Quick Guides

LEAD Project Managers

Quick Guides

Project management for LEAD is a central function, one that requires a mix of strategic, operational, and relationship skills, along with a clear vision about how a community can improve its system of response and care.

As outlined under Roles and Responsibilities, LEAD project managers oversee the day-to-day processes and coordination of a local LEAD initiative, and are stewards of the collective vision. If you’re in this role, familiarizing yourself with all elements of LEAD – from the principles to procedures to contracting, funding and evaluation – can offer invaluable benefits.

Whether you’re exploring LEAD, are eager to begin a LEAD initiative, or are seeking guidance in implementation or evaluation, this toolkit offers resources to help your community build better safety, health, and equity with LEAD.

Request Technical Assistance 

The LEAD Support Bureau provides intensive and ongoing technical assistance and support through site-specific contracts; some technical assistance may also be available on a limited pro bono basis. To request assistance, contact the Bureau.

FAQ

What is success, in LEAD?

Overall, LEAD aims to enhance public health, safety, and equity by improving care for people who have been historically rejected by multiple systems, while reducing dependence on the criminal legal system in response to unmet behavioral health needs and poverty.

At base, success in LEAD means the incremental reduction in harm: of participants to themselves, of the harm they cause to others, and of the harm others cause to them – including systemic harm. But a person’s progress along the harm-reduction continuum may not be straight or linear. Thus, individual successes in LEAD must always be measured by incremental progress toward goals participants identify for themselves, in concert with their case manager.

And just as LEAD strives to help people improve their individual circumstances, it also strives to help communities improve their collective well-being as a whole, by reorienting the systems that shape health, safety, and equity. So it’s important for every LEAD site to measure not just individual progress but to assess systemic shifts as well.

How do you get police officer buy-in?

Key strategies for building police officer buy-in include designing the program and developing policies and protocols with their input – ideally, input from the officers who will be tasked with carrying out diversions and their supervisors at the table from the beginning. Law enforcement-led training is invaluable, so that the approach is introduced by “one of our own” or a peer. Roll call check-ins on a regular basis can help identify issues that need attention or process problems. Soliciting officer input and thoughts, rather than calling sessions “trainings,” is easier to accept.

In ordinary policing models, officers are seldom kept informed of what happens after they’ve made an arrest; in contrast, LEAD’s multidisciplinary OWGs provide officers with consistent opportunities to participate in ongoing conversations about the people they’ve engaged with. It’s common for officers to express appreciation for this opportunity to engage in shared problem-solving with other agencies.

The most important way to build buy-in, however, is for case managers to meet officers out in the field in difficult conditions (in the rain, early morning, in an alley with a very challenging individual) and competently and rapidly make the situation better. No one can resist help with a hard problem, and sharing the work is a real barrier-breaker.

Is anyone eligible for LEAD?

Many people who come into occasional contact with the criminal legal, social service, or behavioral health systems – via a single arrest, a temporary economic hurdle, or a difficult psychological period – can successfully find their way through these challenges without suffering severe and lasting consequences. For them, the established system of response and care may prove to be sufficiently accessible and manageable.

These are not the people LEAD is intended to serve.

Instead, LEAD is expressly designed to provide a new system of care for people whose complex, ongoing, unmet behavioral health needs result in disruptive or unlawful behavior. They may lack reliable shelter, income, food, health care, and positive social networks, and may find existing systems inaccessible, impossibly complicated, or insufficiently responsive.

Chapter 1

What is LEAD?

Policy Makers and Elected Officials

Quick Guides

In recent decades, it’s become increasingly clear that we can’t arrest our way out of the problems associated with unmanaged mental illness and/or substance use. A robust alternative strategy is urgently needed, one that, ultimately, must be scaled to match the scope of the challenge. Otherwise, the legitimate pressure for a meaningful response to real problems threatens to drive communities back to punitive measures, for want of a viable option. 

Over the years, determined people from communities of every type – large and small, conservative and liberal, urban and rural – have joined the effort to create safer, healthier, more equitable communities by reducing our reliance on the criminal legal system and investing in effective, community-based alternatives to jail and prosecution for people living with these challenges.

LEAD advances safety and equity by developing a coordinated system of response to specific incidents and ongoing situations, diverting eligible people to community-based services and sustained care, instead of jail and prosecution, in all appropriate cases.

LEAD equips communities with a practical way to respond to problems for which jail and prosecution are both common and ineffective. With LEAD, policymakers, service providers, criminal legal system stakeholders, and community members work together to enhance public safety and order by better addressing the problems that can come from unmanaged mental illness, substance use, and income instability.

LEAD is premised on two realities: (i) elected officials will always be expected to offer a meaningful, plausible response to public order and public safety issues, and (ii) there is wide support among voters for responses that center care coordination rather than punishment, if that care-based response can be made available in timely and effective ways.

Evidence shows that when it’s implemented with fidelity, LEAD works: A rigorous set of external evaluations of the flagship site in Seattle found that LEAD reduced rates of re-arrest by 58%, new felony charges by 39%, and prison admission by 87%, compared to a control group, while reducing systems costs and increasing rates of permanent housing by 89% and legitimate income by 33%.

Whether you’re exploring LEAD, are eager to begin a LEAD initiative, have encountered challenges in LEAD implementation, or are seeking guidance in expansion or evaluation, this toolkit offers resources to help your community build better safety, health, and equity with LEAD.

FAQ

Is anyone eligible for LEAD?

Many people who come into occasional contact with the criminal legal, social service, or behavioral health systems – via a single arrest, a temporary economic hurdle, or a difficult psychological period – can successfully find their way through these challenges without suffering severe and lasting consequences. For them, the established system of response and care may prove to be sufficiently accessible and manageable.

These are not the people LEAD is intended to serve.

Instead, LEAD is expressly designed to provide a new system of care for people whose complex, ongoing, unmet behavioral health needs result in disruptive or unlawful behavior. They may lack reliable shelter, income, food, health care, and positive social networks, and may find existing systems inaccessible, impossibly complicated, or insufficiently responsive.

How can LEAD work alongside other initiatives?

