Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program has been adopted by localities nationwide.
minute read
A Seattle criminal justice diversion program that became a model for jurisdictions across the United States was promoted with claims of dramatically reducing arrests and improving participants’ lives. However, a new report says that not only were widely cited claims of major reductions in arrests and felony charges substantially overstated, but participants were three times more likely to end up dead than employed.
For more than a decade, governments across the United States have been told that Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program produced remarkable results: participants were 58 percent less likely to be arrested, felony charges fell 39 percent, and employment and housing outcomes dramatically improved.
A new national review says those claims bear little resemblance to what actually happened.
The August 2026 National Retraction Brief, authored by Washington Policy Center Public Safety Solutions Policy Director Eric Zimmerman, alleges that LEAD’s foundational research was repeatedly misrepresented as the Seattle-born program expanded across the country, helping influence legislation, government grants, municipal budgets and other public and private funding in more than 20 states.
Among 176 LEAD participants examined for employment outcomes, 91 percent remained unemployed on average. The report contrasts those results with 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) research tracking men after release from at least six months of incarceration. According to the BLS comparison cited in the report, 33.9 percent were employed within one week of release, and 50.3 percent were employed by week ten.
According to the report, three times as many LEAD participants died as the estimated number who gained employment during the study period.
LEAD research has been promoted with claims that participants’ “odds of being housed increased 89%” or that participants were “89% more likely to obtain permanent housing during the follow-up.” Of 146 participants who were unhoused when they entered LEAD, an estimated average of 19 were permanently housed in a given month during the 18-month follow-up period, equivalent to approximately 13 percent of those entering without permanent housing.
Shelter placement performed somewhat better, with an estimated average of 31 participants appearing to be sheltered in a given month. Even combining shelter and permanent housing, however, the report calculates that LEAD achieved only a 35 percent success rate in connecting initially unhoused participants with either shelter or permanent housing.
There was another major limitation: that portion of the LEAD study did not use a control group. The report therefore compares the results with federal housing data from King County over roughly the same period. The county’s sheltered-homelessness rate declined slightly, from 70.5 percent in 2012 to 69.4 percent in 2014.
Zimmerman concludes that connecting participants to shelter and housing may nevertheless represent LEAD’s most plausible treatment effect beyond reducing contact with the criminal justice system, arguing the program could potentially be more accurately understood as a point-of-arrest intake method for “Housing First” programs.
Even on permanent housing, the number of participants who died was approximately half the estimated number entering permanent housing during the study period.
Despite the abysmal results of the program, LEAD was being promoted locally and nationally using dramatically different numbers, including that participants were “58% less likely to be arrested.” Zimmerman’s report argues that researchers reported an odds ratio that was subsequently promoted as a 58 percent reduction in arrests, crime, or recidivism.
The report identifies similar problems with claims that LEAD reduced felony charges by 39 percent and improved employment outcomes by 46 percent, arguing that promoters repeatedly confused mathematical concepts including odds, probability, and absolute versus relative change.
For arrests, the report identifies an unadjusted 22-percentage-point difference between LEAD participants and the control group after entry. Zimmerman cautions that even that difference cannot reliably be attributed to LEAD because the groups experienced different recruitment practices, policing patterns, timelines and geographic conditions. LEAD participants also appear to have benefited from reductions or dismissals of charges that affected subsequent warrant arrests in ways the control group did not.
According to the report, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was an “unblinded operational partner,” and prosecutors could take LEAD participation and progress into account when determining whether and when to file felony charges.
The report argues that the 11-percentage-point unadjusted difference in felony rates cannot be cleanly attributed to LEAD changing participants’ criminal behavior because the justice system itself treated LEAD participants differently.
Despite the problems, LEAD expanded far beyond Washington after its Seattle launch. Santa Fe, New Mexico, became one of the earliest jurisdictions to replicate the model, followed by Albany, New York, and Fayetteville, North Carolina. LEAD programs or pilots were subsequently established in jurisdictions including Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; Huntington and Charleston, West Virginia; and communities in New Jersey and Maine.
North Carolina has continued expanding the model, announcing $1.5 million in funding in March 2026 for LEAD programs involving Fayetteville, Albemarle, and Greensboro, as well as the counties of Gaston, New Hanover, Robeson, and Harnett.
Statistics originating with Seattle’s program did not remain local as LEAD developed into a nationally replicated criminal justice model. Versions of the disputed claims appeared in materials from police departments, universities, prosecutors, state governments, medical and criminal justice publications and organizations promoting LEAD.
The report documents versions of the “58 percent” claim appearing in sources including the Seattle Police Department, University of Washington, LEAD Seattle/King County, Duke Law School, Michigan State Police, New Mexico State Legislature, National Association of Counties, American Journal of Public Health and King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Other sources described the finding even more broadly as LEAD participants having 58 percent fewer arrests, recidivism or crime, according to the report. Those sources included an American Journal of Criminal Justice article, New York State Department of Health materials, and organizations in Maryland and North Carolina.
