COLUMN ONE : Doing Time by Mail, Not Jail : In a ‘90s twist on traffic school, clogged courts are diverting some petty thieves and batterers to correspondence courses or classrooms. But critics say the for-profit programs don’t work.

Caught pinching a $100 pair of earrings for the first time in Orange County? The typical punishment: a day in jail, three years probation, a $150 fine and a criminal record. Commit the same crime in Los Angeles County? You could attend an eight-hour petty theft school and get the charges dropped. And in Sacramento County, keep your record clean by completing a correspondence course.

Provide sex for cash in Sacramento, and go to prostitute school. In Ventura, go to jail.

Sexually abuse a son or daughter in five Northern California counties and you might keep it off the record books by attending a program for child molesters.

Most everywhere else: state prison and registration as a sex offender.

Welcome to California’s crazy quilt of court diversion programs, where the path to justice can meander through the mail as well as through jail.

These are the traffic schools of the ‘90s, where an overburdened justice system increasingly farms out its first-time petty thieves, drug offenders, spouse abusers, flashers and barroom brawlers.

The private, largely for-profit programs are spottily regulated and largely unproven. Access to them varies from judge to judge, sometimes in the same courthouse. Yet the programs increasingly are viewed as the only alternative to overcrowded jails and overworked probation staffs--although some judges admit they often have no idea who’s running the programs or if they work.

“I’m fairly disgusted with a lot of these programs, because they don’t do any good,” said Orange County Municipal Judge Margaret Anderson. “We really don’t have any control over them.”

In most counties, there is too little funding and too few personnel to give the programs and their owners more than a cursory once-over.

Since 1979, California’s Penal Code Section 1000 has allowed use of diversion programs for drug users, spouse abusers and some child molesters. Some prosecutors have expanded that list to include a range of misdemeanors from resisting arrest to maiming animals.

Four counties now allow petty thieves, drug offenders, embezzlers, vandals and others to avoid jail through a correspondence course run by a couple in Sandy, Utah. In Sacramento, cock-fighters can keep their records clean by completing the company’s 40-page workbook, which has the tough crime-busting theme: “If you want to soar with the eagles, you can’t flock with the turkeys!”

And short-staffed probation departments often rely on the offenders to confirm their own eligibility for the programs.

Many counties don’t--or can’t--keep track of how many people are in diversion classes.

“It’s just as screwed up as it appears to be,” said Suzie Cohen, executive director of the association that represents California’s probation, parole and correctional officers. “If somebody doesn’t show up (for counseling) and the program doesn’t notify us, it could be months before the probation officer knows” to inform the court.

Although state law says that only first-time offenders are eligible, programs often contain repeat offenders or those who have been through diversion, both clients and program providers say.

Moreover, smart defense attorneys are finding ways to shoehorn more dangerous assault suspects into programs designed for first-time spouse abusers.

Some attorneys and judges contend the disparity in punishment from county to county also amounts to unequal justice.

“If you take a serious offense, an assault case, and in one county the person gets diversion and in another county he gets two years in the state prison, that’s not right,” said Dick Iglehart, ex-Alameda County chief deputy district attorney and now chief counsel for the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee.

Many of the programs designed to teach petty crooks to mend their ways have their roots in the formerly big-money world of traffic schools. That freewheeling boom went bust in 1992, when a new state law forced offenders to pay both the ticket fine and the traffic school fee. Offenders could still keep their records clean by going, but it wasn’t cheap. Attendance plummeted by 40%.

Big traffic school operators, such as National Traffic Safety Institute--based in Salem, Ore., and also known as the National Training Systems Institute--focused on new moneymakers.

Now the company, which pioneered the Saturday traffic school in Santa Clara County in the mid-1970s, not only offers traffic classes, but ones for drug users, petty thieves, child safety belt offenders and batterers. Last year the company--with 800,000 students nationwide--made an estimated $30 million to $40 million, a manager said.

“You can’t make it just on traffic school anymore,” said Jim Brierly, National Traffic Safety Institute’s Southern California regional manager in Santa Ana, whose job includes networking with judges.

Often taught by former traffic school teachers, the multi-service, multi-county programs--tucked into business parks and mini-malls--counsel drunk drivers next door to spouse abusers next door to men who exposed themselves.

As in traffic school, if offenders complete the programs--which can range from 52 weeks for domestic violence classes to an eight-hour marijuana school--the charges are dropped.

