Diversion Programs

Background

Diversion is probably as old as the justice system itself. Police officers and court officials have always exercised their discretion to prevent the formal processing of offenders. During colonial times, a cobbler from Boston named John Augustus developed an idea to keep offenders out of the criminal justice system: probation. The current practice of diversion as an acceptable activity of the justice system originated in 1965 in Genesee County, Michigan. Soon after, in 1967, the U.S. Department of Labor began to fund pretrial diversion programs, and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration funded experimental alcohol detoxification programs. With the support of the 1967 President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, and the 1973 National Advisory Commission on Criminal Standards and Goals, diversion programs prospered during the 1970s. During the decade, over 1,200 diversion programs were established, at a cost of over $112 million. Although federal funding for diversion programs waned in the 1980s, many still exist. In most cases, state and local governments have assumed the cost. All states and the federal government use some form of diversion.

One critical area for the use of diversion is drug offenses. Because of the large number of drug offenders that are brought into the criminal justice system, local, state, and federal authorities in over one hundred jurisdictions have implemented drug courts as a form of diversion. Drug courts provide nonviolent substance-abusing adults with the sanctions and services necessary to change their behavior and avoid long-term incarceration. Research indicates that such treatment can reduce substance abuse, criminal behavior, and recidivism.

No national statistics are kept on diversion programs, so it is not known exactly how many people are diverted from the justice system each year, but there is good evidence that the number is quite large. It is estimated that in a year when there are 3 million index crime arrests, there will be less than 900,000 felony convictions and less than 500,000 prison sentences. Some of this drop-off reflects cases that are too weak to obtain a conviction, but by far most is due to diversion [Page 534]at each stage of the criminal justice process, including probation. For most offenders, diversion is the first option authorities consider when deciding how to proceed in a particular case.

In a sense, every offender not in jail or prison is living in the community because of some form of diversion. Even if every arrest were prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law, there would still be large numbers of offenders living in the community. These would be former offenders, however, and, having been punished as fully as the law allows, they would be free citizens. Many of the offenders living in the community today, however, are under some form of diversion authority: pretrial services, probation, parole, or community corrections. The existence of diversion as a correctional strategy is a way of sustaining correctional control over offenders, while at the same time allowing them to live in the community.

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