A typical day at Kensington Neighborhood Wellness Court is something like this one from early summer:
On a Wednesday morning, two men arrested for relatively minor infractions, were brought to the Kensington Wellness Support Center (KWSC) on Lehigh Avenue. There, they were screened for medical and mental health conditions, social service needs, and any outstanding warrants. In the afternoon, they were transported to the courtroom inside the 24th District headquarters for a hearing before the Honorable Judge Henry Lewandowski III.
One man, charged with obstruction of a public way, had accepted the offer of a shelter bed earlier in the day, so the prosecution was withdrawn; he followed a social worker out of the courtroom to be transported back to the KWSC. Another man, charged with public intoxication in MacPherson Square, opted for a trial and was convicted after brief testimony from the arresting officer. During the penalty phase, however, he agreed to be sent back to the KWSC to be referred to rehab. Instead of jail and a fine, the judge imposed only court costs.
On another eight cases that afternoon, Lewandowski issued wellness bench warrants, which, unlike traditional bench warrants, instruct officers to direct individuals they’ve encountered back to wellness court or to the support center, instead of jail.
The Kensington Neighborhood Wellness Court is a same-day diversion pilot program, launched on January 25, 2025 with the promise of dramatically reducing incarcerations while quickly directing people living with addiction and homelessness to the help they need. It’s a fundamental piece of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s signature Kensington Community Revival (KCR) plan to address the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast, a plan which also included deploying more police officers; increasing arrests for drug use, prostitution, and “quality of life” crimes; defunding syringe replacement; and cracking down on harm reduction programs.
For those suffering from addiction, waiting days, weeks, or longer in a city jail for extradition or a trial can be deadly. Philly jails are desperately understaffed and ill-equipped to offer the treatment that many addicts need. Now, instead of sending them up to State Road — and into conditions that have been deemed unsafe and rife with civil rights violations, per a federal monitor — there is the KWSC, where they are instead redirected into needed services.
The guiding principle behind the City’s implementation of the pilot court is “resetting norms.” It’s not normal to see human waste piled on the L station stairs, needles strewn about like cigarette butts from the 1980s, people huddled in boarded up storefronts on Kensington Avenue helping each other shoot up, and others lying unconscious along the sidewalks. As the City’s public safety staff reiterates, “The goal is treatment.”
This seems like a great idea. And it’s fundamental to Mayor Parker’s promise that she will clean up Kensington and return it to the community. Like her famous El ride to the neighborhood in 2024, it’s a bold and public-facing effort, despite her admission at a community meeting that the City is “building the plane while flying it.” Cops and sweeps are visible. A court operating specifically to take in the mentally ill and addicted is visible. They show the Mayor is doing something.
But beyond the politically profitable public display of action, is the Wellness Court effective — and how will we actually know?
What is a wellness court?
Adam Geer, Philadelphia’s Chief Public Safety Director, was present in court that day in June to observe the proceedings. During Geer’s first meeting with Deputy Police Commissioner Pedro Rosario, in January 2024, Rosario expressed his desire for a system of immediate intervention that would allow individuals to access resources in court on the same day instead of waiting in custody.
“That was compelling,” recalls Geer. “As a former prosecutor, I thought that there were a lot of logistical challenges. But we thought that it was feasible.”
Like drug courts, wellness courts are judicially-supervised diversion designed to steer individuals into recovery rather than incarceration, but include wider mental health conditions in addition to substance abuse. A decade-long study by The National Institutes of Justice found drug courts reduced recidivism by 30 to 40 percent and saved $79 million over 10 years in court costs, treatment costs, and reduced incarceration.
We know incarceration doesn’t stop addiction, treat mental illness, or solve homelessness. Diversion programs, however, work by addressing the root causes of criminal activity. A Pew 2018 research analysis showed that increased imprisonment raises costs without reducing drug use or deaths. This was apparent in Philadelphia, where reporting by The Kensington Voice revealed that increases in neighborhood law enforcement operations during the Kenney administration did not translate into improvements in the quality of life for either residents or those who are in the neighborhood to buy and use drugs.
The wellness court is post-adjudication, meaning individuals are arrested and booked into the criminal justice system before diversion begins. Here’s how it works:
In the morning, PPD officers in Kensington locate and arrest individuals for summary offenses — low-level city ordinances, such as obstruction of highways (and other passageways), criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and possession of drugs and/or paraphernalia — then take them to the KWSC. There are no guns in this building, not even on PPD officers. Lockers are present in the vestibule for storage.
“Success needs to be a humane success, it needs to actually be a measurable success that is sustainable and replicable.” — Bill McKinney
Staff screen participants for medical and mental health conditions, substance abuse, and assess for other immediate needs, like shelter. There are boxes of clean clothes and shoes for the taking, and a shower — oversized, to accommodate people with disabilities and who are sensitive to cramped spaces — was recently added. There are no holding cells; instead, there are large waiting rooms where restraints are used only when there’s a safety issue.
