Home      Login

Abstract: 

In response to the opioid overdose crisis, one large urban county in the U.S. Midwest adopted and implemented a Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) pilot program that was evaluated by researchers from a local university. This article reports program activities and client outcomes from that evaluation. The LEAD team attempted to recruit and contact 93 eligible individuals to connect them to the program to complete an initial assessment and continue with case management services. Ultimately 44 individuals completed their initial assessment; 34.1% (n = 15) were still receiving case management services or had successfully completed their case management plan by the end of the program; 9.1% (n = 4) were referred out from the LEAD program to another provider; 52.3% (n = 23) withdrew from the program after their initial assessment; and 4.5 % (n = 2) became deceased after their assessment. The case manager made a total of 852 contact attempts across these individual groups during their varied tenures in the LEAD pilot program; 65% of these contact attempts resulted in a successful interaction with the client. The evaluation results add to a growing body of research on LEAD, and insights gleaned from program implementation observations provide important lessons for other jurisdictions wishing to implement this model.

Keywords: Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) model, LEAD implementation, criminal justice system diversion, systemic harm reduction, case management

Affiliations:  1: University of Cincinnati; 2: University of Cincinnati; 3: University of Cincinnati; 4: University of Cincinnati; 5: Hamilton County (Ohio) Office of Addiction Response.