Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

Diversion

A better way for criminal justice and mental health

Diversion finds that court diversion and liaison schemes in England only work with one in five of the people with mental health problems who go through the criminal justice system. Many opportunities for diversion are being missed and too little is being done to ensure that offenders with mental health problems make continuing use of community mental health services.

But in the absence of a clear national policy framework, diversion services have developed in a piecemeal and haphazard way. Many schemes are insecurely funded and there is an unacceptably wide degree of variation in their ways of working.

The report looks at the evidence on outcomes and the effectiveness of diversion, it includes information from site visits and looks at whether diversion is good value for money.

Download a short summary of the Diversion report (180 KB)