The Urban Institute, a Safety + Justice Challenge Research Consortium Member, conducted an in-depth process and impact evaluation of the Misdemeanor Diversion Program (MDP) in Durham County, North Carolina, which resulted in a series of reports on the program’s implementation and effectiveness. The first report was released in July 2021 and focused on The Urban Institute’s exploration of the MDP’s implementation, successes, challenges, and perceived impact. The second report, released in November 2021, focused on program outcomes, including enrollment, completion, recidivism, and system-level impacts. Overall, the findings show fewer new criminal justice contacts and reductions in racial disparities; findings also emphasized the need for local law enforcement buy-in, the need to scale the MDP, and the need to improve data collection as critical for MDP’s continued success. A policy brief synthesized results from both components of the evaluation and offered policy implications for these types of efforts, specifically in the context of young adults.

The goal of the Safety and Justice Challenge is not only to reduce jail populations, but to do so safely—and this has been a pillar of the initiative since its inception in 2015. While previous briefs have highlighted the substantial reductions made in jail populations across SJC sites, this report provides an initial look at SJC’s decarceration strategies through a safety lens. More specifically, it explores how aggregate crime rates and returns to custody among people released from jail changed after the launch of SJC and the implementation of its decarceration strategies in sites through 2019. Overall, the findings suggest that decarceration strategies can indeed be crafted and implemented responsibly, without compromising public safety. In fact, public safety outcomes across SJC sites and in most individual sites remained relatively constant before and after the implementation of decarceration reforms.