As an alternative response that builds a long-term system of care, LEAD can beneficially coexist alongside many other interventions. 1) In communities that have crisis-response teams, for example, LEAD can enhance the long-term post-crisis system of care. 2) For communities with specialty courts, LEAD can serve as an adaptive resource for people who might otherwise struggle to comply with court dates or mandates. 3) For communities interested in developing non-police alternative responses to public disorder, LEAD can serve as both first responders and long-term care coordinators.

Chapter 1

What is LEAD?

Chapters

Chapter 1

What is LEAD?

2. Design & Principles

A Model, Not a Program

The LEAD model is founded on evidence-based core principles. While aspects of the model have evolved over time, the core principles have remained stable and are time-tested. Protracted, significant departure from these elements in any LEAD site would mean that it is not operating LEAD with fidelity.

However, there is considerable room for local adaptation while still adhering to the core principles. Indeed, fitting the model to address the foremost issues faced by each community is a LEAD core principle. Throughout this toolkit, LEAD core principles are indicated by an orange caret to the left. The entirety of the core principle is indicated by a line that descends from the indicator on hover.

Although the toolkit notes other areas of adaptation or augmentation that may be advantageous or of interest, they are not requirements.

This is a Core Principle

Advancing Safety

LEAD advances safety, health, and equity by equipping communities with a better way to respond to issues flowing from unmet behavioral health needs and extreme poverty, for which revolving-door arrest, prosecution and incarceration are both common and ineffective.

Structured Collaboration

Most social problems are more complex than any one entity or sector can address by itself. Recognizing this, LEAD uses a form of structured collaboration – called collective impact – in which diverse stakeholders commit to a common agenda to solve a complex problem.

Using this framework for multi-agency collaboration…

  • The policies and protocols for each LEAD site are developed by local decision-makers and advocates who make up the Policy Coordinating Group; they may include senior law enforcement officers, prosecutors and public defenders, project managers, business representatives, elected officials, civil rights leaders and community advocates.
  • For operational coordination and case conferencing, line-level personnel, including mid-level supervisors, make up the Operational Work Group. The project manager, police officers, assistant prosecutors and public defenders, case managers, other service providers, and community leadership representatives all come to the table.
This is a Core Principle

Who Makes LEAD Happen?

Too often, health and safety initiatives are developed and decided by public officials and agency leaders with little meaningful input from the community about its priorities, ideas, needs, or transparency. But people in every community are affected by problems caused by unmanaged behavioral health issues, poverty and homelessness, and everyone has a real stake in seeing a robust, fair, effective framework for response to these issues.

Business Community

As members of the larger community, business owners and employees are important stakeholders in LEAD. They may have long-standing, first-hand experience of the disruption and suffering associated with people living with unmanaged behavioral health needs, poverty and homelessness, and they can be essential partners in understanding the priorities and strategies for a local LEAD effort. Small businesses in vulnerable communities have often experienced under-service, and can be particularly important champions of a community-based response that commits to addressing the safety issues they encounter.

Community Members

LEAD intentionally cultivates and includes diverse stakeholders – in addition to business owners, civil rights and disability rights advocates, residents associations, mental health and recovery services providers, faith communities, and public safety coalitions – to develop and manage each LEAD initiative, and be alert for the various ways in which an effort like this could falter. To formalize this inclusion, many LEAD sites establish Community Leadership Teams (CLT) to contribute to its collective stewardship.

Criminal Legal System Entities

LEAD allows criminal legal stakeholders to participate in a better response to problems for which jail and prosecution are generally ineffective, and consume system resources unnecessarily.

Police officers, public defenders, prosecutors, and probation agencies are key partners in the LEAD model: developing policies and protocols as members of the PCG, drawing on their professional positions to illuminate emerging needs, problems and opportunities; and supporting multidisciplinary case review and problem-solving by participating in OWG and case conferencing.

Operational Partners

Given LEAD’s collaborative and dynamic model, multiple organizations may have a role in implementing or partnering in a LEAD initiative. In addition to the project management entity and the case management provider, these can include LEAD Liaison Prosecutors who coordinate LEAD participants’ non-diverted cases; sergeants and officers making diversion referrals in the field; public defense managers identifying missed opportunities for diversion; other community-based service providers; public health systems; and other agencies responsible for training, education, employment, public benefits, and family services.

For partners involved directly in implementation – those who sit on the PCG and/or the OWG,, LEAD initiatives develop a multi-agency Release of Information (ROI) to enable partners to share information as necessary and appropriate.

Other Interested Stakeholders

Other agencies and groups may not hold a primary operational responsibility but are important stakeholders nonetheless; these might include mayors, councilmembers or commissioners, state legislators, business leaders particularly impacted by the problems of unmet behavioral health needs, civil rights and disability rights advocates, faith organizations committed to providing support where they can, or vocational organizations that might provide opportunities for LEAD participants.

Thus, while it is useful to recognize the distinctions between operational partners and what might be called interested stakeholders, it is important to ensure that LEAD informs, includes, and benefits from a wide array of stakeholder organizations. Many can and will help shape local attitudes and practices through legislation, advocacy, community engagement and education, and civic leadership.

This is a Core Principle

Who Are LEAD Participants?

LEAD is designed to provide care coordination for people with complex, ongoing, unmet behavioral health needs and/or income instability who may lack shelter/housing, income, food, health care, and social networks and for whom existing systems prove inaccessible, impossibly complicated, or insufficiently responsive.

Public intoxication, persistent trespass, open-air drug use, shoplifting – research shows that more than 60% of people in custody are held for offenses like these.1Zhen Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2017, bulletin prepared at the request of the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 2019.2Ibid. In many cases, these persistent behaviors are driven by unmanaged mental illness, substance use, or poverty.

Individuals may be referred to LEAD if they are exposed to the criminal legal system due to illegal activity related to behavioral health issues or poverty. LEAD is primarily designed for people who have had repeated contact with the criminal legal system, whose problematic situation is entrenched and protracted, related to complex challenges – it is not a “light touch.”