The report traces the statistical problem back to the initial promotion of LEAD research in 2015, including press releases from the Seattle Police Department and University of Washington, saying a finding concerning the odds of arrest was subsequently translated into claims about probability and absolute percentage changes.
The result, Zimmerman argues, was that policymakers around the country were making decisions about an allegedly “evidence-based” criminal justice program using statistics that substantially exaggerated what the underlying research could prove.
The report says those differences could have been material to legislative votes, government appropriations and competitive grants, where stronger claims of program performance could affect funding decisions.
Claims originating from one flawed Seattle study became part of the evidence used to promote the model far beyond Washington. When California lawmakers considered legislation establishing LEAD pilot programs, a legislative analysis cited the Seattle evaluation as finding that participants were “58% less likely to be arrested” than members of the control group. California subsequently authorized LEAD pilots, including programs in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Albany, New York, which launched LEAD in 2016, has similarly cited Seattle’s results while operating its own version of the diversion model.
In North Carolina, Fayetteville launched an early program, and the state has continued putting public money behind expansion of the model. Versions of the disputed Seattle statistics appeared in North Carolina government and policy materials describing LEAD’s evidence base.
Zimmerman is now calling for governments already operating LEAD to pause expansion and submit the programs to independent external audits. The report recommends that policymakers evaluate alternatives on a case-by-case basis, including baseline criminal justice responses and diversion tied to compliance or residential treatment.
It also advocates increased investment in rehabilitative jail programs and post-release support, including vocational education, financial literacy, life-skills training, and community, peer and accountability-based support.
For drug offenses, the report recommends strengthening frameworks that increase the certainty of arrest, prosecution and incarceration while simultaneously offering compliance-based avenues for reduced sentences, early release or intermittent confinement.
Jurisdictions currently considering LEAD, meanwhile, should suspend adoption until rigorous evidence demonstrating real-world participant outcomes is available, according to the report.
Zimmerman also calls for published scholarship that inadvertently repeated inaccurate descriptions of LEAD research to annotate those claims.
The report argues that LEAD and other diversion programs should establish measurable goals and publicly report whether participants are actually improving. The recommended metrics include participant mortality, loss to follow-up, reductions in drug use, abstinence, employment, income growth, housing independence, and longevity in permanent supportive housing.
For more than a decade, governments across the United States have been told that Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program produced remarkable results: participants were 58 percent less likely to be arrested, felony charges fell 39 percent, and employment and housing outcomes dramatically improved.
A new national review says those claims bear little resemblance to what actually happened.
The August 2026 National Retraction Brief, authored by Washington Policy Center Public Safety Solutions Policy Director Eric Zimmerman, alleges that LEAD’s foundational research was repeatedly misrepresented as the Seattle-born program expanded across the country, helping influence legislation, government grants, municipal budgets and other public and private funding in more than 20 states.
Among 176 LEAD participants examined for employment outcomes, 91 percent remained unemployed on average. The report contrasts those results with 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) research tracking men after release from at least six months of incarceration. According to the BLS comparison cited in the report, 33.9 percent were employed within one week of release, and 50.3 percent were employed by week ten.
According to the report, three times as many LEAD participants died as the estimated number who gained employment during the study period.
LEAD research has been promoted with claims that participants’ “odds of being housed increased 89%” or that participants were “89% more likely to obtain permanent housing during the follow-up.” Of 146 participants who were unhoused when they entered LEAD, an estimated average of 19 were permanently housed in a given month during the 18-month follow-up period, equivalent to approximately 13 percent of those entering without permanent housing.
Shelter placement performed somewhat better, with an estimated average of 31 participants appearing to be sheltered in a given month. Even combining shelter and permanent housing, however, the report calculates that LEAD achieved only a 35 percent success rate in connecting initially unhoused participants with either shelter or permanent housing.
There was another major limitation: that portion of the LEAD study did not use a control group. The report therefore compares the results with federal housing data from King County over roughly the same period. The county’s sheltered-homelessness rate declined slightly, from 70.5 percent in 2012 to 69.4 percent in 2014.
Zimmerman concludes that connecting participants to shelter and housing may nevertheless represent LEAD’s most plausible treatment effect beyond reducing contact with the criminal justice system, arguing the program could potentially be more accurately understood as a point-of-arrest intake method for “Housing First” programs.
Even on permanent housing, the number of participants who died was approximately half the estimated number entering permanent housing during the study period.
Despite the abysmal results of the program, LEAD was being promoted locally and nationally using dramatically different numbers, including that participants were “58% less likely to be arrested.” Zimmerman’s report argues that researchers reported an odds ratio that was subsequently promoted as a 58 percent reduction in arrests, crime, or recidivism.
The report identifies similar problems with claims that LEAD reduced felony charges by 39 percent and improved employment outcomes by 46 percent, arguing that promoters repeatedly confused mathematical concepts including odds, probability, and absolute versus relative change.
