Last summer, Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George emailed local police chiefs with an unusual request. She wanted a list of people being arrested over and over again for nonviolent offenses.

The reform-minded prosecutor wasn't compiling this list of shoplifters and car thieves to crack down on them. Instead, she wanted to enroll them in a new program intended to keep them out of trouble.

"Incentives for Success" is meant to curb low-level property crimes typically carried out by people trying to make money to feed their drug addictions. Participants work with a case manager to solve whatever issues may be contributing to their lawbreaking and earn small financial rewards for showing up each week. If participants avoid charges for 12 weeks, their cases are dismissed and expunged.

So far, George has referred nine people with a combined 99 misdemeanor and 14 felony charges to the three-month program, with the first set to graduate next week. George hopes to enroll another 40 people this year, which she said could resolve more than 500 cases if each of them successfully completed the program.

The initiative could reduce a backlog that's clogged up Vermont's court system since it shut down during the pandemic, George said. With nearly 3,000 pending cases in Chittenden County alone, George said her office has needed to focus its limited resources on more serious cases, allowing many lower-level cases to linger for months.

But George also sees the program as an opportunity to fix what ails the people committing these crimes in a way that is less punitive and more rehabilitative.

"For these individuals, coming to court is not a priority. They don't feel safe there. They certainly don't feel supported," George said in an interview. "So if they have this opportunity to come [to a place] where their needs will be met, that's what they're going to do. And that's what's going to keep them from committing further crimes."

The initiative comes at a time when the drug crisis has led to a surge in property crime. In Burlington, for instance, some 300 cars were reported stolen last year, compared to 50 in 2019. The rate of retail theft has also risen. Stores reported more than 800 incidents last year compared to 320 in 2019. Business leaders say the true number is far greater, as many small store owners have stopped reporting every theft.

The spike has gotten lawmakers' attention in Montpelier. Several crime-focused bills are circulating in the Statehouse, and Gov. Phil Scott mentioned the issue during his State of the State address earlier this month.

"We've made progress on justice reform and treating addiction as the public health crisis it is," he said. "But when spiking crime rates make it clear that not all the changes have been effective, we have a responsibility to take a step back and consider other strategies."

Two of the proposed bills would make it easier to charge shoplifters with felonies. Currently, people who steal property valued at $900 or less can only be charged with a misdemeanor, and each theft gets counted individually, meaning someone could steal thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise from several stores and face only misdemeanor-level charges. The bills would allow prosecutors to add up the value of merchandise stolen from multiple stores in a certain time frame.

Testifying against the proposal this month, Falko Schilling, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, pointed to research that shows increased criminal penalties are a poor deterrent for future crime. Imprisoning people may only exacerbate problems by increasing the likelihood of recidivism, according to the research. Schilling encouraged lawmakers to instead stay focused on addressing the root causes of criminality.

In response, Rep. Martin LaLonde (D-South Burlington), who sponsored one of the bills, said the state is "past that" point with some people. "Once there is criminal behavior, there needs to be accountability," he said.

George thinks her new program can provide accountability without imprisoning more people. It's funded by a $75,000 grant from a New York City-based criminal justice nonprofit, and she's running it in tandem with a Burlington nonprofit, Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform.

George assembled a list of 64 potential participants after hearing back last fall from police chiefs in Burlington, South Burlington, Williston and Winooski. She whittled it down to a handful of initial participants, then enrolled them in the program if they showed up for an initial screening.

Participants receive a weekly participation reward — from $12 the first week to $22 by week 12 — that can be doubled if they test negative for a substance they've identified as wanting to avoid. The approach is based on a drug treatment initiative known as contingency management, which has helped people curb unwanted behaviors.

While the incentives encourage people to show up, the real work begins once they've arrived. At weekly meetings with case managers, participants work to overcome issues that contribute to their drug use and lawbreaking. Staff have helped people find housing, obtain IDs, sign up for Medicaid and purchase cellphones. They've enrolled people in medication-assisted treatment programs and driven them to their first appointments.

"It's a one-stop shop," said Brad, a 29-year-old man who spoke to Seven Days on the condition that his last name be withheld.

A Burlington native, Brad has used illicit drugs for his entire adult life, and his addiction regularly landed him in legal trouble. He moved back to Vermont from Las Vegas a year ago and was accused in short succession of 10 crimes, from stealing cars and shoplifting to a pair of DUIs.

