In the context of community-based alternatives prior to incarceration, explain the post-arrest events of initial detention/initial hearing and pre-trial services.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.If an individual is arrested upon first encounter with police or another first responder, the second intercept identifies the point at which that person is brought to "first appearance" before a judge. This occurs before the individual enters a plea or proceeds to trial. In some jurisdictions, there is a specialized team that works as part of the court system, identifying defendants who would be appropriate for behavioral health diversion. While some specialized problem-solving courts (e.g., drug court, mental health court, veterans' court, community court) function at this stage, it is more typical to have them take referrals at Intercept 3. Accordingly, Intercept 2 diversion is more likely to send individuals directly to treatment, or assign them to specialized probation. A number of studies on Intercept 2 have used effectiveness criteria like those employed in studies on Intercept 1. Addressing outcomes for individuals who receive diversion following arrest, investigators have examined services use, mental health, substance use, offending, and quality of life. They have also employed criteria such as whether the individual had housing.Almost all the existing research identifies differences between diverted and non-diverted individuals at this stage. It is not necessarily accurate to conclude that such differences are attributable to the diversion; that would require the use of experimental designs (using random assignment to condition) that are virtually impossible to implement in a criminal justice context. (Judges and clinical administrators are understandably reluctant to allow random assignment of defendants to conditions, because an unfortunate outcome such as a serious offense committed by an individual in a no-treatment control group is hard to justify after the tragic event.) However, correlational designs, particularly when accompanied by a comparison group, can provide useful information on the strength (although not the causal direction) of the relationship between the diversion variable and the different outcomes. For example, the studies described later in this paragraph using a comparison group typically obtain their groups from (1) individuals who have been diverted, or (2) those in a standard condition such as probation, and consider how these two groups fare on certain relevant outcomes. This is sometimes called a quasi-experimental design, because it does not have the genuine experimental attribute (random assignment to group) that allows the researcher to control all variables except the one of interest-diversion status-and hence draw conclusions about whether diversion causes differences in outcomes. For this intercept, several investigators reported that diverted individuals had more time in the community, fewer hospital days in the community, fewer arrests, and less homelessness.