Equity and net-widening in the implementation of drug diversion schemes in England: a mixed methods study

Previous research and various inquiries have discussed ethnic inequalities at various stages of the criminal justice system. There is little existing research on how such inequalities play out in the implementation of police-led drug diversion (PDD) schemes. There is potential for PDD to reduce the impact of inequalities in drug policing by reducing criminalisation for drug-related offences. There is also potential for such schemes to increase contact with the criminal justice system through processes of net-widening and mesh-thinning. This presentation will report the results of an equity analysis, based on qualitative and quantitative analysis carried out as part of a large, realist evaluation of PDD. The analysis in based on: 221 semi-structured interviews and focus groups with stakeholders in PDD (including police officers, diverted suspects, and PDD providers) in three police forces; descriptive quantitative analysis of trends in the use of criminalising and diversionary sanctions for drug possession in one of these forces over six years; inferential statistical analysis of data from 32,742 offences dealt with by police in 16 police forces in 2021/2022. The inferential analysis showed that - when controlling for individual and force level characteristics - people who were classified as Black were less likely than those classified as White to be diverted . People classified as Asian were more likely to be diverted. Trends in the one police force showed that the introduction of diversion was followed by a substantial reduction in the use of criminalising sanctions for drug possession offences. In the early years, there was also an overall increase in the number of drug possession offences dealt with by the police; suggesting some temporary net-widening. But this subsequently returned to the previous level. Qualitative analysis suggests that the mesh of the diversion net was not very thin, as consequences for non-compliance with diversion were light to non-existent.