But defense attorneys, judges and probation officials admit that rarely does anyone check on the instructors’ qualifications or whether the programs actually work in changing behavior.

“A lot of it is really a shot in the dark,” said Los Angeles Municipal Judge Andrew C. Kauffman, who nevertheless favors diversion as the only alternative to the vacuum created by shrinking probation resources. “We don’t know which programs are good.”

Today, more than 400 people accused of petty crimes in Sacramento County are serving their time by watching a video and completing workbook exercises at home. So are dozens of people in Yolo, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo and Santa Clara counties.

Instead of spending a Saturday in a classroom, these offenders must complete a correspondence course run by Western Corrections, the Utah mom-and-pop company launched as a traffic school 14 years ago. The company has workbooks for 148 offenses, said founder Jeff Scott.

Depending on their crime, offenders send in $125 or $225 for a workbook heavy with the jargon of self-esteem and a home movie-quality video of a class session.

Sample workbook questions: Why is it important that you avoid committing a crime? When it comes right down to the bottom line, who is responsible for your actions? Indicate what the chances are that you will commit another crime: definitely, maybe or never.

A workbook exercise asked offenders to “list the positives and negatives of crime.” A 22-year-old pizza parlor manager who had shoplifted listed “money” and “cool” under the positives and “fear,” “no money” and “frustrating” under the negatives.

A Northern California mother of two attributed her shoplifting to antidepressants. To the question, “What are the steps you can take to avoid stealing again?” she answered, “No. 1. Not take Zoloft.”

Many program providers say the issue isn’t whether the programs are good, but which have the sweetest sales pitch.

“It’s all politics,” said Linda Polinsky, director of Auburn, Calif.-based Pacific Educational Services, which started out as a traffic school in 1979 and runs classes for everyone from prostitutes to child abusers. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a good program or a bad program.”

In today’s courtrooms, some judges said, they only have time to perform triage, deciding quickly which cases belong in the justice system and which don’t. Diversion is the Band-Aid placed on those considered to be minor.

Greg Thompson, Sacramento County’s chief deputy district attorney, said his office faced the Hobson’s choice of the criminal justice process: Use programs such as the Utah correspondence course, or abandon prosecution of many misdemeanor cases altogether.

“Does it work?” asked Thompson. “Compared to what? Compared to paying a $100 fine for petty theft? I think it does. It’s certainly more effective than the option of nothing.”

In fact, Thompson and other diversion supporters say, the penalty of attending the programs often is much harsher--both financially and timewise--than the one a misdemeanor offender would have received from the courts.

After a drunken spat with his wife, a 30-year-old armored car guard named Leroy was shocked to find himself in a yearlong domestic violence program that cost $1,300.

On a recent Tuesday night, he joined 10 men at California Diversion Intervention Foundation’s West Los Angeles office. Goaded by the sharp tongue of counselor Priscilla Roulet-Jones, the men talked about their attempts to communicate with their wives.

One tattooed former gang member and heroin addict spoke of how he used to come home late, afraid his wife would be lying in wait to stab him. Now, he said, before the yelling starts he tells his wife, “Priscilla said we should talk.”

The cost of the program is “tough, but it’s made my marriage better,” Leroy said. “Everybody’s got the same problems. That really helps.”

But diversion program instructors said the criminal justice system often allows people into the programs by reducing their charges.

“They plead them down to get them in,” Roulet-Jones said.

Two men who shot at police officers have recently completed her “domestic violence” class, she said, as have two people who got in a fight at work, and a man who punched a supermarket cashier.

San Bernardino County Deputy Dist. Atty. Gordon Isen said prosecutors are sometimes pressured to revise the charges to allow for diversion.

“I’ve seen where assault with a deadly weapon on a wife or girlfriend is modified to allow for a diversion program,” he said.

In a scathing 1990 study of California’s domestic violence programs, Kurt R. Sjoberg--the state auditor--said the quality of the programs and the types of people referred to them ranged from the responsible to the absurd.

“I think it was most troubling that a batterer could be (diverted from) the criminal justice system and basically do nothing to change his criminal behavior,” he said recently. “We had incidents where they’d go to class and leave. They didn’t confront their behavior at all. But they avoided the penalty.”

Program providers say some people try to buy their way out of attending. Roulet-Jones said a movie producer came to a drug diversion class last year loaded with ringing cellular phones and beepers. When she told him that he’d have to leave the hardware outside, the man framed her face with his hands and said, “You look so great. I’ve got a role for you in my new movie.”

