By Alex Severson

In July 2019, Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque established the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, a pre-booking diversion intervention designed to provide harm reduction services to individuals either at risk of or previously involved in the criminal justice system. In this report, we analyzed whether enrolling and engaging in LEAD improved participants’ housing, substance use, employment, and recidivism outcomes. We did not have enough data through November 2023 to support strong statistical conclusions about whether LEAD – Bernalillo County had been effective at improving outcomes of participants due to low enrollment counts prior to September 2021 and due to the deadline for submitting the present outcome evaluation. Preliminary results were suggestive of potential short-term gains in housing outcomes specifically among the subset of LEAD participants who continued to engage with the program through six-months, though it is unclear whether these results generalized to the subset of LEAD participants who disengaged following enrollment. Results, though statistically underpowered to detect effects, also did not suggest that program enrollment or engagement meaningfully influenced participant recidivism.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Center for Applied Research & Analysis, 2023. 29p