Last year, Jorge Rivera was picked up on the street by Philadelphia police for an alleged minor offense. Handcuffed in the back of a police car, he thought he was going to jail. Instead, the officers took him to a social worker with Merakey, a nonprofit providing addiction recovery, intellectual and developmental disability, and autism services.

At Merakey, a social worker discovered that four individuals had been using Rivera’s identity — which had prevented him from receiving social services. Staff worked to secure his Social Security retirement benefits, enroll him in health insurance and food assistance, and connect him with his son, who was living in Florida.

Today, Rivera lives in Allentown, where he is sober and housed. “He changed my life,” he says through an interpreter about the social worker who helped him get his life on track. “I’m in a safe place. I’m not gonna hide anymore.”

What made this possible for him was Police Assisted Diversion (PAD), which progressed from a pilot launched in 2017 in District 24 to a citywide program by the end of 2023. PAD operates under the PPD’s Behavioral Health Unit. Kurt August, Director of the Office of Criminal Justice, spearheaded the program. He explains PAD as allowing police officers to, in some cases, offer alternatives to arrest. PAD empowers law enforcement to “protect and serve” not just law followers — but certain breakers of low-level laws, too.

“Typically these are crimes committed by people struggling with complex unmet health needs, living in deep poverty and a state of desperation,” says August. “What we’re doing as a city is saying: We think there’s something better that can happen for a lot of these people before they go through the next steps of the justice system.”

Besides reducing the number of people cycling through the courts, PAD is creating an alternative pipeline to human services for the people who need them most through the people they encounter most: police officers patrolling the streets. One of the biggest hurdles for getting people with substance abuse disorder into treatment and getting homeless people housing and other services is getting them through the door, face-to-face with a social worker.

Since January 2023, the $4.5 million-this-year program has resulted in nearly 3,500 arrest diversions and over 830 social referrals, which you can track on the data dashboard. Every individual who has the opportunity to avoid the criminal justice system saves about $140 per Philadelphia resident in incarceration costs, lightens the criminal court caseload, and redirects someone in need of services to where they can receive them. Studies from other cities have also shown that law enforcement diversion programs overwhelmingly prevent arrests, increase earnings and housing.

How PAD works

Individuals encounter the PAD program in two ways. The first is arrest diversions, where police stop someone for an eligible offense — low-level crimes (or summary offenses), including purchase and possession of narcotics, prostitution, open lewdness, paraphernalia, even dog fighting, and retail theft, recently reinstated as an eligible offense after a brief hiatus. Shoplifting has become one of PAD’s most crucial points of contact, as individuals are often detained for attempting to steal an essential item — diapers or food, for example. To qualify for an arrest diversion, you can’t have any active warrants, can’t have been through diversion twice, and must show you are capable of completing the paperwork (in other words, coherent and not a physical threat). The next step: Officers conduct a direct, warm handoff to a social services provider to work with the individual instead of arresting and charging them.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, less than 2.5 percent of all diversion screenings since 2021 have been deemed ineligible by exceeding the maximum diversion opportunities. Those who were found to have warrants total 16.6 percent.

PAD officers are also empowered to provide the people they encounter with assistance like bus passes, money for laundry detergent, diapers, and hygiene supplies, and transportation to a store, and assistance in filling out forms to get their government ID in order.

The second way to get into PAD is a social referral. This process was pioneered during the pilot after officers found individuals they encountered regularly would approach them asking for help getting in touch with human services, accessing healthcare, or getting into addiction treatment. In those cases, since individuals are voluntarily approaching officers for help, there is no warrant search or ineligibility for prior diversions. Officers redirect the requester to whatever services are most critical. Also considered a social referral: when family members and clinicians refer individuals to PAD for help.

There are eight assigned PAD officers, but any officer in the City has the power to initiate a diversion. The police academy handles PAD training; PAD officers present the program to graduating candidates. In the last few days of academy, soon-to-be officers visit the Kensington Wellness Support Center (KWSC), where PAD operates, to get the lay of the land. After the program expanded citywide in 2023, PAD officers and PAD providers were sent to roll calls to present the program to officers in each district, passing out information flyers and business cards.

“Harm reduction is really just trying to be creative and supporting people in their journey.” — Jordyn Clarke, Merakey

The other partners in making PAD work are Philadelphia’s human service providers. Several have contracts with the Office of Public Safety, such as Merakey, the Salvation Army, the University of Pennsylvania, and One Day at a Time (or ODAAT). However, any service provider with resources available can be a “third party” referral. Since none of the City’s currently contracted providers have inpatient capability or offer mental healthcare, they are referred out, as would anyone in need of shelter if the contracted providers are full.

In April 2025, PAD changed its operating hours. While arrest diversions take place citywide from 7am to 11pm Monday through Friday, the KWSC is open 24/7 and takes social referrals and community walk-ins overnight and on the weekends. PAD also partners with the East Service Detail on the overnight shift to help with shelter placements, crisis response and ER transports, and transports to the KWSC.

