New diversion program being pursued by OKC criminal justice reform advocate
JaNae WilliamsWhen Tina Brown was working as a prosecutor and public defender, she met a lot of people in the criminal justice system who needed a way out that she didn't see available.
Now, she has started exploring a criminal justice reform that would focus on diversion before arrest for low-level offenders.
These people, often struggling with mental health, substance abuse, poverty, homelessness, or some other trauma, need more than punitive and compulsory programs. A carrot dangled at the end of a stick, as Brown describes some of these programs, though successful for some are not a one-size-fits-all solution.
“You’d still have your drug courts and mental health courts and all the other programs; we’re not saying get rid of those things," she said. “We're saying this group of folks right here, who aren't committing serious felony offenses, who are cycling in over and over again, let's meet them where they're at because they deserve help, too.”
Brown learned about Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) at the time but was unable to fully explore the program until taking on a role as program officer for criminal justice reform at the Arnall Family Foundation.
After making the career move last April, she began to explore local efforts and saw a specific emphasis placed on reducing the jail population. Brown started conversations with Brendon Cox, director of policing strategies, and Najja Morris-Frazier, director of the LEAD National Support Bureau, along with local stakeholders about how to bring the program to Oklahoma City.
What is LEAD and how could it help people avoid OKC jail?
LEAD was launched in 2011 in Seattle as "collaborative community safety effort." The program sought to provide alternatives to arrest and incarceration, especially for those committing low-level offenses.
“Number one, the system was overloaded and number two, the folks that were being arrested had unmet behavioral health needs," Cox said. “The system really wasn't built to ultimately address those issues and they were kind of coming through the door and coming right back out and folks weren’t seeing improvement.”
Offenses eligible for the program in Seattle began with drug possession and sales and prostitution, then included other non-violent crimes like theft, fraud and misrepresentation such as forgery.
In Seattle, initial participants were 58% less likely to be arrested than those who continued through the traditional channels of the criminal justice system, according to data from the program.
After successful implementation of the program in Seattle, the bureau was formed to help jurisdictions nationally and internationally as they began looking to replicate the program. Currently over 50 jurisdictions have operational LEAD programs, with over 40 more exploring, developing, or launching programs.
Early data from other cities shows positive results as well, with Santa Fe, New Mexico, reporting reduced recidivism among participants and a 54% reduction in the total number of clients using heroin, in its pilot group of the program. Programs across the country also report increases in employment and housing stability among participants.
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"The idea is that not only are people not being arrested and going to jail through the LEAD program, they don't even get that charge filed against them, so there is no warrant later on that's going to be issued from them missing court," Brown said.
The program connects officers with case managers who assess needs and divert people directly to services depending on those needs. However, Morris-Frazier said the program is not a temporary fix and does not try to force people into making changes they are not ready for.
“When we bring someone into LEAD, we’re not sitting down assessing them in order to tell them all the things that are wrong with them and directing them in how to fix their life," she said.
Once a part of LEAD, participants have ongoing relationships with case managers that allow them to access services they need as they need them. This means that if a person is not ready to enter rehab on a first contact, they can still work with the program to access things they need in that moment to improve their outcome, Morris-Frazier said.
“The idea is that as life happens we know, as we know with our own lives, things kind of ebb and flow," Morris-Frazier said. “So there will be times when things are more stable and seem a bit more predictable, and then there's times even in our lives, when things can become a bit more chaotic.”
In addition to police being involved in connecting people to caregivers, a separate function of the program developed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd is being called "Let Everyone Advance with Dignity." This change opens the channels of communication between the community and case managers allowing citizens the ability to refer people to LEAD in addition to law enforcement.
One of the program's major benefits, according to Cox, is that it eliminates "silos" in the criminal justice system. Often people working within the system, like prosecutors, law enforcement and public defenders, do not interact or have conversations with each other about how a case might affect a person.
LEAD employs an operational work group that consists of those stakeholders coming together for "problem solving" meetings and updates with case managers. This is done to help coordinate the possible cases a LEAD participant may have with their care plan, in hopes of keeping progress moving forward.
"That way if this person is about to get housing, or if they're about to go to treatment, we don't sentence them into jail when we know that if we put them in jail, they're going to lose that voucher or they're going to lose that opportunity to go to treatment,” he said.
A long road to realizing the program
The conversation for the Oklahoma area is in its earliest stages, Brown said. With a need for buy-in from the community, law enforcement, service providers, businesses and members of the court system, there are a lot of people to bring to the table.
Recognizing that officer buy-in would be important, but that sometimes people hand ideas to the higher ups without ever consulting the police who will implement policies, Brown began to facilitate conversations with Oklahoma City Police Chief Wade Gourley and division heads throughout the department.
“You've really got to engage officers early on in that process, so they have a clear understanding what this is,” she said. “Officers want another tool in their toolkit.”
Brown said LEAD is designed to offer that without numerous additional steps and provides a "smooth transition" from officers to case managers. According to the program website, a possible positive outcome of LEAD is "reconciliation and healing" in relationships between police and communities, an effort police in the city have been working on.
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“The other thing is not only, you know, jail population going down, but as people begin to see the police in the community, diverting people, making that smooth hand off, that's how trust is built,” Brown said.
Brown also brought the group to an Oklahoma City University School of Law conference on criminal justice and hosted a presentation for the public while Morris-Frazier and Cox were in town recently.
She is beginning to look at options for a site visit to a current LEAD program for herself and others to identify exactly how the system would work in Oklahoma. Once she has what she sees as true commitment from other stakeholders, Brown said she will bring Morris-Frazier and Cox back in for their expertise and guidance.
"The next thing would be to identify a project manager,” she said. “You need one of those to kind of rein everyone in. That person is not tied to any one office so that way they can’t be swayed one way or the other.”
Brown said there is still work to be done to identify all of the resources available locally to meet the various behavioral health, trauma, poverty and other needs the program would address as well. Brown also plans to seek more community input as she moves the process along, through meetings and other opportunities for dialogue.