One unintended consequence of juvenile diversion may be that diversion programs widen the net of justice system control, rather than divert youth from the system. This issue was examined in a group of youths who were randomly assigned to either the Adolescent Diversion Project (ADP) or to a control group who received services as usual by the court after referral by an intake referee at the court. Four methods of assessing the extent of net widening were used: (1) analysis of the court files of the first 62 control subjects to determine their eventual dispositions; (2) discriminant analysis of a random sample of court cases (N=253) and comparison to ADP cases (N=248); (3) analysis of questionnaire data provided by referees for 180 cases; and (4) analysis of system processing rates. The results indicated that the ADP did not achieve the goal of reducing the court's formal caseload. Most of the diversion cases were diverted from the 30-day adjournment disposition, which usually involves minimal supervision and monitoring of behavior by an intake referee. These findings question the current value of diversion programs, given their tendency to expand the net of social control over the population of youth. (NB)