A Foreigner's View of American Diversion

Abstract

As part of a Dutch-sponsored project to learn about the American ex perience with diversion, five diversion projects in California are described and evaluated: university-sponsored counseling of status offenders inside a police department; police-sponsored counseling and job seeking for sta tus offenders and minor delinquents outside the police department; a "barrio organization" for all types of young offenders, with counselors acting without links to the police as advocates and community workers; a police program of supervision and controlled activities for cooperative de linquents ; and a probation program inside a juvenile hall for counseling detained status offenders. With exception of the barrio organization, all projects proved disappointing. There was little actual diversion; instead, the projects were largely an extension of the justice system. They did not deal with delinquent youths from the lower class and they appeared to function as a "velvet cloak" for the hardening of judicial policy in other respects. Project workers do not participate because they believe in di verting, but because they believe in counseling. Therefore, they are not aware of the antidiversion aspects of the projects.