State contract will create Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program in Thurston County

Thurston County officials approved a contract between the county and the Washington State Health Care Authority to establish a Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, which diverts non-violent offenders to social resources rather than incarceration.

Commissioner Tye Menser, when noting a large percentage of inmates in the county jail experience mental health issues, said he and local justice officials have wanted to prevent the jail from being a “default mental health hospital.”

“And this is a big step, I think, in that direction,” he said.

The contract between the state and the county will provide up to $925,593 to establish a LEAD program. That’s enough to hire six full-time employees to provide case management services and to operate a community advisory board, said Mary Ann O’Garro, who coordinated with the state on behalf of the county. As it stands, the contract ends on June 30, 2021, but the county has the option to renew it  through 2023.

How diversion works

LEAD is a nationally-recognized model of justice, meant to divert non-violent offenders away from incarceration.

“In lieu of the normal criminal justice system cycle — booking, detention, prosecution, conviction, incarceration — individuals are instead referred into a trauma-informed intensive case-management program where the individual receives a wide range of support services, often including transitional and permanent housing and/or drug treatment,” reads a passage on the national LEAD website.

LEAD allows enforcement officers the option to put someone accused of a nonviolent crime in contact with a case manager, rather then sending them to jail. From there, the case manager attempts to help the person receive social services they require.

Similar to Olympia Community Court

A similar program in Olympia recently received recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice in the form of a $400,000 grant. (See sidebar story.) Olympia Community Court has provided people accused of crimes with mental health and addiction treatment and housing resources since its inception in 2016. Court officials have reported seeing a large reduction in recidivism among its graduates. Only 19 percent of court graduates have been convicted of additional crimes, compared to an average 45 to 50 percent recidivism rate in other jurisdictions.

It's a pilot program

From the state’s perspective, Thurston County's new LEAD program is a pilot. A limited number of jurisdictions have been granted funds to start up their own LEAD programs. It was a highly competitive process, said Assistant County Manager Robin Campbell, during a meeting on Tuesday. It wasn’t a sure-fire bet that Thurston County would be awarded the contract.

The program’s progress will be tracked by the state to determine whether additional resources should be spent on creating more LEAD programs.

Thurston County Prosecutor Jon Tunheim, a proponent of LEAD, said during a Board of County Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, that King County has a LEAD program. Its success caught the eye of state officials, who in turn created the grant program to establish more LEAD programs.

Tunheim met with Sheriff John Snaza and Public Health and Social Services Director Schelli Slaughter, and decided to work together to apply for the grant.

Tunheim said they had tried unsuccessfully to launch a similar program years prior, using Medicaid funds — the only source of funding they had.

“For a variety of reasons, it turned out that was not a good match, and we could not make that work effectively for law enforcement,” he said.

He added later: “I believe it really is, in my view, one of the most critical strategies that we can enact right now to try to divert people out of the criminal justice system that don’t need to be there, help manage our jail population and our criminal justice and court system.”