With Santa Barbara’s jail overcrowded and understaffed — a situation that a slated North County jail may alleviate but won’t remove altogether, especially with prison realignment shifting offenders to county jails — the county is looking for new methods of reducing recidivism. For that reason, County CEO Chandra Wallar has proposed to the supervisors a new model for funding services aimed at criminal offenders....

...The one fully functional example right now is run out of Rikers Island jail in New York. Goldman Sachs loaned the New York City Department of Corrections $9.6 million to provide counseling and therapy for teenagers. If the program reduces recidivism by 10 percent, Goldman Sachs will break even. The investment bank will make a maximum profit of $2.1 million if the recidivism reduction reaches 20 percent. The net savings to New York City would be an estimated $20.5 million.

New York pays Goldman through an intermediary — MDRC, a nonprofit education and policy research organization — that also verifies the numbers. Through Roney’s legwork, Santa Barbara has already secured an offer by MDRC to provide technical assistance in assessing the county’s corrections infrastructure. Roney also acquired grant money to hire Jessica McLernon, a Santa Barbara resident who, in a previous job as New York City’s Director of Workforce Development, rubbed elbows with several of the players in the Rikers Island program. Roney is hoping that MDRC can help answer some of his questions, which were also shared by some of the supervisors. How is success best measured? How much overhead — for instance, for lawyers and go-betweens — would a Pay for Sucess arrangement cost?...

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