As city and county commissioners discuss ways to deal with the over-population of the Douglas County Jail and community mental health issues, a new option may become a topic of conversation after four community leaders attended a national conference recently.

On July 1-2, Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson, Lawrence Mayor Jeremy Farmer, Douglas County Sheriff Ken McGovern and Sgt. David Hogue attended a conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., on “Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion,” or LEAD.

The LEAD program began in Seattle in 2011 “in an attempt to move away from the War on Drugs paradigm,” according to LEAD King County (Washington.) LEAD is a pre-booking diversion program that allows law enforcement to assess whether those accused of low-level drug crimes would be better served by receiving addiction treatment and community-based services rather than prosecution and jail time.

If officers decide a person would be better served elsewhere, they can refer the offender to the diversion program, according to LEAD King County. Prosecutors can also use discretion on whether to prosecute people who’ve been arrested or place them in the LEAD program.

Farmer said that if the program came to Lawrence, it could also address offenders who have mental illness issues as the underlying reasons for their crimes. Lawrence police officers are already scheduled to receive “crisis intervention training” to de-escalate mental illness situations this fall. Farmer said part of that training will be “giving tools to officers to make those decisions on whether people should be taken to jail.”

The idea is to treat the underlying problem beneath addicts’ crimes in hopes to stop the revolving door of low-level drug offenders in the jail, Branson said.

“(Presenters at the conference) talked about ‘criminalizing addiction’ while resources would be much better spent getting (drug addicts) treatment and help,” Branson said. “It focuses on treatment versus just incarceration.”

Branson said his office has been researching diversion programs across the nation since about January, and happened on the LEAD program about three weeks before the conference. Branson called it a “stroke of luck” that the conference was coming up, and a LEAD donor paid for Branson, McGovern, Hogue and Farmer’s airfare and hotels.

The ideal outcome, if implemented, is “to have fewer incarcerations for nonviolent offenders that would benefit from treatment or rehabilitation ultimately to reduce future criminal conduct,” Branson said. “This is really a crime-prevention tool.”

Farmer said that after attending the conference, he thinks that “helping people work through their issues makes communities healthier and safer.”

“The War on Drugs says, ‘put ( drug addicts) in jail, lock ’em up and throw away the key,'” Farmer said. “That exacerbated the higher jail population and more people are in need of case management and treatment.”

The Seattle LEAD program also focused on helping women in prostitution receive support, rather than incarceration, lowering recidivism. While that problem isn’t as prevalent in Lawrence, the program can also be tweaked to cater to each community, Branson said. LEAD offers a guideline, but it’s not a “one size fits all.”

“We have a high student and high transient population,” Branson said, “but there are still concepts there we can pull in for us. We can focus on conduct we think is going to be influenced or changeable by going through a program like this.”

But don’t think all drug offenders are going to be running the streets of Lawrence if LEAD is implemented here. Many offenders, such as violent offenders or those who commit drug crimes for reasons other than addiction, wouldn’t be eligible for LEAD, Branson said.

“People with drug possession who are just opposed to a particular substance being outlawed — it won’t have any effects on them,” Branson said.

Branson said that the program in Seattle was cost comparable to incarcerating offenders. And after three years in place in Seattle, the program organizers found that LEAD participants were 58 percent less likely to re-offend than a “control group” of offenders who “went through ‘system as usual’ criminal justice processing,” according to LEAD King County.

“There’s a willingness there in our community and law enforcement on how we can turn around and do this smarter,” Branson said. “Rather than bankrupting the community by incarcerating people, do something more realistic and in line with the crimes that have been committed.”

Farmer said that what he liked about LEAD was that the treatment agencies were all homegrown. The program asked social service agencies to submit proposals of how much they’d charge the city for their services — like Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center in Lawrence — and LEAD, in turn, selected the most financially sound and service-appropriate options.

“There are no up-front infrastructure fees. There’s no need for a drug court. The case is dropped and dismissed,” Farmer said. “The part I like is utilizing people in the community already providing services.”

A decision on whether to implement the program is still a long way off, Branson said. For now, the four will be spending time digesting what they learned from the conference and come together in the future for further discussion.