For arrests, the report identifies an unadjusted 22-percentage-point difference between LEAD participants and the control group after entry. Zimmerman cautions that even that difference cannot reliably be attributed to LEAD because the groups experienced different recruitment practices, policing patterns, timelines and geographic conditions. LEAD participants also appear to have benefited from reductions or dismissals of charges that affected subsequent warrant arrests in ways the control group did not.
According to the report, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was an “unblinded operational partner,” and prosecutors could take LEAD participation and progress into account when determining whether and when to file felony charges.
The report argues that the 11-percentage-point unadjusted difference in felony rates cannot be cleanly attributed to LEAD changing participants’ criminal behavior because the justice system itself treated LEAD participants differently.
Despite the problems, LEAD expanded far beyond Washington after its Seattle launch. Santa Fe, New Mexico, became one of the earliest jurisdictions to replicate the model, followed by Albany, New York, and Fayetteville, North Carolina. LEAD programs or pilots were subsequently established in jurisdictions including Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; Huntington and Charleston, West Virginia; and communities in New Jersey and Maine.
North Carolina has continued expanding the model, announcing $1.5 million in funding in March 2026 for LEAD programs involving Fayetteville, Albemarle, and Greensboro, as well as the counties of Gaston, New Hanover, Robeson, and Harnett.
Statistics originating with Seattle’s program did not remain local as LEAD developed into a nationally replicated criminal justice model. Versions of the disputed claims appeared in materials from police departments, universities, prosecutors, state governments, medical and criminal justice publications and organizations promoting LEAD.
The report documents versions of the “58 percent” claim appearing in sources including the Seattle Police Department, University of Washington, LEAD Seattle/King County, Duke Law School, Michigan State Police, New Mexico State Legislature, National Association of Counties, American Journal of Public Health and King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Other sources described the finding even more broadly as LEAD participants having 58 percent fewer arrests, recidivism or crime, according to the report. Those sources included an American Journal of Criminal Justice article, New York State Department of Health materials, and organizations in Maryland and North Carolina.
The report traces the statistical problem back to the initial promotion of LEAD research in 2015, including press releases from the Seattle Police Department and University of Washington, saying a finding concerning the odds of arrest was subsequently translated into claims about probability and absolute percentage changes.
The result, Zimmerman argues, was that policymakers around the country were making decisions about an allegedly “evidence-based” criminal justice program using statistics that substantially exaggerated what the underlying research could prove.
The report says those differences could have been material to legislative votes, government appropriations and competitive grants, where stronger claims of program performance could affect funding decisions.
Claims originating from one flawed Seattle study became part of the evidence used to promote the model far beyond Washington. When California lawmakers considered legislation establishing LEAD pilot programs, a legislative analysis cited the Seattle evaluation as finding that participants were “58% less likely to be arrested” than members of the control group. California subsequently authorized LEAD pilots, including programs in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Albany, New York, which launched LEAD in 2016, has similarly cited Seattle’s results while operating its own version of the diversion model.
In North Carolina, Fayetteville launched an early program, and the state has continued putting public money behind expansion of the model. Versions of the disputed Seattle statistics appeared in North Carolina government and policy materials describing LEAD’s evidence base.
Zimmerman is now calling for governments already operating LEAD to pause expansion and submit the programs to independent external audits. The report recommends that policymakers evaluate alternatives on a case-by-case basis, including baseline criminal justice responses and diversion tied to compliance or residential treatment.
It also advocates increased investment in rehabilitative jail programs and post-release support, including vocational education, financial literacy, life-skills training, and community, peer and accountability-based support.
For drug offenses, the report recommends strengthening frameworks that increase the certainty of arrest, prosecution and incarceration while simultaneously offering compliance-based avenues for reduced sentences, early release or intermittent confinement.
Jurisdictions currently considering LEAD, meanwhile, should suspend adoption until rigorous evidence demonstrating real-world participant outcomes is available, according to the report.
Zimmerman also calls for published scholarship that inadvertently repeated inaccurate descriptions of LEAD research to annotate those claims.
The report argues that LEAD and other diversion programs should establish measurable goals and publicly report whether participants are actually improving. The recommended metrics include participant mortality, loss to follow-up, reductions in drug use, abstinence, employment, income growth, housing independence, and longevity in permanent supportive housing.
Sign in to comment
Powered by The Post Millennial CMS™ Comments
Join and support independent free thinkers!
We’re independent and can’t be cancelled. The establishment media is increasingly dedicated to divisive cancel culture, corporate wokeism, and political correctness, all while covering up corruption from the corridors of power. The need for fact-based journalism and thoughtful analysis has never been greater. When you support The Post Millennial, you support freedom of the press at a time when it's under direct attack. Join the ranks of independent, free thinkers by supporting us today for as little as $1.
Remind me next month
To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our Privacy Policy
Comments