In the triage center — a room buzzing with staff from various partner organizations, Office of Public Safety (OPS), and police — there’s a conference table covered in files and laptops and a digital spreadsheet displayed on a large TV monitor. Here they view the current status of each person in custody, including eligibility and recent hospital admissions (Temple University Hospital’s Episcopal Campus is located across the street).
If the individual has active warrants for low-level crimes, the Defender Association of Philadelphia has a remote station at the KWSC where they can work to clear those before court. They reach out for warrants from other jurisdictions as well, who are often (but not always) comfortable allowing defendants to try diversion.
Once potential health and legal hurdles are cleared, defendants are transported to the 24th District headquarters for court. The City contracts with private attorney Christian Colón to provide legal representation in wellness court, as the Defender Association doesn’t handle summary offenses. Those who have accepted services in lieu of a trial promptly meet service providers and transportation staff who can take them to their next stop, whether it’s a shelter, recovery program, or back to a social worker. Those who opt for a trial receive one immediately. Even after conviction, the judge can still offer defendants an opportunity to receive help.
This process accommodates up to 12 individuals per day and occurs only on Wednesday mornings. Mayor Parker’s FY26 budget includes funds necessary to expand the court to five days a week, but no timeline has been announced.
In early April, The Inquirer reported that just two individuals had successfully completed the terms of their treatment. OPS provided data on the current caseload (as of September 3, 2025): 187 individuals have been brought into the KWSC by PPD and offered services, and 132 have accepted support or been reconnected with a service or diversion program rather than go to trial. They did not provide data on how many people had successfully met the terms of their diversion.
However, the Kensington Voice reported on October 21 that of 87 individuals arrested between January and May whom they tracked through July, just eight had been marked by the city as completing their program. This included someone who has since died of an overdose.
A legal gray area
Harm reduction workers refer to “number of touches” when discussing how many contacts are needed for someone to willingly enter recovery. Every interaction at a drop-in center, with an outreach worker, or police officer increases the chance of success. The OPS calls the wellness court “a light touch,” although critics argue that involving the criminal justice system is the least effective method for getting addicts into treatment and can harm those with mental health issues.
Dave Malloy is the Mobile Services Director at Merakey, a nonprofit providing addiction recovery, intellectual and developmental disability and autism services, and a partner in the pilot. Originally from New Jersey, he moved to Philadelphia in the early 2000s and began his recovery in 2004 after an arrest. He describes the shift in how individuals are treated in custody since then as “transformative.”
Specialists in addiction and behavioral health, like Malloy, are working in tandem with police and public safety staff at the KWSC. The nursing station, which is run by Penn Medicine and the first point of contact inside, has been shaped by best practices from the social sciences. “Getting arrested is a traumatic experience. We are giving patients a soft landing place,” says Nicole O’Donnell, a certified recovery specialist, or peer counselor, and an onsite director for Penn. “What is our job? To provide hope.”
In October 2024, a few months before its launch, 16 harm reduction and social service organizations, along with advocates and medical professionals, signed a letter opposing the wellness court and advocating for evidence-based harm reduction and direct investments in Kensington. The ACLU sent a letter in December 2024, also outlining their objections to the pilot. (No lawsuits have been filed so far.)
“Putting legality aside, there’s a very clear sense that it’s not fair,” says Solomon F. Worlds, an ACLU Staff Attorney. “Throughout the rest of the city, whenever, and on any other day of the week in Kensington, when one is charged with a summary citation offense, they don’t get arrested. It is absolutely unfair.”
So what does success look like? To Geer, it has nothing to do with statistics. “The one that I like the most is, Are the children out in the community?”
Then there are concerns about due process. Even with legal representation, a defendant in wellness court has no time to obtain evidence in their defense, nor an opportunity for review by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, unless they want to be held pending adjudication. Furthermore, these are defendants who were detained hours earlier (potentially for public intoxication) and may be suffering from long-term substance abuse and mental health conditions. They’re interviewed for services in that state, and then have to stand before a judge. Even individuals who are currently sober could be experiencing withdrawal, and many people with long-term substance abuse disorder mask withdrawal symptoms out of necessity, concealing their inability to contribute to their defense.
“Individuals who are intoxicated cannot knowingly and willfully consent to the legal practices that are happening before them,” says Worlds. “They can get a warrant put out for their arrest. If they don’t show up, they are linking themselves to the criminal legal system in a way that they may not have previously been linked.”
Even the court has been concerned about its operations. That prompted an interruption in new cases from mid-April to early May, as they worked out some legal concerns and new enforcement protocols.
