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For nearly two years, the Fairfax County prosecutors’ office has run a diversion program that allows people to avoid a charge on their criminal record in exchange for participating in programs like therapy, education and addiction treatment. Now, the office is working with a professional chef and a Fairfax City restaurant to expand the program to include training for restaurant jobs.
The new program, Pathfinder Kitchen, will launch this spring with two cohorts of six students, all of whom were arrested for nonviolent crimes in Fairfax County but offered diversion instead of traditional prosecution. Participants will be trained on kitchen equipment and food preparation, and will end the program with a ServSafe certification that will make them eligible for restaurant jobs and pair them with openings at Fairfax City restaurants.
“They’ll be able to work at any kind of restaurant they want,” said Duriel Barnes, a professional chef who runs a company The Chosen Chef and will be leading the training this spring in partnership with the Fairfax City restaurant Mackenzie’s Tunes & Tonics.
Barnes, who was a police officer in D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department for 17 years before leaving in 2022 to pursue cooking full time, said he’s glad for the opportunity to help people who have been arrested change their lives.
“I can relate on both sides … the law side and the cooking side,” Barnes said. “I love the opportunity to give back.”
Taking Root diversion program
The culinary training is an expansion of the Taking Root diversion program, which Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s office launched in the spring of 2022. Prosecutors and defense attorneys can jointly recommend people to the program, according to Descano’s office. If a judge agrees, they are assigned a plan for services and/or treatment, and assigned a case manager. Then, if the participant successfully completes their individualized program — which could include therapy, employment, addiction treatment, education or other interventions — the charge won’t appear on their criminal record.
The program, which is still small, has slowly scaled up over the past two years. So far, 20 people have graduated from the program and an additional 80 people are either in the process of completing the program or awaiting final approval for it, according to Descano’s office.
To date, six people have left the diversion program without completing it, a spokesperson for the office told DCist/WAMU.
“If you find people who have touched the system, made a mistake and you actually get them the supports that they need, so that they’re not committing more crimes, it creates more public safety,” said Descano at an event announcing the new training program. “It helps build communities and it helps change people’s lives.”
Diversion programs exist in localities across the country, but Fairfax County’s program is unique because of its relatively broad eligibility requirements. Just like many other counties and cities, Fairfax has special dockets that aim to keep people with mental illness, co-occurring substance use disorders, developmental disabilities, and low-level offenses out of jail and get them into treatment programs. But the only requirement for Taking Root is that the person not be accused of a crime categorized as violent.
The program was launched with funding from the Vera Institute of Justice, an advocacy group that funds pilot programs aimed at reducing incarceration. It also got a funding boost from the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee; Sen. Tim Kaine lobbied for $700,000 to help the program launch. A spokesperson for Descano said the office has one more year of funding for the program, but they’re looking for additional grants and funding sources to expand it.
Lula Kelly — diversion program manager at Opportunities, Alternatives & Resources, a Virginia-based nonprofit that employs case managers who work directly with program participants — said she hopes Taking Root can eventually serve 500 people over the next several years. She also hopes her organization can help other Northern Virginia counties launch similar diversion programs.
So far, Kelly said, the Fairfax program has served a “range” of clients, from “people that make $150,000 a year to people who have zero income.”
Each client gets a program based on their individual needs, she added. For example, one successful client got help with immigration issues, which in turn helped him get a job and an apartment.
“He’s no longer on drugs, he’s no longer stealing,” Kelly said. “Because these are things that build. If you work at things one step at a time, they will come.”
Kelly said OAR helps clients with whatever they need to stay in the program and be successful — whether that’s help with transportation to appointments or help getting food for their family.
“We’re going to do what we need to do to make sure that everybody that comes in this program is successful,” she said. “And if they don’t succeed, it’s going to be because they just said, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ But it’s not going to be because we’re not giving them everything that they need.”