But Roulet-Jones and other operators said probation departments and the courts have begun to require increasing numbers of reports to ensure compliance by both offenders and providers.

Like everything else in court diversion, fees vary widely.

At National Traffic Safety Institute, petty theft school costs $45 for a single eight-hour class. At California Diversion Intervention Foundation, with seven offices in Los Angeles and Orange counties, an accused petty thief must attend eight 1 1/2-hour sessions at a cost of about $200. Some Northern California petty thieves can complete a workbook for $125.

Long-term programs for serious offenses, such as domestic violence, can cost much more.

An 18-year-old from Fullerton ended up in California Diversion Intervention Foundation’s domestic violence class after a hair-pulling, face-slapping battle with her mother. The tab: $800 for 32 sessions.

After being arrested at a Sav-On Drugs in Orange for forging a prescription for a powerful painkiller, Debra Magedman, 39, ended up in the company’s Thursday night drug diversion class.

The cost: $25 a week for 20 weeks, $50 for each missed session, and random drug tests at $37.40 apiece. Grand total: roughly $700, not including any bail.

But the cost is relative, said Magedman, a spiky-haired blonde who drives a Mercedes and was wearing a mink-edged sweater when she was arrested. “I was facing six months (in jail). After my program is done, it will be taken off my record,” said Magedman, who credits the program with forcing her to kick painkillers.

Had she shopped around, she might have gotten a better deal from Virginia Florez-Kelly’s Second Chance Diversion across town.

“I am the lowest-charging program in the county,” said Florez-Kelly, a Riverside County social worker who moonlights running the one-woman drug diversion program. But still, she said, it’s a “moneymaker.”

At Second Chance, Magedman could have completed the program for $270. And instead of attending every week--which most counties require--she could have done the course in a couple of weekends.

“I don’t make them come once a week because I don’t come once a week,” Florez-Kelly said. “That’s the way I set up my practice--the hours I want to work.”

Diversion program supporters and critics say that recently enacted laws could correct some of the problems. A law that becomes effective Jan. 1 will put drug diversion programs under the eye of county health care agencies. And legislation that took effect five months ago calls for more oversight of domestic violence diversion programs by county probation departments.

But judges and probation officials concede that without more staff it will be tough to carry out their new responsibilities.

“Even if we monitor providers, we’re lucky if we can do that once a year,” said Kathy Miller, an Orange County Probation Department official.

She said her office can’t even fulfill some of the responsibilities it shouldered in the past. The department used to complete pre-sentence reports to determine if people were eligible for diversion, but “a couple of years ago we said we couldn’t do that anymore. I don’t know what information the court gets before they send them to diversion.”

One coordinator, who asked that her name not be used, said that when probation officials do come to check the programs, “They tell us when they’re coming. You’d have to be a complete moron if you were doing something wrong.”

Different counties have different standards for teachers. In Orange County, a domestic violence program instructor must have a graduate degree or be supervised by someone with a counseling degree.

In Los Angeles County, one year’s field experience is required but educational background is not, said Jane Clausen, a Los Angeles County probation official.

She said she knew of no agency that monitors programs for such things as petty theft, minor sexual offenses or child abuse, and no lists of approved programs are maintained. “We don’t really have the expertise to review them.”

In cases such as petty theft, Clausen said, people can find their own program, complete it and report back to probation officials.

Some in the justice system say that, for better or worse, the future might be similar to the system in Sacramento County, home of the state’s only prostitute and “john” diversion programs, and one of the few places that allows people who molest young family members to receive counseling in lieu of prison.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Thompson said Sacramento County turned to diversion programs when budget cuts threatened one-third of his staff of misdemeanor prosecutors, and “we did not want to abandon the prosecution of misdemeanor crimes.” But his office also embraced diversion because misdemeanor offenders seldom ended up doing time, even when they were prosecuted, “because there was no room in the jails.”

Prostitutes and their customers arrested for the first time now can avoid jail by attending school: a 24-hour, two-weekend, self-esteem workshop for the prostitutes and a 12-hour school for their customers. In other counties, a prostitute would typically get 30 days in jail for a first conviction.

Polinsky, director of the Pacific Educational Services program, said about half the prostitutes and 100% of the johns show up. In the last three years, 500 prostitutes and 1,500 johns have been through the program.

Polinsky said diversion is appropriate for “victimless” crimes such as prostitution, and just might stop a cycle before it starts.

But does she know if her programs work? “No. I wish I did.”