The City asserts that due process guardrails are built into the process. Individuals receive medical, legal, and behavioral health competency screenings. In the courtroom, their attorney and the judge can, if they are uncomfortable, decide whether they are not competent, which according to OPS has yet to happen. “The City’s position is that the discretionary enforcement of summary offenses is constitutional and consistent with the Mayor’s public safety goals,” the City’s law department said in a statement.
Dr. Bill McKinney is the Executive Director of New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), and a longtime advocate for the neighborhood’s residents. He is also a social scientist. While Geer met with McKinney about the pilot before it began, he thinks the City could do more to make the pilot community-driven, comprehensive in nature, and trauma-informed. “We are not engaging everyone who has strengths we can bring to the table. There’s not enough expertise from people with lived experience, people directly working with people in the street. We can do better with community collaboratives,” he says.
McKinney says it’s too soon to know if the Wellness Court is good or bad for the community. “I want and need the mayor, Adam Geer, our councilpeople, to be successful,” McKinney says, including with the wellness court. But, he adds: “Success needs to be a humane success, it needs to actually be a measurable success that is sustainable and replicable.”
What does success look like?
Since the KCR plan’s inception, McKinney has seen improvements on Kensington Avenue translate to worse conditions a few blocks away, including more drug users pushed off the public thoroughfare now setting up camp in residential neighborhoods. “We know that’s happening, yes,” Geer acknowledges. “It is an issue we are aware of and are working on.”
He also notes that violent crime and homicides were down 80 percent in Kensington as of this summer, compared to a 40 percent drop nationwide and in Philadelphia as a whole. “None of our work in Kensington can be viewed in a vacuum. We’re doing a lot of different things as a city,” Geer says. “All of these things are working together. They all influence each other. And so there is some progress, but we are nowhere near done. We’re just really beginning.”
There is a weekly debrief with the OPS, court personnel, and KWSC staff to discuss what’s working and what isn’t. Processes have changed based on feedback from stakeholders and staff. But an issue outside the pilot is hampering the City’s ability to fulfill its goals: the long-term ecosystem into which participants are released, which presents the most cracks for them to fall through.
The current City budget includes $264 million in operating funds for the new Riverview Wellness Village in Holmesburg, which provides medical care, social services, workforce development, and other on-site programming for 340 people, aiming to build that missing continuum of care. An additional $75 million will increase capacity to 640 residents, and further plans will expand capacity to 840 residents, but no timeline has been set for this either.
The KWSC and wellness court have been allocated $5.5 million, which will cover both operations five days a week. On September 18, the City announced that it had hired a new Neighborhood Wellness Court Director, Eleni Belisonzi, to lead the program. More than 15 new open positions in the program have been posted, and with Belisonzi in place, the number of operational days is expected to increase along with case management efficiency, which would lead to fewer defendants dropping out.
“None of our work in Kensington can be viewed in a vacuum. We’re doing a lot of different things as a city. We’re just really beginning.” — Adam Geer
It isn’t police sweeps or what happens in the wellness courtroom that will produce long-term results for the neighborhood. It’s the same-day support center operations, hot-handoff to human services, inclusion of harm reduction principles, and warrant-clearing abilities that could be incorporated city-wide, even if the pilot comes to an end.
The complex, long-term nature of the problem means it may take at least two years before the pilot program shows any discernible results. But Kensington did not get this way overnight, either. McKinney calls the challenges of people who are addicted “brutal,” and also understands the desperate situation everyone is in. The question he asks of the City is, “Can you change course, or are you still plugging forward?”
So what does success look like? To Geer, it has nothing to do with statistics. “Does it look like more kids on bikes, on blocks playing? Does it look like more people utilizing the space in and around McPherson, more restaurants coming in?” he says. “Each one of those is a metric for success for me. The one that I like the most is, Are the children out in the community?”
More children riding bikes on Kensington Avenue is … nice, for sure. But it’s also so subjective as to make it nearly impossible to hold the City to account for the money, effort and political capital it’s spending on the wellness court. How many people the court sends to treatment will complete it and move on from the neighborhood? How many will go before the judge and then wind up back on the street?
Until more staff and care partners are in place, OPS can’t keep track of how many defendants are following through on the terms of their diversion until they show up at court…or don’t. Most of the opioid users in the neighborhood will take several attempts to recover before they succeed, and how the program deals with that reality will determine if this is just another in a long line of failed attempts to solve the problem that is Kensington.
McKinney, too, wants to see more children and families out in the neighborhood. But he argues that much more is necessary before he can agree that any effort in Kensington is successful, like the restoration of non-punitive strategies, a clear structure for collaboration with stakeholders, maintaining civil liberties — and transparent tracking of long-term recovery.
“No more suffering in Kensington allows for much more space for joy and hope,” he says. “Success can be for everyone, it is all possible.”
Correction: An earlier edition of this article misstated the timeframe of arrested individuals tracked by Kensington Voice. They were arrested from January to May, and their progress tracked through July.
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