ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies a number of problems with court diversion and considers whether human rights law can provide the tools for addressing these. At their core, these problems relate to court diversion being premised on coercive intervention. The chapter then identifies four particular issues with this coercive intervention: it occurs irrespective of the absence of conviction and sentence; it occurs only in relation to criminalised disabled people; it is disability-specific; and it applies to a minority of criminalised disabled people. The chapter then turns to consider whether the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides a framework for exploring these problems with court diversion. It is suggested that the CRPD is useful in critiquing the disability-specific dimensions of court diversion, notably by reference to rights to equality and non-discrimination, legal capacity and liberty. However the CRPD cannot respond to the full complexities of court diversion. It is of limited use in a criminal justice context, principally because the CRPD and relatedly its jurisprudence and work of the UN Disability Committee stop short of broader engagement with interlocking systems of oppression, settler colonialism and prison abolition.
