CCE and partners lay out vision for new D.C. pre-arrest diversion program

August 4, 2026 - Today CCE, along with partner organizations ACLU of the District of Columbia, the Georgetown Law Center for Innovations in Community Safety, and DC Justice Lab, sent a letter to the D.C. Council in response to the recommendations of the District's Pre-Arrest Diversion (PAD) Task Force. Our letter compliments their efforts and shares concerns that the proposed pilot program is too restrictive and misses an opportunity to create a robust alternative to arrest for people experiencing behavioral health and substance use challenges.

CCE has been working on issues related to prearrest diversion (PAD) for many years. PAD was a key section and set of recommendations in the 2020 report we worked on for the D.C. Auditor: Everything is Scattered: The Intersection of Substance Use Disorders and Justice-Involvement in the District. It was also recommended by the District Task Force on Jails & Justice, and we have provided expert testimony on the issue many times before the D.C. Council. In fact, we testified in support of the creation of this very PAD Task Force a couple of years back.

“The District has an opportunity to build a national model for pre-arrest diversion, but only if the program is broad enough to reach the people who need it most and is informed by the communities it is intended to serve."

In our joint letter, we emphasize strong support for a District-wide pre-arrest diversion program and applauds the PAD Task Force's extensive research and commitment to expand diversion in the District, however identifies four major concerns with itst recommendations:

1. Expand Eligibility to Maximize Impact. The proposed eligibility criteria unnecessarily exclude many people who would benefit most from diversion, including anyone with a prior felony conviction and many misdemeanor offenses that could be safely addressed through treatment and services instead of arrest. Such limitations would also make it more difficult to evaluate whether diversion is effective because the pilot would begin with a much smaller and less representative participant pool.
   

2. Broaden the Role of Community-Based Response. The letter urges the D.C. Council to expand the role of the Department of Behavioral Health's Community Response Teams and other civilian crisis response models, rather than making diversion primarily dependent on police involvement. Many successful diversion programs nationwide rely on behavioral health professionals as the primary responders for people experiencing mental health or substance use crises.

3. Strengthen Officer Training and Program Implementation. A voluntary, limited rollout will produce inconsistent implementation and make it difficult to determine whether the pilot actually works. We recommend a more comprehensive approach that includes robust training, stronger officer engagement, and a pilot designed to generate meaningful data.
   

4. Increase Community Engagement and Public Input. We urge the D.C. Council to hold a public roundtable before legislation is considered to ensure residents, people with lived experience, service providers, and community organizations can help shape the program. Despite requests for additional outreach, only one small roundtable was held during the Task Force process, and several recommendations raised by participants were not reflected in the final report. 

Among the recommendations we support are the recognition of the role behavioral health plays in justice involvement, its emphasis on collecting data to evaluate outcomes, and its recommendation to create a centralized location where participants can access behavioral health assessments, service navigation, peer support, and other services.

“Pre Arrest Diversion in D.C. has never been more timely, especially as the D.C. jail continues to deteriorate and budgets tighten. We hope that our concerns will be taken seriously for a safer and healthier D.C.” - Crystal Jones Nieves, CCE Open Horizon Fellow

The PAD Task Force recommendations arrive as the District's jail population continues to grow, making diversion more important than ever as a strategy to connect people with services and reduce unnecessary justice involvement, and use public resources more effectively. We urge D.C. to adopt a more inclusive approach from the outset so we can all learn more quickly what works and build a diversion program that serves as a national model.

Read our full letter to Chairman Phil Mendelson, Judiciary Committee Chair Brooke Pinto, and other members of the D.C. Council here.

Read our fact sheet about prearrest diversion.