Juvenile Diversion

Juvenile Court and Contemporary Diversion

“…One of the main dispositions that youth receive as a result of informal processing is diversion, including referral for treatment or services or a requirement that youth participate in youth courts, community service, mentoring initiatives, and related programs (Feld and Bishop, ; Models for Change Juvenile Diversion Workgroup, ; Willison, Mears, Schollenberger, Owens, and Butts, ). If youth successfully complete the diversion program, typically no “official record”—adjudication or disposition—results (Mears, ; Ray and Childs, ). Diversion enables the juvenile court to intervene actively with youth and to hold them accountable and provide assistance and services.…”

“…Juxtaposed against the ideals held out for diversion, as well as the concerns about it, is a limited body of credible research that has documented the extent to which diversion is implemented well and the magnitude of its benefits and harms. Numerous reviews have found that diversion frequently is implemented inconsistently and that it fails to produce significant improvements in recidivism relative to counsel‐and‐release or formal processing (Blomberg, ; Klein, ; Lipsey, ; Mears, ; Polk, ; Ray and Childs, ; Schwalbe, Gearing, MacKenzie, Brewer, and Ibrahim, ; cf. Wilson and Hoge, ).…”

“…Wilson and Hoge, ). Some accounts have suggested that diversion may be effective in some contexts, for some youth, when it includes certain components, such as skill‐building or cognitive‐behavioral therapy (Lipsey, ; Ray and Childs, ). Intensive services for low‐risk youth, however, generally is unnecessary and costly.…”

“…This “heterogeneity in diversion,” as Ray and Childs (: 425) characterized the situation, creates substantial challenges for evaluating the impact of diversion programs. Petrosino et al.…”

“…This consensus is unique among juvenile justice reforms; other policies, such as the transfer of juveniles to adult court, engender divides that tend to fall along ideological lines (Butts and Mears, ; Fagan and Zimring, ; Kupchik, ; Loeber and Farrington, ). Perhaps for this reason, diversion programs and policies—such as teen or youth courts; drug courts; mentoring; family therapy; community service; arbitration; and programs that emphasize restorative justice, education, counseling, and treatment—have proliferated (Ezell, ; Kretschmar, Butcher, Flannery, and Singer, ; Mears, ; Pearson and Jurich, ; Ray and Childs, ; Sullivan, Dollard, Sellers, and John Mayo, ; Willison, Mears, Shollenberger, Owens, and Butts, ).…”