DRUG PROGRAM A GOOD ALTERNATIVE TO LOCKUP

Some smart people in King County are experimenting with breaking old,
ineffective strategies in search of solutions to drug-related crime.
They've started a program called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD
).

Jerry Large Seattle Times staff columnist Related Jerry Large's
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Some smart people in King County are experimenting with breaking old,
ineffective strategies in search of solutions to drug-related crime.

They've started a program called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion
(LEAD). Instead of arresting the same people over and over for drug
dealing, drug use and drug-related prostitution, LEAD will try to get
low-level offenders off that merry-go-round and save us all some
trouble and money.

Go fish last Thursday's paper out of the recycle bin or go to the Web
and read the story by crime team reporter Sara Jean Green
(seati.ms/q0htKf). The details are all there, I just want to praise
the idea.

Prosecutors, police, public defenders, the ACLU, neighborhood and
business associations, and government have united to create LEAD
because they agree that what we've been doing doesn't work.

Green quoted Seattle Police Department spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb:
"Officers are frustrated arresting the same people over and over again.
We know it's not working."

Under the pilot program, police will be able to offer a few people an
alternative to being arrested. It's especially important that
alternatives will be tailored to the individual. It could be drug
treatment, education, help getting housing. Having another way to make
money helps, too =C2-- you know, a job.

Most people know by now that poverty, homelessness, a lack of
education can all nudge some people toward selling or using drugs.

Addressing the underlying causes and breaking the cycle would be a lot
cheaper than repeated arrest, prosecution and imprisonment.

Of course, most poor people aren't part of that cycle and plenty of
people with more money use drugs, though they tend not to wind up in
jail.

Lisa Daugaard, Defender Association deputy director, told Green that
LEAD will try to give more young people the same opportunity to change
their paths as is available to middle-class kids whose parents have
the resources to help get them off drugs.

The Defender Association, which has an intimate view of the lives of
people arrested and prosecuted for drug-related crimes, made this new
approach happen.

Defenders saw the huge racial disparities, and they recognized the
many factors that lead people to crime and keep them at it even in the
face of strict enforcement.

The new program will fight crime by helping people get off the track
they are on.

LEAD is the first program of its kind in the nation, but the
realization that enforcement alone is not the answer is reflected in
the growth of other groups as well.

That's why so many law-enforcement officials around the country are
members of "Fight Crime: Invest in Kids." The nonprofit is nonpartisan
and evidence-based. And what the evidence shows is that giving kids a
good start in life cuts crime and saves tax dollars.

We are piecing things together, bit by bit, and starting to ask the
right kinds of questions. What is our ultimate goal and what is the
least painful, most efficient way to get there?

If our goal is punishment, we can keep locking people up. If our goal
is a safer community and more productive citizens, then we have to do
some things differently. We may even eventually come to see drug abuse
as a health problem rather than a criminal matter.

LEAD is just a start, a worthwhile step away from a rut that has led
us to bulging prisons, a mistrust of police and an endless stream of
lost lives.

The leaders of this new effort have acknowledged from the outset that
this strategy won't work for everyone, and that the particulars will
have to be tweaked as they go along. After all, they're smart enough
not to stick with anything that's not working.

There's a quotation from Winston Churchill that I keep coming across
lately: "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing ...
after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

Maybe someday that won't be true, but at least on one significant
issue, we are moving finally toward the right thing.