Jurisdictions across the nation are making substantial advances on diversion, in what the Sentencing Project describes as a growing diversion-reform movement, in a new report written by Richard “Dick” Mendel, the Sentencing Project’s senior researcher for youth justice.
Until recently, diversion’s performance has been inconsistent at best.
A detailed 2019 study of youth diversion reported that in most jurisdictions across the country, somewhere between 10% and 30% of youth who are initially diverted from court typically failed diversion and later had their cases formally petitioned. In some courts, the study found, diversion failure rates ran as high as 50%. Youth of color have also been less likely than their white peers to be diverted and to complete diversion successfully, states and localities should prioritize strategies to minimize the number of diversion failures.
But there has been a shift, the report finds. “I am seeing more energy around diversion than ever before,” said Tiana Davis, a former policy director of equity and diversion from the Center for Children’s Law and Policy.
Over the past decade or so, state and local justice systems have implemented a range of new diversion efforts, the Sentencing Project found. Sometimes, local systems launched programs on their own; other times, they relied upon expert support from national technical assistance providers at places like the Council of State Governments Justice Center, Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice, the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Impact Justice, and the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Public Safety Improvement Project.
Put together, the reform efforts “represent a noteworthy shift in youth justice policy that could – and should – represent the beginning of a meaningful national movement to make diversion the norm for addressing most delinquent conduct by America’s adolescents,” Mendel writes.
Among the most promising recent developments in youth diversion is the growing focus on restorative justice alternatives to formal court processing. Restorative-justice diversion programs require youth to focus on and repair the harm caused by their misconduct, and often include face-to-face meetings with victims. The report contends that restorative-justice processes may offer more meaningful accountability than traditional court. “To sit down across the table from someone whom you’ve harmed and work to make a repair is infinitely more difficult than to stand in front of the judge and say nothing,” a director of a program in Colorado explained.
The report also found increasing interest in expanding diversion prior to arrest, catching them before arrest. And for those who are assigned to diversion, jurisdictions are working to not only reduce failure rates, but to minimize the share of youth who are sent back to court for noncompliance.
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