Tuesday, May 15, 2007

A Short History of Pretrial Diversion

Mostly so I'll be able to locate the document again myself, I wanted to point readers to this Short History of Pretrial Diversion of Adult Defendants, an academic paper found on the website of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.

Long-time readers know this subject is of keen interest to me as possibly counties' best tool to reduce local jail overcrowding; I plan to return to the topic with greater regularity after session is over.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This post seems to use the same terms for different programs. Although the end result regarding easing overcrowding in county jails may be the same, pretrial diversion and pretrial supervision are not the same thing.

JT Barrie said...

It appears to me that all legisliars pay lip service to pretrial diversion - including the form known as "drug treatment diversion" - so as not to appear like the petty vindictive people that they really appeal to.

But this aspect of drug prohibition is much like the care of wounded soldiers is to the Department of Defense: the glamor children are the big expensive weapons systems that reign terror from the skies and from the killing fields. While legisliars don't want to appear to bash sick people, they love the glamor of headline grabbing drug raids and catching bad guys with lots of cash and designer versions of banned drugs. DAs don't run on successful drug treatment centers; they run on high conviction ratios and high conviction totals. And, of course, they try to keep funding for the prisons "not open for discussion".
Here in Oregon we pass mass incarceration scams by over 70% - but every tax increase proposal to actually pay for these measures goes down with over 55% opposed