Diversion Evaluations

Diversion programs, or alternatives to incarceration, aim to keep offenders with mental illness out of jail, allowing them to return to their support systems within the community, and to receive treatment to address their symptomatology. Diversion programs screen defined groups of detainees for the presence of mental disorder, use mental health professionals to evaluate all those detainees identified in the screening, and negotiate with prosecutors, defense attorneys, community-based mental health providers, and the courts to produce a mental health disposition outside the jail in lieu of prosecution or as a condition of a reduction in charges. With years of experience, the psychiatrists and psychologists at FAF have performed thousands of evaluations to gauge the appropriateness of diverting open criminal cases into specialty courts. We have maintained successful ongoing contracts to provide these assessments to a number of jurisdictions in New York State.