While researching diversion programs this week, I stumbled onto a detail that feels especially relevant given today’s political climate:
Diversion programs were introduced at the federal level during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration.
Yes — that LBJ.
Long before “progressive prosecutors” or modern reform debates, Johnson’s administration openly recognized that incarceration was a blunt instrument ill-suited to address poverty, addiction, unemployment, and youth involvement in low-level offenses. Diversion wasn’t framed as being “soft on crime.” Instead, it was framed as being smart, humane, and cost-effective.
And the evidence backed it up.
The Vera Institute and the Birth of Diversion
One of the earliest organizations to operationalize this vision was the Vera Institute of Justice in New York.
Vera helped develop the Court Employment Project (CEP), a groundbreaking alternative to incarceration that combined:
- Career development
- Counseling and case management
- Temporary paid employment
Rather than cycling people through jail, CEP focused on stabilizing lives before criminal system involvement hardened into something permanent. The goal was simple but radical for its time: address the root causes of system contact instead of punishing the symptoms.
That philosophy hasn’t aged; it’s endured.
Diversion Today: Meeting People Where They Are
Modern diversion programs are no longer limited to one demographic or offense category. Today, they exist across jurisdictions and populations, including:
- Mental health diversion
- Substance use diversion
- Pre-charge diversion
- Specialty courts
- Youth-focused alternatives
What effective diversion programs share is not ideology, it’s practicality. They meet people where they are, reduce system exposure, and connect participants to resources that actually reduce harm.
Why Youth Diversion Matters Most
Early last year, The Sentencing Project released a publication highlighting the United States’ renewed emphasis on youth diversion, and for good reason.
Youth are uniquely vulnerable to the long-term damage caused by criminal justice involvement. Arrests, court processing, and incarceration disrupt:
- Educational attainment
- Employment prospects
- Mental health
- Family stability
Research consistently shows that diverting young people away from the formal system makes them:
- Less likely to face future arrests
- More likely to remain in school
- More likely to achieve long-term stability
In other words: diversion works, especially when it comes to young people whose lives are still forming.
We’ve Known This Works. We Just Keep Forgetting.
What’s striking is not that diversion programs exist; it’s that we keep treating them like a new idea, because they most definitely are not.
Diversion has bipartisan roots. It has decades of empirical support. It saves money. It reduces recidivism. And it prevents people, especially youth, from being permanently harmed by a system that was never designed to help them in the first place.
The question isn’t whether diversion works; it’s why we ever stopped prioritizing it.
Read more about youth diversion and evidence-based alternatives here.