He and his girlfriend both got clean last summer after learning they were expecting a baby, he said, and he hasn't been arrested since. But his living situation has remained precarious. He's housed through the state's emergency motel program, and he's been anxious about his pending criminal charges.

Last fall, Brad's attorney informed him that the state was offering him a deal: He could avoid jail time if he entered treatment court, a monthslong program created two decades ago that's designed for defendants whose crimes are connected to their addictions.

It seemed like a decent resolution, given his list of pending charges. But it would have required him to show up for dozens of scheduled court hearings, drug tests and counseling appointments — a tall order for someone without a phone or car and a baby on the way. He knew people who had landed in prison after flunking out of the program and worried he would, too.

Then Brad heard about the new program from his case managers at Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform and thought it sounded more manageable. He could drop by for his weekly counseling sessions whenever his schedule allowed, and he could get a bit of spending money, too.

George enrolled Brad in the program at the nonprofit's recommendation. Eight weeks later, he said he's in a much better place. Case managers helped him get a cellphone and provided him with warm clothes when winter hit. Most importantly, they advocated on his behalf with the Department for Children and Families, helping him to maintain custody of his daughter while his girlfriend seeks mental health treatment. During an interview last month, the 2-month-old lay in his lap, quietly cooing.

"Any problem you have, you come to them, they're going to try their best to support you," Brad said of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. "Words can't describe" what that means for someone like him, who has never had a support system before: "It's everything," he said.

The program doesn't have a 100 percent success rate. Two participants were arrested for misdemeanors shortly after enrolling. George chose not to kick them out, she said, because both infractions occurred early on. Instead, she made them write a letter about what they had done, what led to it and how they will make sure it won't happen again. She made clear that their behavior jeopardized their freedom and reflected poorly on Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, which was advocating for them.

"A lot of these individuals don't have anyone that's rooting for them — and they don't have anybody they'll disappoint," George said.

The threat of disappointing a trusted advocate has motivated Chrystal, another one of the program's participants, who spoke to Seven Days on the condition that her last name be withheld.

Chrystal is a longtime stimulant user who has subsidized her addiction through a prolific shoplifting habit. She's infamous among Church Street businesses and a frequent subject of angry emails to the state's attorney's office.

The court system has tried "literally everything" to rehabilitate Chrystal, George said. Chrystal has served probation, gone to prison multiple times and tried treatment court. But nothing has worked. By this winter, Chrystal was on the verge of landing in prison again.

George was reluctant to refer Chrystal to the program because she knew that offering yet another chance to one of Burlington's most notorious shoplifters ran the risk of making her look soft on crime, especially if Chrystal flunked out by picking up new charges. But the prosecutor eventually decided it was worth a shot. At the least, Chrystal would be getting support services instead of just waiting many months for trial.

"If she isn't successful, we're still not in any worse place than we were with her," George said.

Kelly Devine, executive director of the Burlington Business Association, testified in favor of the two retail theft bills now pending in the legislature. But she said in an interview on Monday that most people she represents aren't in favor of throwing more people in jail. Rather, Devine said, they simply want "consequences for actions." Told about George's new diversion program, Devine said she hoped the prosecutor would keep the community informed about whether it's working. "I would like nothing more than for something like this to be successful," she said.

In South Burlington, where retail thefts have surged, Police Chief Shawn Burke said he isn't opposed to the new program. But he said he hoped George's office would consider the victims when choosing who can participate. Traditional court diversion programs give victims a role and often involve letters of apology or restitution payments. George's new program does not.

"I have always been more of a fan of a person accepting responsibility for their actions, e.g. guilty plea, and then showing success during a period of deferred sentence," Burke wrote in an email.

George said she always weighs victim input but that people in the throes of drug addiction often aren't stable enough to participate in the restorative justice process. Eventually, she'd like to incorporate that element into her new program, she said, so participants can better understand how their behaviors have hurt the community.

Chrystal, for her part, is still using drugs. But she said she was working hard to stay out of trouble — and had been successful so far, for about seven weeks. She was going to the food shelf regularly and otherwise tried to stay home in Essex, where she was living with family. Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform is helping her sign up for Social Security disability benefits so that she can have a source of income aside from stealing.

Her goal, she said, is to start fresh.

"I could come in here, talk about nonsense every week, pretend to care, and it wouldn't help me out," she said. "But I'm really trying to get as much as I can out of this program to help me in the long run."