Abstract

in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Acknowledgements The genesis for this monograph was an idea that Brandon Haynes, Research Analyst with Kentucky Pretrial Services and John P. Bellassai, J.D., a long-time national expert on pretrial diversion, had for a workshop at the 2006 Annual Conference of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies. They wanted to do a session on the legal issues surrounding pretrial diversion. Expecting to find a few cases that they could highlight at the workshop, Mr. Haynes began his search. After painstaking and time-consuming research, he identified over 2,000 cases. The monumental task of reading brief summaries of these 2,000 cases then fell to Mr. Bellassai, who identified those with the most relevance. Through that effort, he was able to cull the list of cases down to about 200. Given the unexpected volume of cases, at the conference workshop, the two could speak only in very general terms about the types of legal issues relating to pretrial diversion. Since the Pretrial Services Resource Center had a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to provide technical assistance for pretrial diversion, an opportunity was available to take the work that Mr. Haynes and Mr. Bellassai had already done to produce this monograph. Writing up the case summaries was the easy part compared to the work that they had done. Once a first draft was written, Mr. Bellassai provided a very thorough review that improved the document significantly. ii CONTENTS