(The Center Square) - New analysis from Washington Policy Center’s Director of Public Safety Solutions is casting doubt on the success claims of a program to reduce arrests, prosecutions and incarceration for individuals involved in drug-related crimes.
The LEAD program, or Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, allows a police officer to refer someone accused of a drug related crime into a diversion program, rather than into the criminal justice system.
“Supporters of LEAD claim the program reduced recidivism by 58% and reduced felony charges by 39% and increased odds of being employed by 46%. The underlying research contradicts those claims,” wrote Zimmerman.
In a Tuesday interview with The Center Square, Zimmerman said the idea of law enforcement diversion programs grew in popularity around 15 years ago, with backers arguing prison causes problems for inmates, so keeping them out of prison whenever possible is key.
“They had this idea…what if we try to make it so that fewer people go to prison, particularly for drug crimes or prostitution? Let's come up with a way to keep people out of jail and keep them from going to prison. And then let's study and kind of find out what happens,” said Zimmerman.
“I think we've found through what we can observe in Seattle, is that this doesn't seem like it's working very well," he said.
"They've said all along 'we can prove that it drives fewer arrests in the future, and it drives a reduction in felonies for people participating. People who participate have more jobs. They're more sustainably housed. They're overall better and doing better.' But we can look at the research now and say, that's not what the research ever said.”
One of the LEAD claims was that participants have a 58% reduced recidivism rate, which Zimmerman noted in his report that claim is entirely inaccurate.
In a Wednesday interview with The Center Square, LEAD co-creator Lisa Daugaard admitted that the number has been inaccurately reported, and said they will amend the figure.
“It's not a 58% reduction in the absolute number of arrests for the lead participants. It is a 58% reduced likelihood of being arrested compared to a comparison group. But WPC is not wrong. It should not be sort of flattened or further simplified as a 58% reduction in the number of arrests. That is the mistake,” Daugaard said.
The LEAD creator stands by the success of the program in Seattle and King County, and said expecting participants to be gainfully employed once they complete the program is not in their mission statement.
“Our mission of LEAD is to reduce time. We are interested in stabilizing lawful income. Jobs are only one way to do that," she said.
"Enrolling people in public benefits or achieving other ways of folks not needing to be involved in illicit economic activity...selling drugs, that is an objective. And so, if anyone had a job by the end of this as a result, that was super, but not necessarily expected. Not a stated goal of the program,” she said.
Daugaard shared that she would follow up with The Center Square on numbers of LEAD participants who are employed and in stable housing.
Critics of the LEAD program, including Ginny Burton, founder of OUT Impact Coalition, argue diversion programs like LEAD are anything but compassionate because they’re not operating with the idea that transformational change is possible.
Burton, who beat her addiction after her final arrest at the age of 40, runs a 26-week curriculum with prisoners inside the Olympic Correctional Facility in Forks. Before participants focus on careers or employment, they work through the deeper issues that landed them behind bars.
When prisoners who complete the program are released, they have the skills to pursue education, family reunification, and employment in total self-sufficiency.
The program runs at a fraction of the cost of what is spent for each participant in the LEAD program.
“I'm inside of the Department of Corrections, and of the 55 people who have been released…only one of our guys has reoffended. Over 87% are practicing abstinence-based recovery. That means no medication assisted treatment, no dependence on social services, because they learned to become the strongest version of themselves.”
Dozens of other inmates have completed her program, but are still incarcerated, encouraging fellow inmates to enroll.
Daugaard told The Center Square the success of LEAD is based not just on research, but “daily evidence of efficacy observed by partners, neighborhoods, businesses and participants, many of whom have frequently testified in detail about how LEAD works and why, backed up by ongoing data collection on outcomes that align with the four research-based pillars of SAMHSA's Recovery Framework. Here is testimony from July 14 that, it seems, the author missed,” wrote Daugaard via email to The Center Square.
Daugaard argues LEAD can't be compared a program like OUT Impact, which is run behind bars.
“We can't afford to send everyone through to jail. We can't afford to give everybody a lawyer, to get due process before they get the charges dismissed and released, if that's what happens. We cannot run all of those people through the jail,” she said.
Burton argues that just keeping people alive but not requiring them to better themselves and become self-sufficient is a disservice to the struggling person and to taxpayers.
“Is just keeping someone breathing and diverted from criminal justice a success metric?” asked Burton. “Why are we not looking to people who are actually solving the problem?”
Last month, Burton walked 300 miles across Washington state to fundraise and raise awareness for her prison program, as the state recently cut her grant funding.
She told The Center Square she fell short of her $250,000 goal, which would fund an entire year of her program, but did raise about $60,000 to help cover costs. Private donors who have seen the success of the program are funding some operational expenses.
WPC’s analysis, including a 12-page report, concludes with policy recommendations for jurisdictions where LEAD has been adopted, including pausing any further expansion of these programs and placing existing ones under external audit by an independent program auditor.
Jurisdictions should also evaluate alternatives on a case-by-case basis, including baseline criminal justice options as well as compliance-dependent and residential-treatment diversion models, according to the report.
