Data on deflection programs remains limited, leaving impacts unclear

Published 10:04 am Thursday, February 13, 2025

It’s been five months since changes to Oregon law made possessing small amounts of hard drugs a crime again, prompting counties to launch programs to deflect drug users away from jail and into addiction treatment or other services.

Between Sept. 1 and Jan. 22, only 26 people successfully did so statewide, early data from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission show. During that same time period, 77 people failed deflection, meaning they did not follow through with county referrals to programs for addiction treatment, behavioral health, shelter or other social services.

Data shows another 313 people are still in the process of connecting with services, meaning that the number of people who have completed deflection could jump significantly in the coming months as those people work their way through the system.

“To pass deflection, you have to have a much longer period of sobriety and engagement with treatment plans,” Commission Executive Director Ken Sanchagrin told lawmakers in a presentation Wednesday to the Joint Ways and Means Committee for Public Safety. “There’s a lot of folks that just could not have completed at this point.”

KATU was the first to report on justice commission data spanning from September to December that showed just 10 people had completed deflection.

Statewide, law enforcement and other agencies attempted to refer around 700 people to deflection across 28 counties between September and January. Roughly 75% of those offenders were eligible for the program. Those with additional criminal charges and outstanding warrants or those who missed court dates or recently failed deflection are barred from entering the program.

Sanchagrin said that new information is rolling in rapidly as counties update the database and more people complete deflection.

“I would feel pretty confident that we could even, as of just today, double the number of people who have completed deflection,” Sanchagrin told lawmakers.

Around 64% of those referred to the program so far were homeless or had unstable housing, Sanchagrin said. Of those who underwent a medical screening, 87% struggled with drug addiction, most commonly to meth or fentanyl. Almost 30% had “an identified” mental health disorder.

Multnomah County, the most populous county in the state, is leading the pack in deflection referrals with 224, according to state data. Yamhill and Lane counties had the second and third highest number of referrals, with 77 and 72, respectively.

It’s unclear how many people have successfully completed deflection in each county. Multnomah County plans to release a quarterly update on their outcomes by the end of the month, but that update will only include data from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30.

County officials said that the commission’s data does not provide an accurate snapshot of current deflection rates because it can take up to 60 days to know if someone has made it through the program. That lag is contributing to the low numbers, county spokesperson Ryan Yambra said.

“Any data being reported right now is incomplete,” Yambra said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive.