Program Information
The Volunteer Center Court Referral Community Service Program is the referral agency for residents of Sonoma County who are assigned community service work by the courts or probation. The program provides placement, follow-up, monitoring and reports on offenders referred to complete community service work. Those referred to the program may be from Traffic Court, Adult Diversion Services, the Adult and Juvenile Probation Departments, or directly from the criminal and civil courts with conditional sentences. Referrals for community service work are made in lieu of fines or jail, as a condition of diversion or dismissal, or as an independent, sometimes mandated sentencing option.
Work assignments are made on the basis of a face to face interview to determine the client's skills, availability and limitations. Clients are matched to a community not for profit agency to do a wide variety of tasks. All of these tasks enhance the ability of the agencies to provide services to the community. The work assignment involves the offender with the community in a positive, constructive way that benefits both the offender and the community.
Interviews are done by appointment and only at The Volunteer Center in Santa Rosa. Work assignments are available in all parts of the county.
A program fee is charged for each referral. The fee is based on the number of hours of work assigned. Contact program staff for the current fee schedule. Waivers or reductions in fees must be arranged with the Program Director.
A person sentenced in Sonoma County, who lives outside of this county, should contact program staff for instructions on how to arrange to do the assigned work where he lives.
A person who was assigned community service work in some other county or state and lives in Sonoma County should arrange a transfer to this program from the sentencing jurisdiction. For assistance, telephone program staff.
PROGRAM ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Our contract agreement is to interview 4,000 or more clients for the year; for 80% or more of the interviewed clients to complete all of their assigned work; and for clients to complete 140,000 hours or more of community service for the year.
At the end of the 2010 fiscal year, we had received 6,758 new referrals to the program (see I. Referrals to Program on statistics page). During this same time period, we interviewed clients for 5,266 cases (see II. Clients Interviewed). During the year, we closed 6,951 cases that we had interviewed with an 84% success rate and 159,066.84 hours of work completed. We also had 1,703 cases closed that we did not interview (see III. Cases Closed). As of 6/30/11, we had 860 referrals in the pending files waiting for interviews and 1,482 referrals that we were actively working with.
Clients referred from our program did unpaid work during the year at 331 different non profit or tax supported sites within Sonoma County. They assisted in thrift shops, cleaned county and city parks, served meals to the elderly, planted trees and cared for wildlife, sorted food donations, helped with sports teams, did school maintenance and many other tasks that assisted the work sites. We also worked with clients who were living in 11 other states, 39 other California counties and 1 out of the country client.
We have collected $327,885.42 in fees for an average of $62.26 per client interviewed. We waived fees equal to 1% of total fees collected ($2,850.50). We had 389 clients who failed to pay their fees in full for a total of $19,068.50 uncollected.
JUVENILE PROGRAM
This was our seventeenth full year working with Juvenile Probation referrals. Approximately a third of our clients are juveniles. We have interviewed and placed 1,188 new juvenile referrals during the fiscal year. For those referrals we closed, 88% were successful. Juveniles completed 26,086.68 hours of work. They worked in 138 different work sites in Sonoma County. We also had juveniles work in 4 other California counties.
