Diversion

Abstract

Diversion is a general term for all community‐based alternatives to standard prosecution that occur before a criminal offender has entered a plea or gone to trial. The goal of diversion is to balance society's interest in punishing offenders with the criminal justice system's interest in reducing recidivism in a cost‐effective manner. Diversion seeks to accomplish these objectives by addressing the underlying treatment needs of subsets of criminal offenders, including those who are drug involved and/or mentally ill. Various community‐based alternatives to incarceration have been designed to provide treatment, social services, and supervision to diverted offenders, and different forms of diversion are implemented along various “intercepts” or stages in the criminal justice process. These include a number of prebooking initiatives such as crisis intervention teams and co‐responder models, and postbooking initiatives such as mental health courts and drug courts.

Diversion at re‐entry using criminogenic CBT: Review and prototypical program development

“…Although probation and parole are conceptually distinct alternatives to incarceration, both involve the supervision and rehabilitation of offenders in the community (Eno Louden et al ., ) and can therefore be discussed together for some purposes. Probation and parole officers with specialty caseloads receive training and education surrounding issues related to mental health, meet with their probationers or parolees frequently, and utilize problem‐solving strategies, rather than punitive measures, when the conditions of supervision are violated (DeMatteo & Strohmaier, ). In addition, specialty caseloads tend to be smaller than traditional caseloads and are often composed of probationers or parolees with mental illness (Skeem & Petrila, ).…”