Pretrial court intervention, also called pretrial diversion or deferred prosecution, allows a first-time offender to keep an incident off the person’s record without having to win the case at trial. Available in many states, pretrial court intervention gives a person accused of a crime, who has never been arrested before, a chance to avoid being branded with a felony conviction for the rest of his/her life.

Pretrial intervention programs vary, but they usually have similar basic features, including:

• The person must not have a prior arrest record.
• The charge the person is facing must be a relatively minor one, such as petty theft or drug possession.
• The person is unlikely to offend again.

A pretrial intervention program gives a generally good person who did something foolish a second chance. The program can also provide a second chance to someone who got into trouble over a drug addiction problem but can probably be helped with treatment.

After a person is accepted into the pretrial intervention program, he enters a plea of guilty to the charge. The judge withholds the order finding the person guilty for a certain period of time and then places the defendant under certain restrictions similar to being on probation.

If the individual follows the terms and conditions of the pretrial intervention agreement, the charges are dismissed and the person is not convicted of the crime. This gives the individual a chance to start over with a clean record.

If the defendant violates the terms of the agreement, he is brought back to court for a sentencing hearing.