With an initial $800,000 in annual funding from foundations, the program was introduced in Seattle’s fast-gentrifying Belltown neighborhood. Early assessments are promising. A University of Washington analysis found that LEAD participants — some 450 so far — were 58 percent less likely to be rearrested than those in a control group. That drop is even more pronounced than results from some other “alternative to incarceration” programs, says Susan Collins, an associate professor at the University of Washington and a lead author on the study.

While LEAD fits in with the growing body of incarceration alternatives like drug courts, it is distinct in some important ways. For example, officers divert people to LEAD before booking them. Participants not only avoid sentencing and prison; they aren’t even arrested or charged. That saves money that would otherwise go to lawyers, judges, court clerks and correctional facilities.

It also saves people from stigmatization and discrimination. A felony conviction can mean the loss of public housing, food stamps, a driver’s license, voting rights, or custody of children. Answering “yes” to an employer’s question about a criminal past can hobble one’s chances of finding work. “The collateral consequences that flow from a conviction are incredibly destructive,” says Alice Green, a criminal-justice reform advocate in Albany, which initiated a LEAD program in June 2015. “Even if you are in jail for just two or three days, if you don’t show up for work, you might lose your job.”

There’s one more important difference. Drug courts typically favor an abstinence-based approach to recovery. If people start using again (and even drug replacement therapies like methadone are banned by some courts), they’re penalized. They might be sent back to jail. LEAD, by contrast, is grounded in the understanding that staying off drugs is difficult. (The relapse rate hovers between 40 and 60 percent.)

“We keep working with people knowing that many, if not most of them, are going to continue to use drugs and may continue to commit crimes related to their drug use for some period of time,” says Daugaard. “And it’s still effective to work with them within the harm reduction framework, and it still reduces the damage they’re doing to themselves and to other people over time.”

This was the case for Vasquez. After his diversion into LEAD, he kept using; “I wasn’t ready to change,” he says. He refused help from his case manager, hid from the police, and briefly returned to Texas to comply with an outstanding arrest warrant. It wasn’t until many months later, after he developed an abscess from injecting heroin, that Vasquez returned to LEAD. He began to bond with his case manager, who helped him get a cellphone, new clothes, and a Metro card. But his experience suggests other difficulties that LEAD faces, as well. For example, Vasquez initially assumed LEAD was a police tool for recruiting informants. “It’s a really good program,” he says, “but on the street it was considered a snitch program, because the officers were running it.”