This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, which offers voluntary community-based services to eligible youth accused of minor school-based offenses in lieu of arrest.
The evaluation anticipated that the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia schools would decrease over the program’s first 5 years and predicted that the annual number of serious behavioral incidents would not increase. Further, it hypothesized that diverted youth—compared to youth arrested in schools the year before Diversion Program implementation—would have significantly lower rates of recidivism arrests in the 2 years following their school-based incidents. Using a quasi-experimental design, the evaluation examined data from 2,302 public school students (67.0 percent male; 76.1 percent Black; age range: 10–22 years old) who were either diverted from arrest through the Diversion Program or arrested in Philadelphia schools in the year prior to Diversion Program implementation. The evaluation compared rate of recidivism arrest, number of arrests, and time to arrest between diverted and arrested youth. It also used district-wide descriptive statistics to examine 5-year trends in school-based arrests and serious behavioral incidents. The evaluation found that since program implementation, the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia has declined by 84 percent, and the number of serious behavioral incidents has declined by 34 percent. Diverted youth demonstrated less recidivism than arrested youth in the 2 years following their initial incident; however, after propensity score matching, the study no longer observed significant differences. The findings indicate that a pre-arrest diversion program can safely reduce school-based arrests and suggest a need for future research regarding the role of demographic and incident-related characteristics in recidivism outcomes. (publisher abstract modified)