But someone can be referred into LEAD even if the criminal legal system hasn’t actually responded in a specific instance, or even if the referred individual doesn’t have a criminal history. This is because although the criminal legal system fluctuates in its ability and desire to respond to issues such as these, the public typically expects law enforcement action for these behaviors, unless another kind of response is available.

Why Does LEAD Exist?

LEAD is designed to help communities build a different system of care and response to better address the challenging realities we face:

Policies criminalize unmet behavioral health needs.

Two-thirds of the people arrested in this country have a mental illness or a drug dependency3Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn, eds., Committee on Law and Justice, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2014). 4Ibid.. In many communities, arrest and incarceration – rather than investments in community-based services – have long been the default response to these challenges. Even when those punitive systems recede after the realization that this response is counterproductive, other strategies are rarely in place to truly address illegal and problematic conduct related to drug use, mental illness and poverty–creating a void that isn’t sustainable. While punitive responses are a poor and harmful match to these conditions, cause great harm and foster inequity, it is not enough to just divert away from those systems – there must actually be a framework for care coordination that is up to the task and is broadly received as legitimate.

Jail isn’t just ineffective, it’s harmful.

Studies show that being jailed even for a short time increases a person’s risk of engaging in crime,5Todd R. Clear, “The Effects of High Imprisonment Rates on Communities,” Crime and Justice 37, no. 1 (2008), 97- 132. decreases employment and tax related government benefits,6 Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang, “The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges,” American Economic Review 108, no. 2 (2018), 201–240. 7Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer, Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems, August 2019. increases homelessness,8 Lucius Couloute, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2018). and exacerbates the racial disparities embedded into our society.9Becky Pettit and Bryan Sykes. (2017). “State of the Union 2017: Incarceration.” The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. For people with mental illness or substance use disorder, the impact of jail is even more detrimental: They may be taken off Medicaid, receive inadequate care in custody, are more likely to be sanctioned for rule infractions, are subjected to harsher sentences, and are disproportionately returned to jail.10Darrell Steinberg, David Mills, and Michael Romano, When did prisons become acceptable mental healthcare facilities? (Stanford, CA: Stanford Law School, n.d.). The devastating intergenerational impact on children when their parents are jailed, even for short periods, is well-documented.11Nell Bernstein, All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated (New York: The New Press, 2007).

Overuse of the criminal legal system exacerbates racial inequities.

Across the country, communities have recognized that our longstanding reliance on policing and prosecution as the primary response to an array of profound social needs has had a deeply disproportionate impact on people of color. Less well known is the fact that most criminal legal system reform efforts also tend to primarily benefit more affluent people and white people – even when such reforms are adopted in the name of advancing racial justice. LEAD is designed to intentionally intervene before many cases reach the criminal legal system, providing a satisfactory alternative response. LEAD also uses data and process checks to ensure that resources and benefits reach the same population that has been disproportionately subject to punitive responses in the past.

This is a Core Principle

A Better Paradigm

LEAD starts by diverting people with behavioral health needs, pre-booking, away from jail and prosecution and into collaborative, community-based systems of response and care.

LEAD’s Strategy…

...addresses unmanaged mental illness and substance use.

LEAD builds a community-based alternative to jail and prosecution for people whose unlawful behavior stems from unmanaged substance use, mental health challenges, or extreme poverty.

...does not require abstinence.

Unlike other forms of diversion, such as divert-to-treatment and most drug courts, LEAD’s harm reduction-based approach doesn’t impose sanctions, establish deadlines, or require abstinence. LEAD is aligned with SAMHSA’s definition of recovery:

“Recovery is a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential.”

Thus, health supports, a stable and safe place to live, purpose, meaning, and community should be understood as essential elements of a recovery journey. For some participants, that journey may – but not always – entail abstinence from non-prescribed substances, and the recovery path will generally include multiple instances of relapse and struggle.

In LEAD, case management provides a “golden thread” that supports all aspects of a participant’s recovery journey, whatever shape it takes. The LEAD model recognizes, however, that participants often confront abstinence requirements in other systems they encounter. In such events, case managers should provide the best support they can to help participants successfully navigate such requirements, even though they are not a feature of LEAD itself.

This is a Core Principle
...nurtures incremental progress.

LEAD’s approach is grounded in the evidence of what works best to support recovery and behavior change for people with complex needs and high barriers. As social science tells us, a person’s readiness to change their behaviors follows no steady course – it can come slowly, may suffer setbacks, and is sparked by internal motivators; with behavioral change, it’s often two steps forward, one step back. Trauma responses make this even more challenging, as self-sabotage, lack of positive self-regard, fear that success foreshadows future loss, anxiety, and trust barriers can cause reactions that, from the outside, look irrational and contradictory.

The criminal legal system – with its public processes, engagement which always entails at least an implied threat of punishment, sanctions, and generally impersonal relationships – isn’t built for that. But LEAD is. LEAD uses trauma-informed, strength-based case management, evidence-based methods, and harm reduction practices to spark and nurture incremental progress and increase safety. In addition, these techniques generate better and nuanced information that then can guide criminal legal system partners who may exercise authority over participants in non-diverted cases; this may help avoid decisions that may inadvertently hamper participants’ progress.

This is a Core Principle
...offers a third way as an alternative to punishment and abandonment.

With LEAD, communities work together to reorient the way their systems understand and respond to people living with unmet behavioral health needs and income instability. Rather than either punishing people for their unmet needs or turning a blind eye to the troubles on our streets, LEAD draws together into collective effort the stakeholders whose systems otherwise receive pressure to respond in traditional, but often counter-productive, ways. It is not enough just to reduce use of those systems – rather, LEAD provides an alternative answer to the very real problems of individuals and communities that result in a high volume of low-level but detrimental illegal and problematic behavior.

What Makes LEAD Different?

