Law Enforcement Assisted Deflection (LEAD)

When an officer has probable cause for arrest, arrest Deflection gives officers the opportunity to refer people to LEAD via a warm hand-off to a LEAD case manager, instead of jailing them on divertible charges. Ideally, this warm handoff can occur within 30 minutes, though this can be difficult in remote areas.

Law enforcement has become a catch-all response Over the years, law enforcement and the 911 emergency system have become a catch-all response to all kinds of problems in the United States, for everything from life-threatening emergencies to reports of people sleeping in doorways or disrupting a business. In many cases, such as when physical safety is threatened, police response may be necessary and appropriate.

But as officers know firsthand, when it comes to people whose unlawful or problematic conduct stems from unmet behavioral health needs, booking them into jail and sending them to court over and over doesn’t cause any real change.

So communities are left to ask: What can we do instead? Without a solid answer, there is a public expectation of action from police–even when they don’t hold the needed tools to actually make a difference in the situation beyond immediately removing the person from where they were encountered.

Based on its own local needs and priorities, each LEAD site’s PCG determines the unlawful conduct they wish to make eligible for Deflection. Over time, the PCG can also expand the array of charges appropriate for deflection.

When LEAD was originally developed in Seattle, for example, the only divertible charges were low-level drug use, possession, or subsistence-level drug sales, along with prostitution. Over time, however, many jurisdictions (including Seattle) expanded the array of divertible charges to include other offenses for which people with unmet behavioral health needs are commonly arrested.

This process to determine divertible charges is an essential element of local self-determination for LEAD sites, to ensure that the divertible charges reflect local priorities and are supported by local stakeholders.

Thus, in developing eligibility criteria, it is essential to solicit widespread input from various stakeholders – including the criminal legal system, businesses, health systems, direct-service providers, and advocacy groups – and analyze local data to identify the problematic or unlawful conduct that your LEAD initiative hopes to address.

Social contact referrals recognize that law enforcement officers may have frequent and repeated contact with people in their precincts who chronically commit law violations due to unmet behavioral health needs and/or income instability. Social contact referrals allow officers to proactively refer these individuals to LEAD without making an arrest.

Such referrals may be made pre-arrest (officers may have probable cause to arrest but decide on another path), or they can be offered in the course of ordinary contact with individuals, rather than in response to any particular incident.

To avoid net-widening, individuals referred into LEAD via social contact referrals should be generally known to be people who chronically commit law violations, and they must face no consequences if they decline to enroll.