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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:19 pm
Time: 9:19 pm
Results for court diversion
1 results foundAuthor: Labriola, Melissa Title: Evaluation of the Cook County Misdemeanor Deferred Prosecution Enhancement Program: Findings and Recommendations Summary: Many states, including Illinois, are grappling with overwhelming misdemeanor caseloads, placing significant resource burdens on courts, prosecutors, and defense agencies (see, e.g., Greenberg and Cherney 2017; Schauffler et al. 2016). Responding to these caseload pressures, as well as to growing national interest in reducing the adverse collateral consequences of a conviction for defendants while addressing their underlying treatment needs, prosecutors are increasingly turning to pretrial diversion (e.g., see George et al. 2015; Labriola et al. 2017). Defendants who complete diversion requirements generally have their cases dismissed without further adjudication. The current study evaluates a diversion program for misdemeanor defendants, implemented by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office (SAO), which has jurisdiction over criminal cases in Chicago, Illinois and its surrounding suburbs. The Cook County SAO is the second largest prosecutorial office in the nation and the largest in Illinois, handling about 250,000 cases per year, including more than 150,000 misdemeanors. With funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the SAO sought to expand a preexisting misdemeanor diversion program to geographic areas within the county where the program was not yet available. The current study evaluates both the original diversion model and the enhancement. Misdemeanor Diversion in Cook County The Misdemeanor Deferred Prosecution Program (MDPP) was initiated in 2012 by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. Given available funding, the program was implemented for defendants who, based on the location of their arrest, had their preliminary hearing within two of six geographically-defined branch courts within Chicago (Branch 23 and Branch 29) and two of five suburban district courts (respectively in Skokie and Bridgeview). Besides the geographic location of the arrest and preliminary hearing, diversion eligibility also required the defendant to be charged with a nonviolent misdemeanor; not to have any prior violent conviction within the past ten years; and not to have a pending case in any court at the time that the current case was filed. As a practical matter, based upon case-by-case discretion applied by the assistant state's attorney, diversion participants tended to be first ime defendants (no prior convictions of any kind). In addition, the most commonly seen charges were retail theft, marijuana possession, and trespass. Enrolled program participants were required to attend two sessions at a community-based services agency located conveniently to the participant's home or work. In a special "veterans" track, program participants who were military veterans attended one of their two sessions at the John Marshall Law School Veteran's Legal Support Center and Clinic and the second session at the Jesse Brown Veterans Medical Center. Attendance at both required sessions led to dismissal of the current criminal charges. Implemented in 2015 with Bureau of Justice Assistance funding, the Misdemeanor Deferred Prosecution Enhanced Program (MDPEP) expanded misdemeanor diversion to two additional preliminary hearing courts: Sixth Municipal District (Markham) and Chicago's Branch 34 courthouses. In addition, the expanded diversion model integrated the use of a brief validated risk-need assessment tool, the Criminal Court Assessment Tool (C-CAT), to aid with programming. Specifically, based on whether a defendant was classified by the CCAT as low, moderate, or high risk, the defendant would be routed to one of three alternative diversion tracks: (1) two case management appointments (low risk); (2) two appointments plus at least ten hours of community service (moderate risk); or (3) two appointments plus ten hours of cognitive-behavioral treatment for criminal thinking, using the nationally known Thinking for a Change (T4C) model (high risk). The goals of the enhanced program model were to reduce subsequent criminal behavior; reduce costs to the system; and minimize the collateral consequences resulting from convictions for low-level, non-violent offenses. These same goals were also shared by the original diversion model. Details: New York: Center for Court Innovation, 2018. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed May 7, 2018 at: https://www.courtinnovation.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2018-03/cook_county_deferred_eval.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://www.courtinnovation.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2018-03/cook_county_deferred_eval.pdf Shelf Number: 150093 Keywords: Court CaseloadsCourt DiversionCriminal CourtsMisdemeanor DiversionMisdemeanorsProsecution |