But as the Attorney’s Office expands its battery of alternatives to incarceration, some officials maintain that such programs don’t address the real issue.

“I think deflection and diversion is fantastic, but I think that we need to be very realistic about the scope of the problem,” Pima County Public Defender Joel Feinman told the Star.

“Diversion is a drop in the bucket, DTAP is an even smaller drop in the bucket.”

In the last 12 months, 62 percent of all narcotics cases involved less than one gram of drugs, according to data provided by the Public Defender’s Office.

“Unless we’re talking about opening up diversion and DTAP to two-thirds of all drug violators, then these programs are ... largely masking the scope of the true problem, which is that we continue to arrest and prosecute people for having minute amounts of drugs,” Feinman said.

Diversion is offered to first-time offenders with no priors, meaning it disproportionately benefits people who don’t have serious drug problems and who are arrested with marijuana derivatives, such as cannabis oil or wax, Feinman said.

“That’s the solution, is that you have to stop arresting and prosecuting people for possessing tiny quantities of narcotics,” he said.

“We’re finally, hopefully, in this country and this county, starting to come to the conclusion that you cannot deal with substance abuse as a criminal justice issue in the long run. You have to deal with it as a behavioral health issue.”

Contact reporter Caitlin Schmidt at cschmidt@tucson.com or 573-4191. Twitter: @caitlincschmidt

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