By Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Elizabeth Marsolais, Samantha Matthews

The Los Angeles County Rapid Diversion Program (RDP) is a pretrial mental health diversion program that was established in 2019. RDP serves individuals whose mental health diagnoses (which can include substance use disorders) played a role in the criminal charges that they are facing. The concept for RDP was developed with several local departments at the table, including public defense, prosecution, behavioral health services, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The program is now overseen by the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department (JCOD). When RDP launched, it focused on people facing low-level, nonviolent misdemeanor charges. RDP has expanded from one courthouse to seven in its first five years of operation. It now diverts qualifying people facing misdemeanor or felony charges. In addition to mental health and/or substance use disorder treatment, RDP clients receive case management services to help them address other needs (e.g., housing, obtaining benefits). Successful completion of RDP leads to the dismissal of charges. The figure depicts the RDP process.

Evaluating the Rapid Diversion Program

RAND researchers aimed to understand how RDP is being implemented, the successes and challenges that the program faces, and the characteristics of clients served by the program. The research team reviewed relevant documents, observed courtroom proceedings, conducted interviews with program implementation partners and graduates, and analyzed program data. In their assessment, the researchers found both strengths in implementation and challenges to consider while contemplating the expansion of RDP. Overall, public defenders, prosecutors, and clinicians support expanding the program.

Key Findings

Building a Diversion Program

RDP was developed on the foundation of three guiding principles that have helped address limitations to the traditional pretrial mental health diversion process under the California Penal Code, Section 1001.36: (1) identifying a set of charges that the defense, prosecution, and courts can agree are appropriate for diversion; (2) embedding clinical staff directly in the courts, which avoids the lengthy process of retaining a forensic evaluator to assess the client and then developing a treatment plan; and (3) providing case management to both address additional client needs and help ensure program compliance.

Rapid Diversion Program Client Characteristics and Outcomes

Among the findings on client characteristics and outcomes:From March 2022 to April 2024, more than 4,300 people were evaluated, and more than 1,200 were diverted.Most clients are Hispanic (about 47 percent) or Black (28 percent).About 35 percent are unhoused and 42 percent are in temporary housing when they enter the program.About one-half of the individuals approved for diversion are facing misdemeanor charges, and one-half are facing felony charges.As of April 2024, more than 660 clients had graduated from the program, and 91 percent had avoided having a new case filed for an offense occurring after graduation.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024. 2p.

By Christina Zanfagna

In the 1990s, Los Angeles was home to numerous radical social and environmental eruptions. In the face of several major earthquakes and floods, riots and economic insecurity, police brutality and mass incarceration, some young black Angelenos turned to holy hip hop—a movement merging Christianity and hip hop culture—to “save” themselves and the city. Converting street corners to open-air churches and gangsta rap beats into anthems of praise, holy hip hoppers used gospel rap to navigate complicated social and spiritual realities and to transform the Southland’s fractured terrains into musical Zions. Armed with beats, rhymes, and bibles, they journeyed through black Lutheran congregations, prison ministries, African churches, reggae dancehalls, hip hop clubs, Nation of Islam meetings, and Black Lives Matter marches. Zanfagna’s fascinating ethnography provides a contemporary and unique view of black LA, offering a much-needed perspective on how music and religion intertwine in people’s everyday experiences.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. 220p.