Towards an evidence-informed prosecutor-led diversion

Prosecutors are important gatekeepers in the criminal justice system. They have significant discretionary powers and in using these powers they have to consider a wide range of goals and expectations. Prosecutors are expected to be victim-oriented, they have to protect society, and often regain trust of the public, they have to be cost-effective and manage increasing caseloads, they have to respect due process and propose measures that will effectively reduce recidivism. In this paper, we argue that prosecutorial diversion should be more evidence-informed. To that end, we present a prosecutor-led diversion model that we developed in a participatory action research in Belgium, which is based on risk-needs-responsivity principles (Andrews & Bonta, 2016).