose support from those systems,” Khamsi said. “Our goal is that if they complete the program, they’ll have the skills they need to contribute to an area in need, which North Las Vegas certainly is.”

Community Court sessions are scheduled for 1 p.m. every other Tuesday at the North Las Vegas Justice Court, 2428 N. Martin Luther King Blvd.

Contact reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Follow him on Twitter @JamesDeHaven.