Durham’s Misdemeanor Diversion Program gives community members second chances 

By Sarah Smiley | The Durham Voice

In 2014, Durham County launched its Misdemeanor Diversion Program, allowing first-time misdemeanor offenders to avoid citations and arrests on the condition that they complete the program.

“The criteria is pretty simple,” Kelly Andrews, MDP’s Program Coordinator, said. “It’s first-time offenders, and we will take any misdemeanor offense with three exceptions – we don’t take traffic matters, sex offenses or firearm offenses.” 

N.C. Rep. Marcia Morey (D-Durham) said the program’s goal is to keep young people out of the criminal justice system. 

“The harms of having a criminal arrest record are great, so the goal was to prevent that, keep them on a good path for their future, and that’s all we wanted to do: help young people,” Morey said.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Morey said MDP has been successful for the Durham community, and that other municipalities in North Carolina have since replicated it. 

“We’ve worked with over 1,000 participants since 2014, we have a 99% program completion rate and about 96% of our participants do not re-offend,” Andrews said. 

Durham’s MDP is a pre-arrest diversion program, meaning the offender's name never enters a criminal database and their involvement in the program won’t appear on background checks, Andrews said. 

MDP was initially created to prevent underage offenders from entering the criminal system, Andrews said. In late 2019, North Carolina’s Raise the Age legislation took effect, preventing 16 and 17-year-olds from being tried as adults for low-level offenses. 

Since 2014, MDP has expanded to include participants up to 26 years old and is shifting to serve offenders of any age with a qualifying first-time arrest. 

“We do encourage and there is encouragement from the chief of police that first-time adult offenders, regardless of age, be sent to MDP,” Andrews said. 

MDP has an individualized curriculum, Andrews said. The program works with community partners like the Life Skills Foundation and Restorative Justice Durham to pair participants with services that fit their needs. 

Leah Wilson-Hartgrove, the Restorative Justice Coordinator at Restorative Justice Durham, said she receives referrals from Andrews and works with participants to navigate RJD’s four-step process. 

The process consists of pre-conferencing meetings to introduce the program and begin dissecting the participant’s needs, a conference circle to involve those impacted by the offense and address how to repair harm, a repair agreement to set measurable goals on personal improvement and a closing circle to reflect on the repair agreement, Wilson-Hartgrove said. 

“The repair agreement is usually four-to-six action items that the participant can take to repair the harm as much as possible,” Wilson-Hartgrove said. 

MDP programming typically lasts up to 90 days, and wraparound services are available to participants as needed, Andrews said. All MDP programming is free of charge. 

“We do intake assessments with every single person who is referred to the program, and if mental health or substance use treatment is needed, that takes precedence over anything else and we would count that toward their program hours,” Andrews said. 

Andrews said she directly trains law enforcement officers on the criteria to refer offenders to MDP. 

“Kelly [Andrews] and I did a lot of outreach,” Morey said. “We would go and talk to officers in the morning when their duty shift came on, telling them, ‘Please don’t arrest these kids for nonviolent offenses. Let’s give them education so they won’t have records or repeat crimes.’”

Most of the initial training with law enforcement was about shifting their mindsets on criminal justice, Morey said. 

“I think the mentality of people training to be in law enforcement is follow the law, and if you don’t, you’re going to get charged,” Morey said. “So it was a new way of looking for police officers to help work with young people to avoid getting into the criminal system.” 

Both Morey and Andrews said there are concerns about the overrepresentation of people of color in the program. 

“That’s something that I think, not just Durham, but a lot of places really struggle with,” Andrews said. “It’s one of those things that I do like for people to remember and I want us to always keep each other accountable for what we’re doing.”

Morey said MDP was originally funded by a two-year grant from the Governor’s Crime Commission and was later unanimously approved by the Durham County Commissioners to be included in the county’s budget. 

Andrews said she is looking for ways to expand the program to include higher-level misdemeanors, services for second-time offenses and possibly lower-level felony offenses. 

“We’re really proud of MDP,” Andrews said. “It’s something that I’m very passionate about, and I’m glad Durham has it.”