Testing the Efficacy of Pretrial Diversion

About This Report
This report presents the results from a randomized trial testing the effectiveness of Neighborhood Court, a restorative justice diversion program run by the District Attorney’s Office in San Francisco, California. Neighborhood Courts is built on a restorative justice framework with the use of restorative justice hearings and directives that are assigned to the defendant, all to achieve four primary goals: 1) efficient case resolution; 2) community-driven solutions; reduced burden on criminal courts; and 4) reduced recidivism. Since its inception, Neighborhood Courts has handled approximately 2,000 cases with ten courts across the city. In this report, we use information collected from program staff and participant interviews and surveys, administrative data, and observations of programs to describe how the program is implemented, identify key program facilitators and barriers, illustrate participant experiences, determine whether the model is effective in reducing risk factors for criminal legal involvement (e.g., recidivism), and whether it is cost-effective. This report should be of interest to entities across the U.S. interested in diversion programs.

Justice Policy Program
RAND Social and Economic Well-Being is a division of the RAND Corporation that seeks to actively improve the health and social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world. This research was conducted in the Justice Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being. The program focuses on such topics as access to justice, policing, corrections, drug policy, and court system reform, as well as other policy concerns pertaining to public safety and criminal and civil justice. For more information, email justicepolicy [at] rand [dot] org (justicepolicy[at]rand[dot]org).

Funding
Funding for this evaluation was provided by the National Institute of Justice.

Acknowledgments
We thank RAND’s Quality Assurance Reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this document, and our colleagues, Priscillia Hunt, Dionne Barnes-Proby, Samantha Cherney, Lisa Abraham, Sean McKenna, for their instrumental assistance. We are grateful to the many individuals at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, Pretrial Services and the Community Boards for participating in interviews, sharing documents and data, answering follow-up questions, and helping with recruitment for the interviews and surveys. A special thank you to the many participants who participated in the interviews; your feedback and perspectives are invaluable.

Thank you to the many participants who participated in the interviews; your feedback and perspectives are invaluable.