[Updated 1/14/20]
Mayor Durkan is withholding funding for the LEAD program pending program evaluation. We sincerely hope that the Seattle LEAD program is not simply an emerging practice, but a highly effective practice. The difference between the two is that effective practices have ongoing, systemic measurements built into the program, which Seattle LEAD, no longer a “pilot” since its launch in 2011, is missing.
Please contact the mayor and the city council in support of withholding further funding until program goals and measurements against those goals are in place. You will have the most impact by calling your city council representative. See the sample letter below as well as additional questions at the end of this article. Email addresses to copy:
Our Member’s Letter
Dear Mayor Durkan,
Thank you for withholding the city council’s proposed increase in LEAD funding. I have long been concerned about the wholesale support for LEAD in the absence of performance metrics or evidence that the program is meeting its goals of reducing crime and improving public safety.
Repeated questions from citizens about LEAD’s efficacy have been met with assertions that the program can’t be properly evaluated unless it’s more broadly scaled. LEAD has been operating in Seattle for nine years and has enrolled more than 750 participants; it seems reasonable to expect that it should be able to demonstrate by now that it is meeting its stated goals and achieving favorable outcomes for participants and the broader community, but that evidence does not appear to exist. The studies on LEAD are based on a data set from 2011 to 2014; a great deal has changed since then in light of the opioid epidemic, the growing meth crisis, policies around prosecution for drug possession, increased homelessness, police staffing levels and other factors.
As Deputy Mayor Fong noted in a letter to Councilmember Bagshaw in October, the city has increased LEAD funding by more than 600 percent since 2015, a staggering amount for a program that is not supported by current research and whose outcomes have not been adequately assessed. Deputy Mayor Fong notes that LEAD “has thus far been unable to provide the city with recidivism data or overall impacts and criminal justice outcomes. This is because LEAD does not track information related to arrests by police officers, filings and court appearances, nor any subsequent interactions with jail by their program participants.” This is fundamental information one would expect LEAD to be collecting.
I am glad that there will finally be an independent evaluation of LEAD, and I hope that assessment will include looking at the program’s impact not just on participants but also on the communities where it has been implemented. The concept of harm reduction should be broadened to include neighborhoods and the broader community, not just individuals.
I fully support diversion programs for low-level and non-violent offenders but believe such efforts must demonstrate results both for participants and the community at large. Please do not approve additional funding for LEAD without greater accountability from the program and clear performance metrics tied to future funding.
Sincerely,
Deborah Bach, Ballard resident
Questions for Discussion with Your Council Member
- At what tipping point will Seattle see evidence of improvements to community safety from LEAD? Is the entire focus on individual harm reduction or will the changes be more widely “felt” by neighborhoods with LEAD that are being profoundly impacted by persistent shoplifting, behavioral outbursts, drug dealing/use, and other impacts from “low level” offenders.
- How many baselines have shifted since the original 2011-2014 study period? Prosecution limits? Severity/scope of opioid/meth epidemic? Spike in unsheltered homelessness? Intensity of police reform politics and impacts on retention/recruitment/hiring? How relevant are the data and peer reviews when Seattle has changed so significantly in such a short period of time and the original geographic scope was so limited (one precinct with good response times)?
- In the north end, Seattle has no framework for involving “neighborhood leaders” or community groups around public safety. Other than NPAC (which covers 40% of the city’s geography), programmatic public safety outreach/leadership is intentionally diffuse – no neighborhood-based meetings or political accountability. For example, from Ballard, where LEAD rolled out in summer 2018, how do we engage with LEAD? Over one year in, no visibility/outreach/reporting for regular community members.
- How does LEAD compare to other approaches that are showing very promising outcomes (with up to date data), e.g., Snohomish, Benton, and Lewis counties? Why is data for LEAD so hard to produce and publicly share as a standard part of the program?
- Why is it so hard to find reporting on LEAD implementations in other jurisdictions? What are the similarities and differences and how do they impact the outcomes for participants and neighborhoods/cities? Is Seattle’s uniquely “hands-off” and understaffed policing producing different outcomes than other less politicized and better-resourced cities?
- Is it helping or hurting to have an echo chamber of leadership in Seattle? Other than Mayor Durkan, are there any open-minded, critical thinkers examining the program and evaluating other approaches? Will this benefit Seattle in the long run or blind us to safely and effectively evolving the program? With the millions more in local funding, what is the cost/benefit analysis in terms of anticipated community outcomes (improvements in property crime impacts?). How does this compare to non-LEAD approaches in other Washington counties (e.g., Snohomish, Benton, Lewis)?
Response from the Public Defender Association (defender.org):
We appreciate the additional information provided by Lisa Daugaard of the Public Defender Association (PDA), which we have summarized here.
- LEAD doesn’t possess data on new arrests or jail bookings because SPD and the Sheriff legally cannot share those in bulk with us and don’t have the manpower to hand-screen each record to make sure disclosure complies with the Criminal Records Privacy Act — but the Mayor’s Office presumably could get those records from SPD, their own department.
- The King County Jail doesn’t have analyst capacity to produce LEAD participants’ booking rates as a special project, which is again why we have sought funding for a database that could automate such work. Given our strong track record of independent and rigorous evaluation, strongly positive results in that evaluation, and ongoing efforts to achieve data analytics capacity that would produce what you seek — and the lack of support for that in local government, such that we had to turn to the private sector.
- LEAD is getting people who are highly marginalized and known to commit crimes into substance use treatment, mental health treatment and housing in large numbers.
- Others around the country and locally who seek to invest only in data-driven approaches have over and over again identified LEAD as among the strongest models in the field (the Ballmer Group, Microsoft, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National Criminal Justice Association), and police officers vote with their feet in making heavy use of the program, which they are not required to do.
- LEAD will at most be able to operate in one or two neighborhoods without the funding the Council added.
- An analysis of community-level impact is only possible when LEAD is operating at scale, and that is only scheduled to happen soon in Burien. Therefore, we proposed and the UW Evans School accepted a community-level impact study in Burien. That won’t be finished for three years.
Speak Out Seattle’s Response to the PDA:
Speak Out Seattle remains a strong supporter of programs such as LEAD that are designed to reduce harm to individuals engaged in crime and substance abuse as well as those who are suffering from mental illness or are homeless.
We appreciate the additional information on referrals and outcomes, but the essential question still remains unanswered: How do we know the LEAD program is protecting the general public from harm?
Speak Out Seattle does not support the expansion of any public safety program that cannot show, with good data, that it is protecting the public from harm. The data needs to be collected and the LEAD program must prove itself on a smaller scale before an entire city is asked to participate in a large scale social experiment that promises harm reduction for offenders but is unable to show that the general public will not be harmed in the process.
Collecting, analyzing and presenting data needs to be an essential part of LEAD’s ongoing operation, not something that is dependent on scaling up or added later. Other outstanding questions are outlined above; in addition to good data, we must also have a scalable framework for community involvement and comparative/transparent information shared from other jurisdictions.
Links
Deputy Mayor Fong’s letter to city council 10/29/19:
