Since 2015, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) model has been hailed as a transformative miracle in criminal justice reform. Promoted as a humane, evidence-based alternative to the arrest and prosecution of people who use drugs, LEAD has spread across dozens of cities in more than twenty states. It has been celebrated at the White House, showcased to persuade lawmakers to codify drug-diversion programs into federal law, and buoyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal, state, local, and philanthropic funding.
However, this national movement was founded on a statistical illusion. A large majority of publicly distributed information regarding LEAD’s success over the last eleven years contains significant factual and statistical errors. These falsehoods, which drastically exaggerated the program’s evidence for improving lives and reducing crime, fueled LEAD’s passage through Congress with bipartisan support. But the truth hides behind its praised numbers and congressional favor: the program’s underlying research never showed a convincing reduction in crime, did not show people recovering from addiction, and never showed people becoming employed and self-sufficient.
For communities, taxpayers, and people who lost loved ones to drug-use, these findings expose a severe failure of public oversight and raise urgent questions about how a decade of justice reform was driven by inaccurate marketing rather than evidence.
The 58% Falsehood
The confusion traces back to the release of LEAD’s pilot evaluation in April 2015. Initial press releases and advertising proudly declared: “People in LEAD were 58% less likely than people in the control group to be arrested.” Subsequent materials claimed LEAD "reduced recidivism for all crimes by 58%."
These claims were false. They roughly doubled or tripled the study’s practical results by confusing an abstract statistical measure—a loosely described 58% odds change—with percentage and likelihood drops in real-world arrests. The difference in arrests for the LEAD group may have been a maximum of 22 percentage points, but even this figure is doubtful: the LEAD group showed no statistically significant differences in criminal charges and typical arrests—those without warrants. The study also acknowledges it was impacted by outside influences, differing law enforcement patterns, and an unblinded prosecutor's office that could strategically drop or reduce charges for LEAD participants.
Despite the study falling well short of gold-standard causal evidence, the “58%” myth became the bedrock of LEAD’s national expansion. The claim was continuously repeated by police departments, news outlets, state legislatures, medical journals, and sizeable group of U.S. Representatives and Senators.
The Human Toll
The most deeply concerning findings of our new LEAD analysis are those that lift away the research jargon to expose the real-world outcomes for the study’s participants. LEAD advocates continue to claim in 2026 that participants’ odds of being on an “employment continuum” increase by 46%. In the real world, this meant an estimated average of just three additional people found actual employment out of 176 participants. During the 18-month follow-up period, an estimated 91% of LEAD participants remained unemployed.
Similarly misleading numbers were used to market LEAD’s housing success. Advocates claimed participants were "89% more likely to obtain permanent housing." The reality? Of 146 unhoused participants, only an estimated average of 19 appeared to be permanently housed in a given month—a very low 13% success rate. Half as many LEAD participants died during the study period as were estimated to have entered permanent housing, and three-times as many died as were estimated gaining employment.
Advocates incorrectly advertise LEAD as aligning with the federal government’s “SAMHSA Recovery Framework.” The framework’s concise definition for recovery includes, “…abstaining from use of alcohol, illicit drugs, and non-prescribed medications if one has an addiction problem”, and developing “…the independence, income and resources to participate in society.” LEAD’s framework disagrees, stating it works “...without imposing expectations for abstinence,” and “There is no participation requirement other than intake and release of information.” In August 2026, the program’s founder clarified LEAD’s views on independence and income, stating “[Jobs are] not a stated goal of the program.” Instead of aligning with the federal recovery framework, LEAD appears to directly oppose it.
A Federal Gold Rush Built on Falsehoods
Unaware that LEAD’s claimed results were fundamentally incorrect and that the program was opposed to federal best-practices, misled lawmakers eagerly embraced the model’s marketing. Two months after LEAD’s study was published, District Attorney Angela Rosalina Pacheco was testifying before a U.S. House Judiciary sub-committee, erroneously assuring Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) that LEAD reduced recidivism by 80 percent. In response Sensenbrenner called it “the most important thing we ought to look at.”
The falsehoods quickly permeated the halls of Congress. During the May 2016 floor debate for criminal justice reform elements of the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Reduction Act, Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) showcased LEAD and a false 60% reduction in reoffending to support her amendment codifying drug diversion programs into federal law. Other Democrats and Republicans voiced support for LEAD by repeatedly citing the false 60 percent reduction. Persuaded by repeat references to these drastically inflated numbers, Congress later codified LEAD into federal law by name. Members of Congress continued citing the same falsehoods in 2017, 2018, and beyond.
After 2017, LEAD benefited from an uninterrupted stream of congressional, state, and local funding. Beginning with $2.5 million in 2018, annual federal funding alone steadily increased, reaching no less than $10-11 million annually for Fiscal Years 2020 through 2026. State, county, and local governments must have assumed proper vetting had been done and many followed the federal example.
Yet, as the money flowed, oversight was weak and late. LEAD’s false numbers went undetected for 11 years. A 2024 federal audit of a Seattle LEAD grant revealed a "Significant deficiency in internal controls over financial reporting" and a "Material weakness in internal control over compliance with procurement procedures." Implementers of LEAD also routinely failed to report basic individual outcomes to public funders. Critical metrics—such as participant mortality rates, progression to housing independence and jobs, or abstinence from drug use—were simply left unmeasured and unreported in LEAD jurisdictions like Seattle and King County since 2015.
Reestablishing Public Accountability
The eleven-year pattern of erroneous claims, unquestioned congressional appropriations, and widespread adoption of the LEAD model appears to set a dangerous precedent for the loss of public oversight in justice reform initiatives. For over a decade, policymakers and the public were sold a story of 58% reductions in crime and sweeping societal healing. The reality: a dangerous and unproven experiment became an endorsed national alternative. This demands immediate congressional scrutiny and a fundamental reassessment of how criminal justice reform is evaluated and funded in the United States.
