Mass incarceration persists throughout the United States, with nearly 2 million people held in federal, state, and local facilities. But research shows that higher rates of arrest, prosecution, and incarceration are not associated with lower crime rates or increased public safety. Instead, these punitive approaches often reinforce racial disparities—Black Americans, for example, represent 37 percent of the incarcerated population but only 12.5 percent of the US population, and are imprisoned at six times the rate of white Americans.

In response, jurisdictions across the country have explored a range of alternatives to standard court processing and incarceration. Diversion programs and other community-based alternatives attempt to minimize a person’s contact with the criminal legal system by addressing the underlying causes of the criminalized behavior instead of punishing it through incarceration. These programs aim to hold individuals accountable in the community instead of through jail or prison to avoid disrupting their employment, education, caregiving, and other responsibilities.

Building and sustaining these programs is complex, however. Diversion efforts often involve law enforcement, courts, and service providers, each with its own data systems and priorities. Without shared data, it becomes difficult to track who is being diverted, what services they receive, whether the program is achieving its goals, and whether outcomes are equitable. For example, in a system that diverts cases from police to a service provider, without shared data, the service provider has access to the cases being referred but no access to data about cases not being referred and why, making it difficult to identify where the program could expand to serve more people. On the other hand, if police cannot see the program data and outcomes for the cases they refer, particularly the positive outcomes, they may stop referring cases.

This is why data is one of the most powerful tools for developing, evaluating, and improving diversion programs. Through the Catalyst Grant Program, many grantees have used data and technology to improve their diversion programming. Below, we highlight four grantees that used centralized data and technology to build out, expand access to, and refine their diversion and community-based alternative programs.

Ardella’s House is a service and advocacy organization in Philadelphia that helps women and girls with criminal justice histories. Ardella’s House partnered with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (DAO) to generate a first-of-its-kind dataset on pregnant women and primary caregivers in jail. This collaboration resulted in an exploratory data report which revealed critical insights into charges, age ranges, racial demographics, case histories, and other factors relevant to supporting the needs of pregnant women and primary caregivers in jail. The DAO’s findings highlighted a lack of services for system-involved women, laying the groundwork for the development of a gender-responsive diversion program designed to prevent family separation and address the unique challenges women and caregivers face in Philadelphia’s criminal legal system. Eligibility for the diversion program was assessed based on several factors identified in the data. This initiative demonstrates the power of data-sharing and collaboration between community organizations and justice agencies to drive more equitable, effective solutions. As the program moves toward implementation, it provides a replicable example for other jurisdictions seeking to use data to develop community-based alternatives that effectively meet the needs of system-involved caregivers and their families.

Communities for Restorative Justice (C4RJ) receives referrals from police departments and district attorneys’ offices throughout Massachusetts to provide restorative justice services to people who are responsible for or have been affected by a crime as an alternative to traditional court proceedings. C4RJ facilitates volunteer-led “circle” dialogues between both parties that lead toward accountability for harm and a collective resolution. C4RJ approached its Catalyst project intending to expand access to restorative justice by increasing referrals and improving equity in the types of cases that get referred. It established regular communication with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office (MDAO) to review and discuss cases that might be eligible for restorative justice. In doing so, C4RJ received access to a reporting and data system normally solely accessible to the MDAO. Access to this data allowed the two organizations to develop and test a new method of generating a list of cases appropriate for restorative justice, eliminating human bias and inefficiencies. Combing through case data helped generate objective criteria that allowed for more cases to be identified as potential restorative justice cases. Data accessibility also allowed both C4RJ and the MDAO to have more informed conversations on the dynamics of certain cases and what factors make a case a good candidate for restorative justice.

Lutheran Community Services Northwest partners with the police bureau of Portland, Oregon, in a collective agreement, the Portland Community Justice Partnership, a community-based alternative to arrest. This process begins when the Portland Police Bureau makes a referral to LCSNW after a crime is committed. LCSNW then reaches out to all parties to engage in restorative justice, diverting the case from the traditional criminal legal system. Participation in this process is voluntary, if the parties do not want to participate in a dialogue, LCSNW will explore alternate ways to move forward. This program has been ongoing for a few years, but the program data have been stored in multiple locations, making it difficult to assess and refine the program. With Catalyst grant funding, LCSNW consolidated data from multiple sources into an internal dashboard using Power BI to clearly show how many people the partnership was serving and identify areas for refinement. With all of the data in one place, LCSNW can understand the entire scope of its program, including how many referrals are happening and at what stages of the criminal legal system, and what charges are most common among referred cases. In addition to internally understanding the program’s strengths and weaknesses, having centralized, accessible data allows staff to communicate the impact of the program with external partners, such as police, prosecutors, and other system actors, and make the case for expanding and refining it.

Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia partners with the District Attorney’s Office for the Augusta Judicial Circuit to provide case management to participants in its diversion program, Checks Over Stripes. Checks Over Stripes provides an alternative to probation and prosecution for people charged with low-level crimes and offers adult education, workforce development, and counseling services. With the goal of diverting more individuals charged with lower-level crimes from probation and prison, Goodwill used its Catalyst grant to formalize its program registration and expand its data tracking processes with support from the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy and data scientists at Vanderbilt University. Using data as the focal point, Goodwill and Vanderbilt were able to review current registration and data collection processes and make improvements that will lead to more accurate data reporting. Providing Vanderbilt access to both data collection systems verified that the DAO’s data could transfer easily into Goodwill’s system, ensuring data used for referrals were accurate. The opportunity to improve internal data processes also strengthened the communication and engagement between the DAO and Goodwill, which will lead to increased referrals moving forward. Goodwill and the DAO intend to analyze the data generated by this new system to understand trends and identify and address potential inequities in who is accepted into the program, who successfully completes it, and long-term outcomes like recidivism.

These Catalyst grantees demonstrate how having access to centralized program data can help service providers and their partners improve and expand diversion or alternative-to-incarceration initiatives. As more communities seek to reimagine public safety, these Catalyst projects offer models for collaboration between community organizations and system actors to design and refine evidence-based alternatives. By using data to guide decisionmaking, these programs not only improve outcomes for individuals but also help reduce reliance on incarceration—ultimately keeping more people out of jail and prison and addressing the systemic inequities that mass incarceration perpetuates.

The Catalyst Grant Program supported the efforts of nonprofit organizations to use data and technology to advance racial equity and reform in the adult criminal legal system. Visit the Catalyst Grant Program Insights page for more resources and stories about the grantees.