Diversion Derailed
What Do Participant Perspectives Teach Us About the True Meaning of “Diversion” From the Criminal Punishment System?
Diversion programs are among the most popular “reforms” to the criminal legal system — despite the fact that state-run diversion programs often don’t achieve their stated goals of diverting people from incarceration or further involvement in the system. In fact, they often lengthen and deepen the extent to which people are pulled into webs of criminalization, without meeting the needs and addressing the underlying conditions that bring people into contact with the criminal punishment system in the first place. They are also often sites of policing, coercion, and harm, while rarely prioritizing the needs, perspectives, and visions of participants.
In the current climate, diversion programs present particular dangers, especially for migrants and parents:
They often require participants to admit to engaging in acts that violate a criminal law in exchange for being offered a program instead of a prosecution, which in certain cases will subject them to mandatory detention and deportation under a recently passed federal law, even if they are not criminally prosecuted;
They track participants, including through ongoing monitoring and drug testing, placing them at risk for targeted immigration enforcement.
Diversion Derailed: What Do Participant Perspectives Teach Us About The True Meaning Of “Diversion” From The Criminal Punishment System?, a report by the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and Interrupting Criminalization, examines diversion programs from the perspective of the people they impact the most — participants themselves — and offers recommendations for program evaluation and creation of community-based programs that genuinely divert people from the criminal punishment system toward sustainable well-being.
Diversion Derailed gathers existing research on diversion programs along with lessons and visions from people who have gone through them, including members of The National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, Grammy’s Place, Women on the Rise, and the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative.
The resource offers concrete recommendations on how diversion programs should be structured and evaluated to best meet the needs of Black women, girls, and trans participants, and how to address the root causes that brought them into contact with the criminal punishment system in the first place.
To learn more about diversion programs and specialty courts which are often promoted in the name of reform, check out the “Problem-Creating Courts” resource on the Beyond Criminal Courts website. This resource offers data-supported talking points to push back on some of the most popular iterations of these programs: drug courts, mental health courts, trafficking courts, and restorative justice diversion programs.
Beyond Criminal Courts is an abolitionist digital resource hub for organizers, advocates and community members created by Interrupting Criminalization, Community Justice Exchange, and Critical Resistance, illuminating all aspects of the criminal court system. It offers resources and tools for folks working together to build the organizing-power we need to defund, divest, and ultimately to dismantle criminal courts for good. Explore and learn more at BeyondCourts.org.
