GOSHEN – Over 400 shoplifters who have been enrolled in the Orange County District Attorney’s Restorative Justice Program have stayed on the straight and narrow.            

The program is a mechanism geared toward providing education and resources for first time offenders in order to avoid recidivism, said Chief Assistant District Attorney Richard Ruggieri.

“We find that after people take the course, they realize what they did wrong, they truly understand whatever was driving them to do such a thing, and they learn from it,” he said. The program has yet to have one person out of the more than 400 participants get rearrested for shoplifting, Ruggieri said.

The program began in 2005.