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Curtis Prescott cycled through Oregon’s court system for three decades, a bleak ritual underscored by his chronic homelessness and fueled by his methamphetamine addiction.
When Clackamas County sheriff’s deputies picked him up earlier this year for sleeping in a McDonald’s parking lot on Southeast 82nd Drive, Prescott figured he’d spin through jail and the courts once more with his addiction untreated and his housing problems unresolved.
Instead, prosecutors placed Prescott, 55, in a new specialty court.
Over the next four months, a team stayed on him to get clean and found a place for him to live with his dog, Bandit.
Prescott slipped once and used meth, landing back in jail.
“But after that, I didn’t mess up anymore,” he said. “They gave me another chance, and because of that chance, I was able to succeed.”
In the year since Oregon once again made minor drug possession a misdemeanor crime, more than two dozen counties have experimented — with mixed success — in moving low-level drug offenders away from jail and into substance abuse treatment.
In the first 11 months, police and other first responders statewide referred just under 2,000 people to programs known as deflection and about 1,300 went on to participate in them.
Deflection operates outside of the court system and relies on the person connecting with treatment providers and recovery mentors.
About half of the people dropped out of those programs. Less than a quarter successfully finished and the rest are in the midst of the process, according to state data.
Not everyone qualifies for deflection. Counties make their own eligibility rules, generally limiting participation to people without outstanding warrants or violent criminal histories.
The state estimates another 800 people caught with drugs, including Prescott, ended up in separate but related court-based programs that also require the person to seek treatment.
Public health experts say it is too soon to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the state’s new approach.
The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the agency charged with monitoring and collecting data for policymakers, is expected to produce its own analysis in early 2027.
Most people swept up in the new system face significant barriers to getting help, including homelessness, said Dr. Daniel Hoover, an addiction medicine specialist at Oregon Health & Sciences University who leads a team advising the state on deflection.
He said researchers need more time to assess deflection in particular given the time lags between the person’s initial contact with police and completing a county’s requirements.
Those requirements vary widely across Oregon.
Multnomah County, for instance, allows people to walk away from its program with few consequences, while Clackamas and Washington counties mandate treatment and use jail as a potential sanction for people who stray.
In some cases, Hoover said, it takes a person many months or years to make progress with a longstanding addiction.
“We know compelled or coerced substance use treatment is not as effective as when someone presents themselves seeking support and seeking treatment,” Hoover said. “In some cases, deflection is going to encounter someone and they are excited about the opportunity for help. In other cases, they might not be.”
BIG INVESTMENT
The new law follows the state’s relatively brief and closely watched role as a pioneer of sorts in treating minor drug possession as a noncriminal violation.
In 2024, as public fentanyl use and drug dealing hollowed out pockets of downtown Portland and overdose deaths climbed, state lawmakers faced fierce political pressure to roll back Measure 110, the voter initiative passed four years earlier that put possession of small amounts of drugs on par with a traffic ticket.
This summer, three Portland State University researchers released the findings of their three-year examination of the state’s drug policies, finding the pandemic and the emergence of fentanyl drove up violent crime rates and overdose deaths, not the landmark decriminalization measure.
Law enforcement and some civic leaders, meanwhile, blamed Measure 110 for contributing to the scourge.
Lawmakers ultimately scrapped decriminalization but also earmarked nearly $21 million for counties to come up with programs that keep people caught with drugs out of jail and direct them instead toward treatment.
Data collected by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission shows about half of those dollars went toward treatment, housing and other services for people experiencing addiction and the rest went into setting up the programs and law enforcement.
Statewide, of the estimated 1,900 people accused of minor drug possession and referred to a deflection program between Sept. 1 and the beginning of August, about 1,700 ended up qualifying for deflection and 1,300 of those actually entered programs, according to the commission.
Data shows about 277 people successfully met the requirements of their county’s deflection programs, an estimated 630 dropped out and about 400 remain in deflection.
Andy Ko, executive director of the Partnership for Safety and Justice, said wide differences in the programs make it difficult to compare them. Partnership for Safety and Justice advocates for policies that reduce mass incarceration, promote racial equity and support victims of violence.
