By Becca Cadoff, Kristyn Jones, Preeti Chauhan, & Michael Rempel
Alternatives to arrest are a means of lessening the deleterious effects of exposure to the criminal legal system. Current alternatives to arrest policies focus primarily on lower-level offenses such as misdemeanors, which constitute the bulk of police enforcement practices and criminal caseloads in the United States. With funding from Arnold Ventures, the Data Collaborative for Justice reviewed policy, practice and research to-date concerning five key models: 1. Citations involving releasing people to appear in court on their own at a later date in lieu of a traditional arrest in which police officers take the individual into custody. 2. Diversion programs involving pre-arrest social service participation where a case is never booked if individuals complete their diversion obligation. 3. Legalization (in which particular conduct becomes permissible under the law) and decriminalization (in which conduct remains illegal but is moved to the civil legal system). 4. Police-involved crisis response models that can either involve trained officers acting alone or in tandem with mental health professionals to respond to people in mental health crisis without resorting to an arrest (e.g., by sending a person to treatment or services). 5. Non-police response models in which social workers, paramedics, or other non-police agencies respond to certain calls for service or criminalized conduct without the presence of law enforcement. Research on any one model is limited. Although key themes and findings are outlined below, alternatives to arrest are in a growth period, and future research is likely to add clarity as well as, potentially, revise our understanding of what works and why.
New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2023. 41p.
