Philadelphia police will launch a new program diverting youth accused of first-time, low-level offenses from arrest, aiming to address root causes of behavior and avoid the trauma of incarceration.
Starting on Monday, Philadelphia police will stop arresting kids who are accused of first-time, low-level offenses, and instead will send them to a police diversion program that aims to address misbehavior without drawing youth into the juvenile justice system.
The offenses — including disorderly conduct, shoplifting, vandalism, and assaults without significant injuries, plus some more serious charges involving children under 13 — are ones that almost certainly would have been funneled into diversion programs later in the court process. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said his hope is to spare children the trauma of being arrested, handcuffed, and booked, while creating alternative mechanisms to address the root causes of their behaviors. Youth who are arrested, he said, will still be processed through central intake at Philadelphia’s Juvenile Assessment Center, known as the JAC, a facility he previously had said would close. Bethel, who served as the safety chief for the School District of Philadelphia a decade ago, where he once saw more than 1,500 student arrests a year, said, “One of the things I learned in the school diversion program is that I have the power, policing has the power, to make a different decision.” Back then, Bethel had been startled to learn that three-quarters of students arrested in schools ended up in diversion programs. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he recalled thinking. “We could have avoided putting a 10-year-old child in a cellblock for six hours because she came to school with Mace that her mother gave her to protect herself.
Police Diversions Juvenile Justice Philadelphia Youth Offenses Crime Prevention
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