Evans and his staff were in a no-win situation. But Evans'
reaction was the opposite of giving up. "I get excited when I am
told that something can't be done," he said.
VINCE
FALLIN
Vince Fallin
was one of that cadre. He majored in sociology and psychology in
college and quickly settled on a career in probation. Early on, he
ran a diversion center in Cobb County. Georgia's diversion centers
were created as part of a federal initiative aimed at securing
restitution from criminals for their victims. Patterned on
restitution centers in Wisconsin and Minnesota and funded by a
grant from the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration,
Georgia's first centers were located in Rome, Gainesville, and
Athens. After getting good national evaluations for its adaptation
of the program, the state started putting its own money into these
centers. Their names were changed, successively, from restitution
centers to adjustment centers to diversion centers in response to
the country's increasingly hard-line attitudes toward crime,
punishment, and rehabilitation.
It did not
take a genius to figure out that getting the state's political and
judicial establishment and its voters to accept some form of
punishment for criminals other than prison was the cost-effective
solution to its prison overcrowding problem. Vince Fallin may not
be a genius, but he is a professional probation officer who is also
adept at getting people to accept new ideas. He realized that what
faced the Department of Corrections—along with the problem of
program design—was the problem of how to market change in the
corrections system. The first step in marketing, he reasoned, was
to find out what the people in the market wanted or would accept at
a minimum. So, he went out and asked the judges, the district
attorneys, and the police chiefs—but chiefly the
judges—what it would take to get them to sentence felons to
some form of punishment other than prison.
Vince Fallin
stands out but is not threatening. Tall and fit, at 44 he has snow
white hair that sets off a healthy tan. He talks like the
professional he is, but with animation, and he can communicate
effectively with people of traditional style and values. People
respond well to him,