Ko said politics, not public health, shaped the law that made drug possession a crime again.
“It wasn’t actually about what good policy should be,” he said. “And so I do think what we’ve got is sort of a bit of a Wild West situation right now.”
BIGGEST EFFORT
In Multnomah County, the deflection program has relied almost entirely on Portland police officers to deliver people they find with small amounts of street drugs to a center in southeast Portland.
The county requires two steps for people to complete deflection: They must take a substance abuse assessment and contact any one of a range of local resources within 30 days. Those can include treatment, housing or getting in touch with a peer for support. Peers are trained staff who are themselves in long-term recovery.
The county does not impose sanctions on those who fail to meet its requirements — though they may be subject to arrest if they are caught with drugs within the following 30 days.
The Legislature gave Multnomah County about $4.3 million to use on its deflection program and also set aside $25 million for the county to fund a permanent facility that will double as a deflection referral clearinghouse but also offer a safe place where publicly intoxicated people can sober up.
The number of people referred to the center for deflection has fluctuated. Police dropped off a total of 62 people in the first three months of the year, county data shows. Between April and June, that number rose to 203, due in part to multiple enforcement missions, according to the data.
Overall, police have referred a total of about 500 people since Sept. 1, 2024, according to statistics collected by Multnomah County and Portland police.
The county leads the state in referrals, state data shows. So far, about 89 people completed the county’s requirements.
Central Precinct Police Commander Brian Hughes said competing demands on officers’ time can lead to fewer people ending up at the deflection center on any given day. One significant incident, a tactical team callout for example, can reshuffle officers’ immediate priorities.
Still, he said he supports deflection, calling it a “work in progress.”
“I think it is a better alternative to what I see every day in downtown Portland with people just being released from jail on the streets with nothing,” he said.
‘ENCOURAGING TRENDS’
Multnomah County does not track whether people end up pursuing treatment, said Natalie Minas, a senior policy adviser in Chair Jessica Vega Pederson’s office.
“After somebody has exited their 30-day window, we don’t have the staff or the protocols to continue checking in with them,” she said.
Vega Pederson, who has led the county’s approach, said it was difficult to predict how many people would opt for deflection.
“For me, this whole year has been about trying to guess what the need was going to be as we were trying to build up services,” she said. “I think overall, I would say, I think we’re seeing some encouraging trends.”
She said a panel of community representatives who have advised her on deflection is considering expanding eligibility and requirements for the program. She said the group is still discussing the details.
“There is a recognition that recovery is a journey and that journey looks different for people and it’s not a one and done thing,” she said. “I think that we also have to have room for that in terms of what success looks like.”
The county is expected to pay an estimated total of $3.7 million to Tuerk House, a Baltimore-based nonprofit, to operate the deflection center through July 2026.
Bernard Gyebi-Foster, executive director of Tuerk House, called the program a success, pointing to the uptick in referrals in recent months.
“If this was cancer, there would be a lot of patience for it, right?” he said. “And so that level of patience ought to be afforded to this population, especially this population, who are dealing with a very, very debilitating crisis.”
Grant Hartley, Multnomah County director of Metropolitan Public Defender, opposed the rollback of Measure 110, calling it a “step backwards.” But he said the county’s approach has been generally effective.
“As far as fitting with the idea of deflection being a light touch and a step towards stability for individuals, I think that, overall, it’s been positive,” he said.
But the low numbers of people moving through the center prompted some leaders to push back on the model, which District Attorney Nathan Vasquez called “too permissive.”
Vasquez said the county’s plan should include police citations, which allow prosecutors to track the cases. The system, he said, “needs to come back to more accountability and meaningful treatment.”
Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards this week called for a “reset” of the county’s program, which she said Vega Pederson designed without significant input from other commissioners.
“If the primary goal is to deflect people from jails and the criminal justice system and into treatment,” Brim-Edwards said, “then the evidence doesn’t show that the program that was designed by the chair and implemented by the chair is accomplishing that objective.”
