Countywide : Extension Sought for Check Program

The district attorney’s office will ask the Board of Supervisors today to extend the private contract for a 3-year-old prosecution program aimed at people who bounce checks.

The Bad Check Prosecution Program has returned more than $1 million to businesses and residents who have been given bad checks, according to the district attorney’s office.

American Corrective Counseling Services, a Santa Ana firm, runs the program at no cost to the county.

The program offers a class on personal finance and responsibility, which can be taken to avoid criminal charges. More than 10,000 people have attended the eight-hour course.

Businesses who have been given bad checks contact the district attorney’s office, which then contacts the program.

“We’re giving them a chance to not go through the criminal justice system,” Bruce Patterson, deputy district attorney, said of people who write bad checks and would otherwise face charges.

The program teaches people how to manage their checkbooks and finances, said Don Mealing, the director of the program. The classes also focus on ethics, he said.

“They have been taught that it’s wrong to steal, but in a way they’re stealing,” Mealing said of people who bounce checks. He said his counselors try to get class-takers to see the ethical inconsistency of their actions.

“The whole checking system revolves around honor,” Mealing said.

The program calls the people who are suspected of writing bad checks and offers to let them take part in the program. Fewer than 1% of the people who go through the program continue to bounce checks, Patterson said, citing a computer study.

More than 124,000 bounced checks have been submitted to the program over the past three years. Those businesses submitting them do so in hopes of finding the people who wrote them. One grocery store chain submits about 400 checks a month, Patterson said.

The class costs $75, and those who attend must pay $25 for each bad check they have written, plus make restitution to victims for any damages. (Those who attend the course cannot pay with a personal check.)

Patterson said the county saves money when it does not have to prosecute a check bouncer. The program also results in having money returned to merchants faster than it would be if check writers were prosecuted, Patterson said.

A person must have refused to pay a bad check in order to be referred to the program. Merchants who receive bad checks must first have made an attempt to be paid, Patterson said. That means the check must have been submitted twice to the bank on which it was to be drawn, and the merchant must have contacted the check writer to tell him or her about the bounced check.

People who bounce checks of more than $1,500 face felony charges and cannot take part in the program.