Enhancing Diversion Success through Financial Capability and Asset Building: A Proposed Intervention Approach

Background and Purpose: Justice system diversion is an alternative strategy for reducing the ongoing levels of mass incarceration. Diversion offers an opportunity for justice-involved individuals to avoid conviction and its collateral consequences, while maximizing public safety, reducing case-processing, and lowering justice system costs. Diversion programs typically include mandated education about the problem behavior and supervision. For some types of programs, such as chemical dependency or mental illness, the defendant may receive treatment services. However, such services may not adequately address many of the hardships that led individuals to break the law in the first place, such as unemployment, homelessness, lack of economic opportunity, and racial bias. In addition, the monetary fees associated with diversion participation can be prohibitive. The financial capability and asset building (FCAB) conceptual framework reflects key aspects of social work’s “person-in-environment” approach. The framework combines personal functional ability (financial knowledge and skills) with the opportunity to exercise their abilities through access to affordable financial education, financial guidance, and asset building products and services. This paper reviews evidence on adult diversion programs and explores the potential for incorporating FCAB services into diversion programs. Such additional FCAB services may help diversion participants complete diversion program requirements and reduce likelihood of recidivism and increase financial wellbeing.

Methods: The authors conducted reviews of the history and evidence of diversion practices and outcomes, and evidence on financial capability and asset building in diversion and re-entry. The authors then analyzed common programmatic features, limitations, and gaps that FCAB services could potentially fill.

Results: The authors use the FCAB conceptual framework to develop a program model for design and operations that integrates FCAB services in diversion programming. The authors stress the importance of conducting financial assessments at the outset to tailor individual needs within a standard set of program services. An educational infrastructure built into some diversion programs could be expanded to include household financial management and budget mechanisms to provide manageable restitution, program costs, and other fee payments. Financial guidance could include education and assistance toward accessible, affordable and secure financial products and services such as for credit repair, credit building, and asset building.

Conclusions and Implications: This paper provides direction for applying FCAB interventions to diversion programming to improve outcomes for individuals eligible for diversion. Financial vulnerability is a common denominator among many justice-involved citizens. Issues such as inadequate housing or childcare, addiction, and lack of access to employment, are all rooted in financial vulnerability. Such vulnerability can be alleviated by FCAB services, but the extent to which they do so deserves further testing. Although diversion programs vary widely by eligibility and services provided/mandated, FCAB services can be a valuable and standard service component, regardless of the type of diversion. Providing such interventions earlier in justice involvement can be viewed more largely as a diversion from an old system of inequities to a new standardized system that empowers individuals to take an actionable path toward greater economic stability and financial wellbeing.