‘GETTING WORSE’
Residents in downtown Portland said they cannot tell if the new law has made a difference or if the pandemic’s effects are receding.
Xavier Stickler, 26, who lives near Southwest Harrison Street and Fourth Avenue and studies planning and architecture at Portland State, said the area has “come a long way” in the past five years.
“There’s certainly less paraphernalia,” he said. “There’s certainly a lot less visibility to it. But that being said, if you really want to look for it and you’re familiar with the area, there are a couple key hot spots that you can easily go out and find it.”
Law enforcement officials say the drug trade has also shifted, migrating to other parts of the city.
About eight miles away from downtown, around Southeast 122nd Avenue and Burnside, residents said the law has not made a dent in drug activity.
“I think it’s actually getting worse,” said longtime resident Ann McMullen, 60.
Drug use was rampant one morning earlier this week.
People clustered together, using drugs behind buildings, in parking lots, on side streets and even along Southeast 122nd Avenue, where two people sat on the curb of the major thoroughfare, nodding off.
Some tried to hide their drug use, ducking into a walkway behind the Blackburn Center, a Central City Concern site that provides housing, health care, mental health services and recovery support.
Others smoked fentanyl openly. One man stood along 122nd Avenue folded over a shopping cart, foil crumpled in one hand, a straw in another — telltale signs of fentanyl use.
Down the block, the line at the Glisan Bottle Redemption Center snaked around the building and along 122nd. Among those waiting to redeem bottles: a man and woman smoking fentanyl.
Portland police patrol cars zipped through the intersection of 122nd and Burnside on their way to calls.
McMullen said she routinely sees drug use and drug deals on the five-block walk from her house to Jubilee Hall, a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Blackburn Center.
“In that five-minute walk,” she said, “I could probably, on any given day, easily identify 30 to 50 people that are in some state of acute intoxication.”
MANDATED TREATMENT
Other counties, including Clackamas and Washington, have taken a citation-based approach to low-level drug possession cases.
Both counties rely on prosecutors to screen the citations. They route some people to deflection and others like Prescott through a special court docket, known as conditional discharge, where their charges are dismissed if they pursue treatment and follow other rules.
Statewide, 533 people accused of minor drug possession ended up in those court programs, according to state data.
In Washington County, Deputy District Attorney William Stabler said peers try to track down people eligible for deflection before their court date to offer treatment and other services before they ever enter a courtroom.
“If we have a good phone number or an email for them, they will try to reach out in advance, and if they can’t reach them, they’ll be waiting at the courthouse, hopefully to catch them as they’re coming in,” said Stabler.
Both counties require everyone in these programs to take part in addiction treatment and monitor their progress over months. If someone is arrested or uses drugs again, they can end up in jail.
“We’re not asking you to finish treatment necessarily, although that happens quite a bit,” said Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Bill Stewart, “but we want you engaged in making good progress.”
FROM CLACKAMAS TO ST. JOHNS
Curtis Prescott spent years on the street.
His criminal record is replete with misdemeanor crimes associated with homelessness and addiction.
“When he is sober, he is one of the nicest guys you’re ever going to meet,” said Stewart, the prosecutor.
Prescott said the specialty court that was set up to handle cases like his felt different this time around. The judge cheered him on. And Ron Ross, who works with a Clackamas County nonprofit that provides support and services to people experiencing homelessness, kept close tabs on him.
Ross, who is himself in recovery from alcohol addiction, helped find Prescott a place to live and a spot in outpatient treatment.
Prescott said he went a day without using meth. Then he went another day. He said he has built on his sobriety day by day.
On a warm afternoon this week, Prescott opened the door to his pistachio-colored tiny home in St. Johns Village, a transitional housing shelter in North Portland. A shelf held a book on sobriety. An air conditioner kept the space cool. A plush bed for Bandit sat in a corner.
Prescott said he hopes to find a job as a mover and maybe pursue training so he can help others climb out of addiction.
He said it has been 20 years since he had a stable place to live.
“I know it doesn’t work out for people,” he said. “But it has for me.”
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