Study: Recidivism Rates Drop for Individuals Who Complete Diversion Program

Research recently published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that a diversion program launched by the Madison (Wisconsin) Police Department reduced recidivism rates within 6 months among individuals who completed the program.

The researchers published their first findings in the ongoing study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Madison police collaborated with local agencies in 2017 to launch the Madison Addiction Recovery Initiative (MARI), a program to offer individuals who have committed nonviolent, drug use-related crimes with personalized substance use disorder treatment as an alternative to arrest. Researchers compared data collected by MPD for 263 participants referred to the MARI program between September 2017 and August 2020 with data for a group of 52 individuals who committed a comparable crime between September 2015 and August 2016.

The researchers noted in their findings that while completing the MARI program reduced recidivism rates at 6 months, simply being referred to the program alone did not.

Future research will look at the program’s effects on recidivism at 12 months, and Veronica White, a Wisconsin PhD student who was the study’s lead author, said in a news release that there are opportunities to also investigate the program’s influence on participants’ health outcomes.