Beginning Monday, Philadelphia police will no longer arrest juveniles for some lower-level crimes. Instead, they’ll become part of a new diversion program aimed at keeping kids out of the criminal justice system when possible.
“Kids do kids stuff,” Philadelphia Police Deputy Commissioner Mike Cram said. “We were all there. We’ve all done stuff we shouldn’t have done. And at some point, somebody did an intervention. And this is what that is.”
Cram says the youth diversion plan is a follow-up to a similar program installed in Philadelphia schools, where Commissioner Kevin Bethel headed up safety before assuming his role with the Philadelphia Police Department. Cram told CBS News Philadelphia that before the schools program, PPD was “averaging about 1,500 arrests a year in schools.”
Last year, Cram says there were a little over 100.
But the new program, police say, isn’t about letting kids off the hook for serious offenses.