Former Williams judge finds life changing alternatives for lower court offenders

WILLIAMS, Ariz. - Fines, probation, community service. Those are the typical penalties that people associate with the lower court systems, but retired judge Bill Sutton has another vision.

Sutton is the owner of Wise Choice Alternatives, a self-directed study program that offers specific cognitive restructuring workbooks as an alternative to typical penalties imposed by the courts.

"When I retired I began looking for an alternative," Sutton said. "Because the different things we would see in court programs that would actually work were rare."

Sutton wanted to find something that would dig deeper and help people get back on track. He wanted to find something that would help with their decision making and reprogram their cognitive thinking. He began doing research and found a company called American Community Corrections Institute (ACCI), which produces self-paced workbooks for correctional institutions.

The philosophical model that drives ACCI is that thoughts drive feelings and emotions, which produce attitudes and behaviors and these result in the consequences of peoples' lives. If faulty thinking is not changed then self-defeating behaviors won't change. The ACCI program challenges people to explore, evaluate and take ownership of their thinking errors and discover their own solutions.

"This sounded like something that might work," Sutton said. "I contacted them and they sent me a sample and I said this is it, this is what we need."

In the summer of 2010 Sutton met with ACCI President Trevor Lloyd and shared with him his vision. LLoyd told them several courts were already using their program with success and offered to contract out the Arizona courts to Sutton.

Sutton created the company Wise Choice Alternatives out of his home and began marketing the program to the lower Arizona courts.

Wise Choice Alternatives offers life skills courses to lower courts in over 20 categories such as substance abuse, anger management, offender corrections, sex offenders, driver responsibility, parenting, theft, and domestic violence. Judges and prosecutors can choose a course for a defendant to complete or give the defendant the option.

"For example a judge can order someone to pay a $1,000 fine or he will reduce it to $400 if the defendant completes this program," Sutton said.

Sutton began the program at the Williams Justice Court and now has branched out to more than 80 courts in Arizona and a few in Montana and Oregon.

"We started with Williams and a defendant out of Seligman was our very first person," Sutton said.

Sutton said the business has gradually grown and now has seven employees. Many Arizona courts utilize the program and Sutton believes it has been successful.

"Studies have shown that recidivism rate with our program is around 13 percent when compared to typical rates of 30 to 40 percent," Sutton said. "We also see the results on a daily basis when we read the evaluations by the defendants."

Sutton knows that most people's problems are not going to be solved with one workbook, but he believes it helps to get a lot of people going in the right direction.

"People don't realize how powerful their thoughts and words are," he said. "Those words are important, our thoughts are important, the subconscious is really important. I'm happy we're doing it. I'm really blessed that so many people are getting this help and we're helping the court system function better and more efficiently."