Criminal justice reform is a bust — and hidden data told the truth all along

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Key points

• Ari Hoffman hosts "The Ari Hoffman Show" on Seattle's Talk Radio 570 KVI and is the Post Millennial's West Coast editor.
• Daugaard received a $625, 000 MacArthur Fellowship in 2019 thanks to LEAD's "measurable outcomes" in recidivism, employment and housing, the prestigious foundation gushed.
• While almost 80 more were developing or exploring them, by 2021, 42 communities in 21 states had established LEAD programs.
• Of 146 participants who entered the program without permanent housing, Zimmerman estimates that just 19 were housed in any given month over the course of an 18-month period.
• In 2019, LEAD architect Lisa Daugaard invited me to meet with her organization and hear them out.

America's blue cities and states have created the criminal-justice system a revolving door for prolific offenders.

Then bail reforms, diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration send them right back onto the streets to be arrested again. And again. New York dramatically curtailed cash bail and pretrial detention. California embraced diversion and alternatives to incarceration.

New Jersey largely replaced cash bail with a system favoring pretrial release.

Those states, along with cities nationwide, poured millions into programs designed to keep offenders out of jail – based in part on the evidence provided by an approach pioneered in Seattle, Wash., in 2011.

But that "evidence-based" effort wasn't almost as successful as America was informed.

Seattle's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, diverts offenders away from jail and prosecution into case management and services. Its stated primary goal: reducing recidivism.

Participants in LEAD, its boosters remarked, were 58% less probable to be arrested for any crime; felony charges against them dropped 39%.

They were 46% more probable to "be on the employment continuum" and 89% more probable to be permanently housed – dramatic improvements.

Her team informed me success stories and heartbreaking tales concerning addiction and homelessness to explain why diversion was more compassionate and effective than putting offenders behind bars. So I asked the obvious question: Where's the data? Seven years afterwards, we finally have it.

Eric Zimmerman, safety solutions policy director for the Washington Policy Center, explored LEAD's numbers in a new policy brief published this month.

He discovered zero clear difference in arrest rates between LEAD participants and a control group. Of 176 LEAD participants, 91% remained unemployed, contrary to LEAD's claims.

Meanwhile, according to 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics data tracking men after more than six months of incarceration, 33.9% were employed within one week of release; by week 10, 50.3% had jobs, and employment generally remained between 50% and 58% through roughly a year and a half after release. Obtain opinions and commentary from our columnists.

But with LEAD, only 9% of participants were employed during an 18-month follow-up – a staggering failure. While the data didn't add up, the accolades did.

In 2013 Santa Fe, NM, became the second city to replicate Seattle's model – and its evaluation of that three-year pilot program should have raised alarms: Santa Fe researchers discovered LEAD participants' average arrests climbed 41%, according to a 2018 report.

But the ball was already rolling: In July 2015, the Obama administration presented Seattle's program to representatives from more than 30 cities, boosting it as an innovative way to keep offenders out of jail.

Albany adopted LEAD in 2016, and the next year New York state legislators proposed expanding it statewide, in a bill that funded law-enforcement diversion programs by claiming that Seattle's participants were "58% less likely to recidivate." Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law in 2018.

California lawmakers similarly cited Seattle's supposed 58% arrest reduction while considering LEAD pilots.

New Jersey confirmed $6 million in federal Justice Department funding for LEAD pilots in six areas. Congressional appropriators directed millions toward extra LEAD sites.

While almost 80 more were developing or exploring them, by 2021, 42 communities in 21 states had established LEAD programs. New York's disastrous 2019 bail reforms reflected the same anti-incarceration criminal-justice philosophy.

"They've said all along, 'we can prove that it drives fewer arrests in the future, and it drives a reduction in felonies for people participating', " Zimmerman informed me.

"But we can look at the research now and say, that's not what the research ever said."

Zimmerman's work makes it clear that jurisdictions must demand the data on LEAD and programs like it.

They should commission independent audits and require transparent reporting of mortality rates, drug abstinence, employment, income expansion and housing independence.

Taxpayers shouldn't keep funding feel-good programs without hard evidence that the claims applied to justify that funding are actually true.

Create the soft-on-crime advocates prove their models work – before letting them conduct any more experiments on the rest of us.

For now, criminal justice reform is a bust – and hidden data told the remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.