When a teenager in Philadelphia is charged with a crime, the next steps usually look the same: hearings, probation, and a slow, demoralizing path through the juvenile system.
But a small group of young people now has a different option.
They can join a running team, train for months, and clear their records by crossing a finish line most adults would find intimidating. Well, that’s exactly what the students in MileUp, a diversion program that trades courtrooms for long runs along the river, are doing.
MileUp is run by Students Run Philly Style in partnership with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and Drexel University’s Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice.
The program began in 2020 with a simple goal: give justice-involved youth, including those facing felony-level charges, a path to expungement built around structure, community, and real effort.
Participants train three times a week and complete a series of races: a 5K, a 10-miler, and finally the Philadelphia Half Marathon. Each race moves their case forward; finishing the program and remaining arrest-free for six months allows their record to be wiped entirely.
The young people who show up to MileUp arrive with a range of charges, most tied to a single decision made in early adolescence. Before this program existed, many would have ended up in placement facilities with little support and limited chances of avoiding deeper system involvement.
Now, the city’s alternative is a running team that demands consistency instead of punishment.
A recent practice, attended by Philadelphia Inquirer’s Nate File, offered a glimpse into how the program works.
Teenagers eased into their warmup with the familiar mix of sarcasm, reluctance, and competitiveness that comes with high school sports. Coaches checked in, cracked jokes, and nudged the group toward the night’s mileage.
Nothing about the scene looked extraordinary, yet the stakes were significant: finish the program, and their charges disappear.
Lucas remembers standing in that same circle two years ago, out of shape and unsure why running had anything to do with the law. He stuck with it long enough to finish the half marathon and clear his record, an outcome he still describes with a small measure of disbelief.
He now works as a peer mentor, guiding teenagers who remind him of his earlier self. “You don’t want to be here at first,” he says, “but then you realize what you’re working toward.”
This season, he has been mentoring Na’Sean, who learned there was a warrant tied to an old incident just as he was settling into a new school year.
The 10-mile race exposed his limits, and he nearly quit midway through. A mentor slowed down and kept him moving until he reached the finish.
That moment changed his sense of what he could do and what his future could look like. “If I finish the half, that’s it. The whole thing is over,” he says. “I want that.”
Running is only part of MileUp.
Drexel staff lead sessions that help students talk through trauma, fear, and loss. Program advocates work with families on the legal steps tied to each milestone. Peer mentors, many of whom completed the program themselves, bridge gaps adults often can’t.
Together, the structure offers something most court processes don’t: support wrapped around accountability, instead of the other way around.
More than 100 students have completed MileUp since its launch, and the vast majority have avoided new arrests in the years that followed. The program has paid over $40,000 in restitution for participants.
Its future isn’t fully secure: a grant that helped fund the program expires this year, but the organization is searching for sponsors to keep the diversion pathway intact.
For now, the teenagers are focused on race day this weekend in Philidelpphia. Some talk about pace goals. Others simply hope to avoid walking. What unites them is knowing that the half marathon is the final step toward starting adulthood without a record trailing behind them.
One student summed up the shift after a long practice: “I didn’t think finishing something this big was for people like me. Now I know it is.”