  • LEAD is not a program, but rather a framework to arrive at the best response to problems – it increases public safety by creating a new system of collective response.
  • LEAD is not a short-term crisis response – it offers ongoing case coordination for people with complex needs living in situations that generate ongoing problems.
  • LEAD isn’t operated within the legal system – it’s a community-based collaborative that can coordinate in many ways with the legal system to achieve better outcomes.
  • LEAD doesn’t mandate treatment, abstinence or any particular care approach; rather, it is based on harm reduction principles and uses motivational interviewing and other evidence based strategies for working with a high barrier population with complex needs. All care plans are highly individualized.
  • LEAD serves a specific population otherwise potentially exposed to punitive responses – people whose frequent unlawful or problematic conduct stems from unmet behavioral health needs or income instability, extreme poverty or homelessness.
  • LEAD isn’t office- or clinic-based: it reaches people wherever they might be, physically, mentally, and behaviorally.
This is a Core Principle

Origin and Development of LEAD

2008: The start of a pre-booking alternative in Seattle

In 2008, after years of contentious advocacy and litigation focused on racially disproportionate enforcement for drug activity (possession and delivery) in Seattle, the Racial Disparity Project at the Public Defender Association (now known as PDA), the ACLU, the Seattle Police Department and the King County Prosecutor embarked on a surprising new road together: they began working together to create a pre-booking alternative for most drug and prostitution cases. They found early support from some Seattle City Councilmembers and King County Councilmembers, the then-King County Sheriff, and the Seattle City Attorney. By the time the initiative received an initial round of funding from the Ford Foundation, Vital Projects Fund, and the Open Society Foundations, it had gained the endorsement of the Downtown Seattle Association, several prominent recovery organizations, local neighborhood leaders, and leading civil rights advocates.

2011: The creation of LEAD and the Belltown pilot

In 2011, this uncommon coalition launched a new model to divert people away from jail and the legal system and into harm reduction-based case management at the earliest opportunity: at or before the point of arrest. By making law enforcement and prosecutors operational partners rather than just operating “upstream” from those entities, this coalition ensured that LEAD would effectively intervene in the flow of individuals who were unnecessarily and unproductively entering the jail and courts. They named it LEAD: Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion. As the nation’s first pre-booking diversion initiative for drug offenses, the pilot program launched in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood; in the ensuing years, and with the support of the city of Seattle and King County, it was steadily expanded to additional neighborhoods and neighboring jurisdictions over the years.

In the early months of the Belltown pilot, it became evident that, while individual participants entered LEAD as the result of police diversion, most already had other non-diverted cases and warrants, or they faced new cases filed after their enrollment. The LEAD team realized that those other charges and warrants often threatened to upend progress painstakingly achieved by participants and case managers. Thus, prosecutor coordination of non-diverted cases with the individual case management plan was a feature of the model almost from the outset.

2015: A national LEAD summit at the White House

The Obama Administration convened a national LEAD summit at the White House in 2015, bringing multi-disciplinary teams from 25 jurisdictions together for two days of workshops on the essential elements of the model and key elements of each operational and governing partner’s role.

2020: The possibility of LEAD referrals without police involvement

When police capacity to response to low-level offenses was nearly eliminated in the early months of the COVID pandemic, and in the context of national calls for new approaches to public safety in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Seattle/King County LEAD stakeholders recognized that it was essential to ensure community partners could make referrals to LEAD services without the need for police involvement – though police referrals are still preserved as a priority part of the model. This evolution was named LEAD: Let Everyone Advance with Dignity, and was quickly adopted by many jurisdictions around the country.

Evolving the LEAD Model

LEAD’s adaptability has been persistently evident in the flagship LEAD initiative in Seattle. From its first pilot in Belltown, throughout its expansion and national replication, and in shifting political and social environments, the LEAD model can adapt and thrive to meet the needs of the given time and place.

CoLEAD: Intensive case management in lodging

In 2020, recognizing that many public order offenses were occurring in conjunction with large encampments that increased during the COVID economic shutdown, and that shelters, health clinics, libraries, community centers, courts and jails were also largely shuttered, PDA and other Seattle-King County LEAD partners redirected existing unspent program funds to provide intensive case management in a non-congregate shelter setting in hotels. Named CoLEAD, the model proved highly successful in engaging people with high barriers living unsheltered in Burien, a neighborhood adjacent to Seattle.

JustCARE encampment resolution & intensive support

Building on the CoLEAD experience, and using federal COVID relief funds, in late 2020 other service partners joined in with PDA in 2021 to offer JustCARE, a response that resolved encampments in vulnerable Seattle neighborhoods by doing protracted outreach, assessment, and resource matching while offering non-congregate shelter resources to chronically homeless individuals, almost all of whom experienced substance use disorder, and most of whom faced other barriers to housing and care systems, including involvement in the illicit economy. Three service providers offered intensive case management to hundreds of individuals, and a community-based safety team was formed to support non-police de-escalation and incident response in JustCARE facilities. Between autumn 2020 through spring 2022, JustCARE resolved 14 large encampments in three Seattle neighborhoods, lodging over 500 people, achieving high rates of permanent housing placements, and losing no participant to overdose death.12An Analysis Of JustCARE Housing And Other Outcomes

Third Avenue Project/milieu management & multi-partner care model

In 2022, after most large encampments in Seattle’s downtown core had been resolved, individuals with complex behavioral health needs who were engaged in illicit economic activity remained present in the area, with obvious needs for support and care and posing significant public order challenges for downtown businesses and workers. Neighborhood leaders and city officials asked LEAD partners to propose a strategy, one that recognized the need for a milieu management situational response in addition to long term individual case management. The company that had been formed to provide safety team and de-escalation services for JustCARE lodging facilities agreed to mobilize teams to engage individuals in the area who were exposed to enforcement, deescalate potential conflicts, provide milieu management for challenging dynamics, and connect individuals to appropriate service providers, including LEAD case management. PDA’s LEAD project management team provides project management for the Third Avenue Project as part of their downtown Seattle LEAD focus impact work.

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Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD): Program Effects on Criminal Justice and Legal System Utilization and Costs (2019)

Recidivism reduction found in a quasi-randomized control analysis by independent evaluators funded by the Arnold Foundation; LEAD participants 58% less likely to be arrested for any crime in any jurisdiction compared to a similarly situated control group.