The budget allocation for PAD has increased significantly since its inception. For FY25, it received about $4.5 million. If the price tag sounds steep, consider this. It covers the KWSC (that’s multiple offices for administrators, meeting rooms for the diversion process and working with social workers), a four-bed community resource hub in North Philly, a daytime support center in University City, as well as the salaries of about 40 medical and behavioral health professionals and five City employees.

Where PAD participants get help

Jordyn Clarke is a PAD mobile supervisor at Merakey, a behavioral health organization. She’s a graduate of the University of Valley Forge and earned her Master of Social Work at Barry. Clarke first encountered the PAD program while working with the Salvation Army as a clinical program manager.

“Once we had gone citywide, it’s a different ball game everywhere,” she says. “The drug supply, retail theft — in West Philly, in Kensington — that looks a little different than South Philly, right? I think that was kind of the beauty of it. The services and the passion of the work doesn’t change, but the needs of each client do. And we’re able to be flexible and fit in the mold of what they need us to be.”

Clarke is headquartered at PAD’s new digs, the KWSC on Lehigh Avenue, which opened in November of 2024. The building used to be a children’s outpatient center for Merakey. With wide halls and plenty of offices and meeting rooms (named after clients), the environment is decidedly not clinical; it’s reassuringly neutral, soft, comfortable, and clean. It’s still being decorated, and some spaces are still in development, but there’s an inspiring vibe. That was intentional, Clarke explains, and came under the direction of Natasha Lundy, the mobile PAD director for Merakey.

Viet Nguyen of the Center for Justice Innovation (CJI) received his PhD in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducted research with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. While that study did show positive outcomes for PAD participants, it narrowly focused on prosecutor-led misdemeanor diversion programs for young adults. “There are common considerations and concerns across different diversion program designs,” Nguyen explains. “A well-designed diversion program shifts people away from more punitive sanctions / onerous conditions while maintaining or improving public safety.”

Nguyen points out that law enforcement-led pre-arrest diversion programs “are generally difficult to study, which makes it hard to say whether they are effective or not.” The CJI guide he co-authored outlines the common challenges. An agency must collect an enormous amount of data to evaluate both impact and process and then determine how to conduct those evaluations (for example, how to define success in reducing recidivism, and under what timeframe; how to measure the efficacy of services delivered by partners, etc.) while also addressing study design issues like selection bias and whether there’s a suitable control population.

Despite the difficulty, studies show that pre-arrest diversion programs reduce recidivism, incarceration and overdose deaths. Seattle’s highly successful Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, launched in 2011, increased housing and employment for participants, decreased bookings and incarcerations, and improved community relations surrounding homelessness, public intoxication and minor crime. Baltimore’s LEAD program is the most analogous to Philadelphia’s PAD due to similarities in substance abuse and homelessness. Baltimore’s data indicates that participants in the program are 56 percent less likely to be arrested, while 45 percent acquired long-term housing and 58 percent started earning income.

Police doing harm reduction?

There are still challenges for PAD to overcome. PAD officers are shared with the Crisis Intervention Response Teams, as both are under the PPD’s Behavioral Health Unit. More staff, officers, and providers are needed for the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation. With federal funding under threat, this is a hard time to be looking for expanding services.

Tension between police and harm reduction workers, who are coming at the problem of homelessness, drug abuse and the presence of open-air drug markets from different directions, has increased in recent years thanks to a variety of factors: funding pressures, dramatic rises (and falls) in crime and overdose deaths, neighborhood residents fed up with litter, human waste and discarded drug paraphernalia, public mistrust of the police and, to a certain extent, gentrification.

PAD operates with the express cooperation of social service providers and police officers, and no arrest diversion or social referrals would ever take place without trust in the officers handling the situation. Beat cops see the same people daily, and redirecting them to services instead of putting them through the criminal justice system for offenses they wouldn’t otherwise commit if they were sober, housed, or had mental healthcare is, in a way, harm reduction.

“I think everybody is trying to find the best way possible. Naturally, there have been some things like harm reduction views cops as an oppressor. And I can understand their viewpoint. However, we can’t escape the reality that our community does see the cops more often than not. So why not use them to get them in here?” Clarke says.

“And I also say, we help the cops with their job too. Most cops have told us, we don’t want to arrest them for using. That’s probably not their biggest issue; it’s probably them going into withdrawal. So bring them here, and we can help them get treatment. That’s been 10 times easier. I think it is harm reduction. Some people may not think it is, but I think harm reduction is really just trying to be creative and supporting people in their journey.”

Alejandro [last name withheld] was in hospital detox from alcohol when he was referred to PAD. On his first visit to Merakey, he completed applications for medical and food assistance and found a bed ready for him at an ODAAT recovery house. Staff transported him there, and then the next day, took him to get a state ID, his food stamp card, laundry items, clothing and groceries. Over the next few weeks, they walked him through obtaining employment, which he did. Today, he still resides at the recovery house and works at a Jewish community center as a cook and cleaner.

“I’m doing things well,” he says through an interpreter. “I’m more secure in what I want. I want to continue at the recovery house because I still need the help, and I don’t want to fall again into drugs and alcohol. I want to be clean, I want to keep my job, and my life to be calm.”

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