Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

This is the Final Report on the Court Employment Project (CEP). The report describes efforts to continue and expand pretrial diversion programs in the U.S. and abroad by sharing information and experience through meetings and correspondence, and working with the U.S. Attorney's office to negotiate a federal diversion program for arrestees. The CEP was an experimental attempt to intervene in the usual court process just after a defendant's arrest ("pretrial diversion"). It offered defendants counseling and job opportunities and, if the defendant cooperated and showed promise of permanent change, recommended that the prosecutor and the judge dismiss the charges against him without ever deciding whether he was guilty. Thus, the MCEP attempted to convert a participant's arrest from a losing to a winning experience.