Last updated August 7, 2023

  • Arrest Diversion

    Arrest diversions give law enforcement officers the option of referring people to LEAD at the point of arrest (either pre- or post-arrest) for diversion-eligible offenses, instead of booking them into jail and referring them for prosecution.
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  • Bureau of Justice Assistance

    The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is a component of the Office of Justice Programs within the United States Department of Justice. BJA provides leadership and assistance (through grants, research, and technical assistance) to local programs that improve and reinforce the administration of justice in our country.
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  • CARA

    The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) represents the nation’s most comprehensive effort to address the opioid epidemic, encompassing all six pillars necessary for a coordinated response – prevention, treatment, recovery, law enforcement, criminal legal reform, and overdose reversal.
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  • Case Management

    LEAD-style case management is the heart and soul of LEAD’s effective, coordinated system of care, one that reorients existing resources to better meet the needs of people for whom standard models of care just aren’t effective. As a participant centered practice, LEAD-style case management operates in the streets, literally and figuratively meeting people where they…
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  • CLT

    A Community Leadership Team (CLT) is part of the stewardship structure for LEAD. Composed of members who represent multiple community voices - faith community, advocacy coalitions, business organizations, and others – the CLT helps identify priorities, informs planning and development, and fosters transparency and accountability.
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  • Code of Federal Regulations

    The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is a compilation of administrative laws governing federal regulatory agency practice and procedures. Revised annually, it contains the whole of the daily Federal Register, along with previously issued regulations that are still current. It is divided into 50 titles, each representing a general subject area (e.g., commerce, military) and…
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  • Community Referral

    Community referrals provide community partners with the opportunity to refer people who are known to chronically engage in problematic, perhaps unlawful, behavior related to behavioral health issues or poverty without police involvement and without using the emergency response system (911 or equivalent).
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  • GAINS Sequential Intercept Model (SIM)

    The Sequential Intercept Model was developed as a conceptual model to inform community-based responses to the involvement of people with mental and substance use disorders in the criminal justice system. It was developed over several years in the early 2000s by Mark Munetz, MD and Patricia A. Griffin, PhD, along with Henry J. Steadman, PhD, of Policy Research Associates,…
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  • Golden Rule #1

    No one in LEAD can be worse off because they shared information with case managers that was, in turn, shared with other partners (especially police, prosecutors, or courts).
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  • Golden Rule #2

    Within their zone of authority and while considering insights provided by other LEAD stakeholders, every LEAD partner should do what they believe is most likely to support positive behavior change in the specific circumstances. This is the second of LEAD’s two Golden Rules.
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  • Harm Reduction

    Harm reduction is a theory and practice that aims to reduce the level of harm (for oneself and for a larger community) that can be associated with unmanaged behavioral illness, including drug use. Rather than demanding abstinence, harm reduction focuses on opportunities to incrementally change behaviors that cause harm to oneself or others. This principle…
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  • Housing First

    Housing First is an evidence-based approach to fostering stabilization by connecting people to housing as quickly as possible. It recognizes that a safe and consistent place to live is an essential precondition for other kinds of positive behavior change. Consistent with harm reduction principles, Housing First emerged as an alternative to approaches that required people…
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  • Law Enforcement

    The term "law enforcement" is used throughout this toolkit to describe police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and others endowed with arresting authority; these may include campus public safety officers, environmental enforcement officers, transit authority officers, and more.
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  • Liaison Prosecutor

    LEAD Liaison Prosecutors serve on the OWG and coordinate LEAD participants’ pre-existing court cases, warrants, or case filings that arise after they enroll in LEAD. They gather information from case managers on the goals of individual defendants, their progress and challenges, and the effects that pending cases might have on that progress.
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  • LSB

    The LEAD Support Bureau (LSB) was founded in 2016 to respond to growing interest in LEAD replication across the United States. A project of PDA, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, the Bureau is the only authorized resource to provide training, technical assistance, and strategic guidance on the LEAD model.
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  • Motivational Interviewing

    Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a foundational technique for LEAD. An evidence-based approach to supporting positive behavior change, MI is a client-centered, collaborative style of communication designed to help people identify and achieve their goals by eliciting and exploring their own reasons for change. Using a guiding (not directive) style of communication, MI meets people where…
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  • MOU

    A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by the relevant decision-making authorities, documents the principal agreements being made by each of the participating entities. Typically, this is a high-level summary description of how each entity will participate in or contribute to LEAD, with an appendix addressing any specific agreements about logistics and operations of the PCG.…
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  • Net-Widening

    Net-widening is the phenomenon in which a society or community increases the array of behaviors (and thus people) subject to control by the criminal legal system. Net-widening can occur when policies and practices explicitly intended to reduce criminal legal involvement paradoxically result in a larger number of people being caught in the criminal legal net.
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  • Operational Protocol

    The operational protocol details eligibility criteria, divertible charges, a strategy for prioritization of referrals when volume exceeds capacity, referral policies and methods, agreements on documentation, and operating agreements that detail relevant duties and roles specific to each operational partner.
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  • OWG

    The LEAD Operational Work Group (OWG) is composed of line staff, including mid-level supervisors, who carry out the day-to-day operations of LEAD. The members are appointed by the PCG and typically include police officers, assistant prosecutors, public defenders, case managers, other service providers, and community leadership representatives. The OWG provides a common table to collectively…
    Learn More

  • PCG

    The Policy Coordinating Group (PCG) is made up of decision-makers and community representatives who are collectively responsible for shepherding the overall initiative: setting goals and policies, defining diversion-eligible offenses, approving protocols, overseeing data and evaluation, selecting service providers, overseeing project management, identifying funding and resources, and managing strategic development. The PCG is made up of…
    Learn More

  • Post-Enrollment Cases

    Post-enrollment cases stem from new arrests or charges after a participant enrolls in LEAD. It should be noted that some post-enrollment cases could, confusingly, relate to incidents that took place before enrollment but that may have sat in a filing queue for weeks or months before filing. It is also common for people enrolled in…
    Learn More

  • Project Manager

    The Project Manager (PM) is responsible for coordinating all aspects of the LEAD initiative and managing its day-to-day activities. A trusted partner of all partners and key staff position, the Project Manager serves as resource and liaison to both the PCG and the OWG. LEAD is a consortium of politically independent actors; therefore it is…
    Learn More

