One man had been thrown in jail more than a hundred times. Another had over 40 bookings on his record.
Now, both — and other members of Salt Lake City’s top 50 most-arrested people list — are on their way to putting those endless criminal justice issues behind them, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said in her State of the City address Tuesday night.
Thanks to a program known as Project CONNECT that seeks to link repeat arrestees with social workers, the man in his 50s with over 100 bookings is living at the city’s microshelter community and hasn’t been arrested since he moved in.
The person with over 40 bookings, who is in his 30s, Mendenhall said, has been able to get medical care and access to important mental health medication at the Fourth Street Clinic.
“They have tried to get help — whether through medical services, homeless resources or treatment programs, but due to their acute and complex needs, they have fallen through the cracks,” Mendenhall said of those in the program. “They are stuck in a cycle of being arrested for trespassing or camping, being put in jail, then released back out onto the streets without ever effectively connecting with the tailored support and resources they need.”
In her speech Tuesday, Mendenhall said the program was working and that the city would expand it in the coming year. It’s a part of the public safety plan the city rolled out early last year after pressure from Republican state leaders imploring Utah’s capital to better addressing crime and homelessness.
The mayor’s focus on chronically homeless Utahns living on the city’s streets comes as a key state legislative session for the planned homeless campus gets underway. Policymakers are debating the best ways to help so-called high utilizers of public programs, with some experts advocating for an increase in involuntary treatment.
The city’s project is conceptually simple: Whenever one of the city’s most-arrested people is taken into custody, a social worker assigned to that person gets notified. City staffers go to the individual and try to secure more stable circumstances, whether that be via mental health services, housing, medical help or something else. In one case, the mayor said, the city was able to connect a man to his family in California and help him move in with his sister.
“Officers are encouraged to reach out to [the department’s social workers] when they have contact with an individual on the list so that if the person is appropriate for arrest or jail diversion, social work can connect them with supportive services,” police spokesperson Michael Ruff explained in an email.
“When someone is arrested and incarcerated,” Ruff said, “the team works with the individual to create a plan for exit from the jail that ideally includes housing and behavioral health support.”
The pilot program didn’t require any additional funds, just staff time, Ruff said. Once accounting is done, he added, the department expects the project will have resulted in cost savings.
While the goal is to provide a higher level of service for those in need of greater assistance, the mayor said the program also aims to free up police to do broader work and boost the city’s relationships with other agencies and nonprofits.
City officials have been working with outside organizations, like the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association and housing provider Switchpoint, to get people on the list the help they need. Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has been a part of the program, too.
“If we are much more intentional and we understand the acute needs that they have and we change our process and we make that investment of time and connection, that can give us different outcomes,” Gill said in an interview. “And that’s what we’re proving.”
In her speech, Mendenhall said 96% of the city’s most-arrested people have experienced homelessness, and 84% of them reported physical, mental or behavioral health issues.
Despite the complex needs of those on the city’s list, 60% of them were arrested and cited less often in the 250 days after the program was launched than in the 250 days before, city spokesperson Andrew Wittenberg said.
The man with over 100 bookings and the one who went to live in California haven’t been rearrested, Mendenhall said.
Merinda Cutler, who runs an emergency shelter nonprofit called Unsheltered Utah, said the lessons learned from the first year of the pilot program should inform how leaders expand it.
“It’s important to acknowledge that this is a pilot program and the data and successes from it should be used to focus on the programs that need more funding,” she said, “so that we can offer these services to others in the community.”
Mendenhall said she plans to expand the project to reach more Utahns cycling through the criminal justice system and dealing with homelessness. She also wants to set long-term metric goals for the program. Details about those plans were not immediately available.