In his first morning as state attorney, Andrew Bain made immediate and sweeping changes: He fired two executive staff members, canceled the office’s catch-and-release policy and discontinued the office’s diversion programs while he “evaluate[s] their effectiveness.”

The actions by Bain, a member of the conservative Federalist Society who Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to the Orange County judicial bench in 2020, represent a sharp departure from Monique Worrell, the elected state attorney for Orange and Osceola Counties who DeSantis ousted from office Wednesday. Bain’s actions also caused concern for local defense attorneys whose clients have gone through the programs.

“… [E]ffective immediately, I am rescinding the catch and release policy that has been in place for too long,” Bain wrote in an email Wednesday morning to State Attorney’s Office staff obtained by the Orlando Sentinel through a public records request. “We must return the principle of prosecutorial discretion, one that relies on a thorough analysis of each case’s facts and the laws of Florida.”

The catch-and-release policy allowed people awaiting a hearing in immigration court to be released from custody.

Diversion programs were central to Worrell’s policy platform, both during her initial campaign in 2020 and while she was the top prosecutor in the Ninth Judicial Circuit.

One of her major efforts in office was the expansion of diversion programs to connect those arrested with low-level charges to services that address the root causes of crimes, she has said. The same programs also seek to avoid penalizing those accused of non-violent crimes with a criminal record that may stop them from being able to find work or qualify for housing.