  • ROI

    The multi-party release of information (ROI) is the essential precondition for ongoing care coordination among LEAD operational partners, allowing case managers to share information as needed and appropriate with police, prosecutors, judges, other care providers, and even neighborhood businesses and government officials, if to do so is in the participant’s interest.
    Learn More

  • SAMHSA

    The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation and to improve the lives of individuals living with mental and substance use disorders, and their families. It represents an…
    Learn More

  • Social Contact Referral

    Social contact referrals give law enforcement officers the opportunity to refer people whose law violations may be related to behavioral health issues or poverty without waiting for a potential arrest.
    Learn More

  • Warm Handoff

    A LEAD warm handoff describes the process by which a LEAD participant is diverted out of the criminal legal system and into LEAD’s community-based case management. In a LEAD warm handoff, rather than making an arrest, a police officer calls the LEAD case management, who comes to the scene or the police station to meet…
    Learn More

LEAD support bureau

Partner with Us

Founded in 2016 to respond to growing interest in LEAD replication across the United States, the LEAD Support Bureau is the only authorized resource to provide training, technical assistance, and strategic guidance on the LEAD model.
Contact Us

Community toolkit

About this site

Produced by the LEAD Support Bureau, this toolkit is designed to support communities that are exploring, developing, launching, or operating LEAD initiatives. It is intended to complement the customized technical assistance available through the LEAD Support Bureau.
What We Do
Resources

Tools for LEAD

Filter
Back
Search

Categories

Categories
  • Communications 2
  • LEAD 101 3
  • Data & Evaluations 9
  • Project Management 1

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  • Printable (2)
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Results

Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) Program: Within-Subjects Changes on Housing, Employment, and Income/ Benefits Outcomes and Associations With Recidivism, (2017)

LEAD participants experienced an improvement in shelter & housing status and access to lawful income sources, and those gains increased with extended case management.

Last updated August 22, 2023

  • Arrest Diversion

    Arrest diversions give law enforcement officers the option of referring people to LEAD at the point of arrest (either pre- or post-arrest) for diversion-eligible offenses, instead of booking them into jail and referring them for prosecution.
    Learn More

  • Bureau of Justice Assistance

    The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is a component of the Office of Justice Programs within the United States Department of Justice. BJA provides leadership and assistance (through grants, research, and technical assistance) to local programs that improve and reinforce the administration of justice in our country.
    Learn More

  • CARA

    The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) represents the nation’s most comprehensive effort to address the opioid epidemic, encompassing all six pillars necessary for a coordinated response – prevention, treatment, recovery, law enforcement, criminal legal reform, and overdose reversal.
    Learn More

  • Case Management

    LEAD-style case management is the heart and soul of LEAD’s effective, coordinated system of care, one that reorients existing resources to better meet the needs of people for whom standard models of care just aren’t effective. As a participant centered practice, LEAD-style case management operates in the streets, literally and figuratively meeting people where they…
    Learn More

  • CLT

    A Community Leadership Team (CLT) is part of the stewardship structure for LEAD. Composed of members who represent multiple community voices - faith community, advocacy coalitions, business organizations, and others – the CLT helps identify priorities, informs planning and development, and fosters transparency and accountability.
    Learn More

  • Code of Federal Regulations

    The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is a compilation of administrative laws governing federal regulatory agency practice and procedures. Revised annually, it contains the whole of the daily Federal Register, along with previously issued regulations that are still current. It is divided into 50 titles, each representing a general subject area (e.g., commerce, military) and…
    Learn More

  • Community Referral

    Community referrals provide community partners with the opportunity to refer people who are known to chronically engage in problematic, perhaps unlawful, behavior related to behavioral health issues or poverty without police involvement and without using the emergency response system (911 or equivalent).
    Learn More

  • GAINS Sequential Intercept Model (SIM)

    The Sequential Intercept Model was developed as a conceptual model to inform community-based responses to the involvement of people with mental and substance use disorders in the criminal justice system. It was developed over several years in the early 2000s by Mark Munetz, MD and Patricia A. Griffin, PhD, along with Henry J. Steadman, PhD, of Policy Research Associates,…
    Learn More

  • Golden Rule #1

    No one in LEAD can be worse off because they shared information with case managers that was, in turn, shared with other partners (especially police, prosecutors, or courts).
    Learn More

  • Golden Rule #2

    Within their zone of authority and while considering insights provided by other LEAD stakeholders, every LEAD partner should do what they believe is most likely to support positive behavior change in the specific circumstances. This is the second of LEAD’s two Golden Rules.
    Learn More

  • Harm Reduction

    Harm reduction is a theory and practice that aims to reduce the level of harm (for oneself and for a larger community) that can be associated with unmanaged behavioral illness, including drug use. Rather than demanding abstinence, harm reduction focuses on opportunities to incrementally change behaviors that cause harm to oneself or others. This principle…
    Learn More

  • Housing First

    Housing First is an evidence-based approach to fostering stabilization by connecting people to housing as quickly as possible. It recognizes that a safe and consistent place to live is an essential precondition for other kinds of positive behavior change. Consistent with harm reduction principles, Housing First emerged as an alternative to approaches that required people…
    Learn More

  • Law Enforcement

    The term "law enforcement" is used throughout this toolkit to describe police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and others endowed with arresting authority; these may include campus public safety officers, environmental enforcement officers, transit authority officers, and more.
    Learn More

  • Liaison Prosecutor

    LEAD Liaison Prosecutors serve on the OWG and coordinate LEAD participants’ pre-existing court cases, warrants, or case filings that arise after they enroll in LEAD. They gather information from case managers on the goals of individual defendants, their progress and challenges, and the effects that pending cases might have on that progress.
    Learn More

  • LSB

    The LEAD Support Bureau (LSB) was founded in 2016 to respond to growing interest in LEAD replication across the United States. A project of PDA, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, the Bureau is the only authorized resource to provide training, technical assistance, and strategic guidance on the LEAD model.
    Learn More

  • Motivational Interviewing

    Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a foundational technique for LEAD. An evidence-based approach to supporting positive behavior change, MI is a client-centered, collaborative style of communication designed to help people identify and achieve their goals by eliciting and exploring their own reasons for change. Using a guiding (not directive) style of communication, MI meets people where…
    Learn More

  • MOU

    A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by the relevant decision-making authorities, documents the principal agreements being made by each of the participating entities. Typically, this is a high-level summary description of how each entity will participate in or contribute to LEAD, with an appendix addressing any specific agreements about logistics and operations of the PCG.…
    Learn More

  • Net-Widening

    Net-widening is the phenomenon in which a society or community increases the array of behaviors (and thus people) subject to control by the criminal legal system. Net-widening can occur when policies and practices explicitly intended to reduce criminal legal involvement paradoxically result in a larger number of people being caught in the criminal legal net.
    Learn More

  • Operational Protocol

    The operational protocol details eligibility criteria, divertible charges, a strategy for prioritization of referrals when volume exceeds capacity, referral policies and methods, agreements on documentation, and operating agreements that detail relevant duties and roles specific to each operational partner.
    Learn More

  • OWG

    The LEAD Operational Work Group (OWG) is composed of line staff, including mid-level supervisors, who carry out the day-to-day operations of LEAD. The members are appointed by the PCG and typically include police officers, assistant prosecutors, public defenders, case managers, other service providers, and community leadership representatives. The OWG provides a common table to collectively…
    Learn More

  • PCG

    The Policy Coordinating Group (PCG) is made up of decision-makers and community representatives who are collectively responsible for shepherding the overall initiative: setting goals and policies, defining diversion-eligible offenses, approving protocols, overseeing data and evaluation, selecting service providers, overseeing project management, identifying funding and resources, and managing strategic development. The PCG is made up of…
    Learn More

  • Post-Enrollment Cases

    Post-enrollment cases stem from new arrests or charges after a participant enrolls in LEAD. It should be noted that some post-enrollment cases could, confusingly, relate to incidents that took place before enrollment but that may have sat in a filing queue for weeks or months before filing. It is also common for people enrolled in…
    Learn More

  • Project Manager

    The Project Manager (PM) is responsible for coordinating all aspects of the LEAD initiative and managing its day-to-day activities. A trusted partner of all partners and key staff position, the Project Manager serves as resource and liaison to both the PCG and the OWG. LEAD is a consortium of politically independent actors; therefore it is…
    Learn More

  • ROI

    The multi-party release of information (ROI) is the essential precondition for ongoing care coordination among LEAD operational partners, allowing case managers to share information as needed and appropriate with police, prosecutors, judges, other care providers, and even neighborhood businesses and government officials, if to do so is in the participant’s interest.
    Learn More

  • SAMHSA

    The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation and to improve the lives of individuals living with mental and substance use disorders, and their families. It represents an…
    Learn More

  • Social Contact Referral

    Social contact referrals give law enforcement officers the opportunity to refer people whose law violations may be related to behavioral health issues or poverty without waiting for a potential arrest.
    Learn More

  • Warm Handoff

    A LEAD warm handoff describes the process by which a LEAD participant is diverted out of the criminal legal system and into LEAD’s community-based case management. In a LEAD warm handoff, rather than making an arrest, a police officer calls the LEAD case management, who comes to the scene or the police station to meet…
    Learn More

LEAD support bureau

Partner with Us

Founded in 2016 to respond to growing interest in LEAD replication across the United States, the LEAD Support Bureau is the only authorized resource to provide training, technical assistance, and strategic guidance on the LEAD model.
Contact Us

Community toolkit

About this site

Produced by the LEAD Support Bureau, this toolkit is designed to support communities that are exploring, developing, launching, or operating LEAD initiatives. It is intended to complement the customized technical assistance available through the LEAD Support Bureau.
What We Do
Resources

Tools for LEAD

Filter
Back
Search

Categories

Categories
  • Communications 2
  • LEAD 101 3
  • Data & Evaluations 9
  • Project Management 1

Tags

Tags
  • All
  • Printable (2)
Back
Search

Results

LEAD Program Evaluation: The Impact of LEAD on Housing, Employment, and Income/Benefits (2016)

LEAD participants, compared to similarly situated control group in a quasi-randomized analysis, had sharp reductions in felony filings, prison admission, and days in jail, with associated significant cost reductions.

Last updated August 4, 2023

  • Arrest Diversion

    Arrest diversions give law enforcement officers the option of referring people to LEAD at the point of arrest (either pre- or post-arrest) for diversion-eligible offenses, instead of booking them into jail and referring them for prosecution.
    Learn More

  • Bureau of Justice Assistance

    The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is a component of the Office of Justice Programs within the United States Department of Justice. BJA provides leadership and assistance (through grants, research, and technical assistance) to local programs that improve and reinforce the administration of justice in our country.
    Learn More

  • CARA

    The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) represents the nation’s most comprehensive effort to address the opioid epidemic, encompassing all six pillars necessary for a coordinated response – prevention, treatment, recovery, law enforcement, criminal legal reform, and overdose reversal.
    Learn More

  • Case Management

    LEAD-style case management is the heart and soul of LEAD’s effective, coordinated system of care, one that reorients existing resources to better meet the needs of people for whom standard models of care just aren’t effective. As a participant centered practice, LEAD-style case management operates in the streets, literally and figuratively meeting people where they…
    Learn More

  • CLT

    A Community Leadership Team (CLT) is part of the stewardship structure for LEAD. Composed of members who represent multiple community voices - faith community, advocacy coalitions, business organizations, and others – the CLT helps identify priorities, informs planning and development, and fosters transparency and accountability.
    Learn More

  • Code of Federal Regulations

    The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is a compilation of administrative laws governing federal regulatory agency practice and procedures. Revised annually, it contains the whole of the daily Federal Register, along with previously issued regulations that are still current. It is divided into 50 titles, each representing a general subject area (e.g., commerce, military) and…
    Learn More

  • Community Referral

    Community referrals provide community partners with the opportunity to refer people who are known to chronically engage in problematic, perhaps unlawful, behavior related to behavioral health issues or poverty without police involvement and without using the emergency response system (911 or equivalent).
    Learn More

  • GAINS Sequential Intercept Model (SIM)

    The Sequential Intercept Model was developed as a conceptual model to inform community-based responses to the involvement of people with mental and substance use disorders in the criminal justice system. It was developed over several years in the early 2000s by Mark Munetz, MD and Patricia A. Griffin, PhD, along with Henry J. Steadman, PhD, of Policy Research Associates,…
    Learn More

  • Golden Rule #1

    No one in LEAD can be worse off because they shared information with case managers that was, in turn, shared with other partners (especially police, prosecutors, or courts).
    Learn More

  • Golden Rule #2

    Within their zone of authority and while considering insights provided by other LEAD stakeholders, every LEAD partner should do what they believe is most likely to support positive behavior change in the specific circumstances. This is the second of LEAD’s two Golden Rules.
    Learn More

  • Harm Reduction

    Harm reduction is a theory and practice that aims to reduce the level of harm (for oneself and for a larger community) that can be associated with unmanaged behavioral illness, including drug use. Rather than demanding abstinence, harm reduction focuses on opportunities to incrementally change behaviors that cause harm to oneself or others. This principle…
    Learn More

  • Housing First

    Housing First is an evidence-based approach to fostering stabilization by connecting people to housing as quickly as possible. It recognizes that a safe and consistent place to live is an essential precondition for other kinds of positive behavior change. Consistent with harm reduction principles, Housing First emerged as an alternative to approaches that required people…
    Learn More

  • Law Enforcement

    The term "law enforcement" is used throughout this toolkit to describe police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and others endowed with arresting authority; these may include campus public safety officers, environmental enforcement officers, transit authority officers, and more.
    Learn More

  • Liaison Prosecutor

    LEAD Liaison Prosecutors serve on the OWG and coordinate LEAD participants’ pre-existing court cases, warrants, or case filings that arise after they enroll in LEAD. They gather information from case managers on the goals of individual defendants, their progress and challenges, and the effects that pending cases might have on that progress.
    Learn More

  • LSB

    The LEAD Support Bureau (LSB) was founded in 2016 to respond to growing interest in LEAD replication across the United States. A project of PDA, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, the Bureau is the only authorized resource to provide training, technical assistance, and strategic guidance on the LEAD model.
    Learn More

  • Motivational Interviewing

    Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a foundational technique for LEAD. An evidence-based approach to supporting positive behavior change, MI is a client-centered, collaborative style of communication designed to help people identify and achieve their goals by eliciting and exploring their own reasons for change. Using a guiding (not directive) style of communication, MI meets people where…
    Learn More

  • MOU

    A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by the relevant decision-making authorities, documents the principal agreements being made by each of the participating entities. Typically, this is a high-level summary description of how each entity will participate in or contribute to LEAD, with an appendix addressing any specific agreements about logistics and operations of the PCG.…
    Learn More

  • Net-Widening

    Net-widening is the phenomenon in which a society or community increases the array of behaviors (and thus people) subject to control by the criminal legal system. Net-widening can occur when policies and practices explicitly intended to reduce criminal legal involvement paradoxically result in a larger number of people being caught in the criminal legal net.
    Learn More

  • Operational Protocol

    The operational protocol details eligibility criteria, divertible charges, a strategy for prioritization of referrals when volume exceeds capacity, referral policies and methods, agreements on documentation, and operating agreements that detail relevant duties and roles specific to each operational partner.
    Learn More

  • OWG

    The LEAD Operational Work Group (OWG) is composed of line staff, including mid-level supervisors, who carry out the day-to-day operations of LEAD. The members are appointed by the PCG and typically include police officers, assistant prosecutors, public defenders, case managers, other service providers, and community leadership representatives. The OWG provides a common table to collectively…
    Learn More

  • PCG

    The Policy Coordinating Group (PCG) is made up of decision-makers and community representatives who are collectively responsible for shepherding the overall initiative: setting goals and policies, defining diversion-eligible offenses, approving protocols, overseeing data and evaluation, selecting service providers, overseeing project management, identifying funding and resources, and managing strategic development. The PCG is made up of…
    Learn More

  • Post-Enrollment Cases

    Post-enrollment cases stem from new arrests or charges after a participant enrolls in LEAD. It should be noted that some post-enrollment cases could, confusingly, relate to incidents that took place before enrollment but that may have sat in a filing queue for weeks or months before filing. It is also common for people enrolled in…
    Learn More

  • Project Manager

    The Project Manager (PM) is responsible for coordinating all aspects of the LEAD initiative and managing its day-to-day activities. A trusted partner of all partners and key staff position, the Project Manager serves as resource and liaison to both the PCG and the OWG. LEAD is a consortium of politically independent actors; therefore it is…
    Learn More

  • ROI

    The multi-party release of information (ROI) is the essential precondition for ongoing care coordination among LEAD operational partners, allowing case managers to share information as needed and appropriate with police, prosecutors, judges, other care providers, and even neighborhood businesses and government officials, if to do so is in the participant’s interest.
    Learn More

  • SAMHSA

    The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation and to improve the lives of individuals living with mental and substance use disorders, and their families. It represents an…
    Learn More

  • Social Contact Referral

    Social contact referrals give law enforcement officers the opportunity to refer people whose law violations may be related to behavioral health issues or poverty without waiting for a potential arrest.
    Learn More

  • Warm Handoff

    A LEAD warm handoff describes the process by which a LEAD participant is diverted out of the criminal legal system and into LEAD’s community-based case management. In a LEAD warm handoff, rather than making an arrest, a police officer calls the LEAD case management, who comes to the scene or the police station to meet…
    Learn More

LEAD support bureau

Partner with Us

Founded in 2016 to respond to growing interest in LEAD replication across the United States, the LEAD Support Bureau is the only authorized resource to provide training, technical assistance, and strategic guidance on the LEAD model.
Contact Us

Community toolkit

About this site

Produced by the LEAD Support Bureau, this toolkit is designed to support communities that are exploring, developing, launching, or operating LEAD initiatives. It is intended to complement the customized technical assistance available through the LEAD Support Bureau.
What We Do

Controls