District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. has spent tens of thousands of dollars in public money, from a law enforcement fund intended to fight drug dealing and substance abuse, to buy sports uniforms, spread sand and grass seed on area baseball diamonds, replace backstops, cut up downed trees around athletic fields and repave a basketball court at an elementary school in one of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.

In at least two cases, the contractors performing the work were political contributors to Mr. Early's campaign war chest.



A former high school basketball player and well-known youth sports devotee whose children play Little League and Babe Ruth baseball, Mr. Early has given at least $206,000 to athletic teams over the last two years, according to accounting records.



In an interview, Mr. Early defended his spending of public money on youth sports, in amounts that have increased dramatically in each of the last three years, as a proven crime-fighting strategy that has resulted in falling rates of juvenile delinquency. He said giving children something to do after school under the supervision of responsible adults is a core part of his crime prevention efforts.



“It's about giving kids opportunity. It's about prevention, prevention, prevention,” Mr. Early said, later adding, “I can't think of a better use of these funds.”



In Massachusetts, money seized from alleged drug dealers is split evenly between the police department that confiscated it and the district attorney's office that handled the civil forfeiture proceeding in court. State law requires that most of the money must be spent on investigations and law enforcement operations, but allows district attorneys the leeway to spend up to 10 percent of their share of forfeited funds on “drug rehabilitation, drug education and other anti-drug or neighborhood crime watch programs which further law enforcement purposes.”



Worcester District Attorney's office accounting records obtained by the Telegram & Gazette under the state Public Records Law show Mr. Early's largesse is often not directly related to anti-drug efforts, does not exclusively target at-risk kids, and last year was more than triple the amount allowed by law. In addition, the money is doled out haphazardly without any formal application process as employed by other district attorneys.



The records show a spending pattern dating back at least three years in which Mr. Early has spent money on youth sports in the city on an almost weekly basis in amounts ranging from a couple hundred dollars to tens of thousands.



While youth sports may be a worthy cause, critics note that simply spreading money across scores of teams and leagues, including some in solidly middle class neighborhoods, does not constitute a coherent, effective anti-drug strategy and that the seized money at issue is not a pot of cash for Mr. Early to spend at his whim.



“You see many candidates spending their own campaign funds sponsoring Little Leagues and various other community stuff around sports as a way to further their political careers. It builds good will. But this is the commonwealth's money, and it needs to have protections attached,” said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a nonpartisan good government watchdog group.





Carlton A. Watson, president of the Henry Lee Willis Community Center, said reducing substance abuse by funding youth sports would require a special effort to ensure that public money isn't used to subsidize children who would get to play even without the money.



“If the kids benefiting are some of the same ones who are the most privileged already, I'd say it's not accomplishing the goal,” Mr. Watson said.



The accounting records show little spending for programs that use arts or humanities to keep children engaged with responsible adults. The overwhelming majority of the spending benefits young athletes, mainly in Worcester.



“Sports can really help develop teamwork and leadership skills, but I've seen the same type of development happen through the arts as well. Not everyone is engaged by sports, and I believe there's a broad spectrum of amazing programs that can also reach out to young people,” said poet and youth mentor Alex Charalambides, founder of the Worcester Youth Poetry Slam.



The district attorney's office received $380,870 in forfeited funds from around the county last year. Of that amount, Mr. Early spent nearly a third, at least $123,503, on sports equipment, leagues and athletic activities, according to accounting records. His office spent $865 of its forfeited funds last year on drug rehabilitation, drug education and other anti-drug or neighborhood watch programs, according to an internal report.



Mr. Early maintains there is no limit to what portion of the forfeited funds he can spend on athletics because the expenses do not fall under the 10 percent cap that state law allows to go to community groups fighting substance abuse, but rather under the general heading of law enforcement. Youth sports reduce substance abuse, which in turn reduces crime, he said.



“I deem crime prevention an appropriate use of the money,” Mr. Early said.

In some cases, however, the link between his sports expenditures and crime prevention seems tenuous at best.



In 2009, for example, the district attorney's office spent $5,000 in seized drug money to buy a Bambini ice resurfacing machine, which it donated to the city to use for public ice skating on the pond at Elm Park.



Mr. Early's youth sports spending also includes nearly $4,000 for sand and grass seed at city baseball fields, more than $10,460 for uniforms and T-shirts, $12,300 for fencing at Doherty Memorial High School baseball fields, $15,200 for tree work around several ball fields, and more than $50,000 for repaving and fixing up basketball courts, some privately owned.



Mr. Early has spent $22,000 in public money to repair basketball courts owned by the Main South Community Development Corp. and $10,000 to rebuild the basketball court at Flagg Street School, a West Side public elementary school.



In both cases, the paving contracts, which were not put out for competitive bidding, went to Jolin Paving & Excavating of Worcester. The company's owner, John R. Jolin, has contributed $2,050 to Mr. Early's political campaign account over the years he has been in office, according to state Office of Campaign and Political Finance records.



Jolin Paving also sponsors a team in the baseball league in which Mr. Early's wife, Judy, is on the board of directors, and one of his sons is a player in the Joe Schwartz Little League. Mr. Early's eldest son this year plays in a sister league for older boys, Joe Schwartz Babe Ruth, that shares the same athletic complex.



Mr. Early donated $2,225 in public money for baseball equipment to Joe Schwarz Babe Ruth last May, records show.



Mr. Early said he had never solicited a campaign contribution from a beneficiary of his forfeited funds spending. Mr. Jolin said the contributions to the district attorney's campaign in his name were made by his wife.



“People called us, and we did the jobs,” Mr. Jolin said of the paving work. “I don't get involved in politics, not even a bumper sticker. I don't have the time.”



Another political contributor, Justin Carlson of Holden, was hired to cut up and haul away downed trees around athletic fields at Doherty, South Community High School and the Jewish Community Center last spring. The district attorney made seven payments totaling $15,200 to Mr. Carlson out of the forfeited assets fund last May and June, accounting records show. Mr. Carlson has contributed $750 to Mr. Early's political campaign.



Although the payments were made directly to Mr. Carlson from the district attorney's office, the work was not put out to bid under the state procurement system.



Mr. Early maintains that the forfeited funds are not subject to state procurement laws that otherwise would require him to put out jobs, such as the tree cutting work, or purchases, such as uniforms and baseball equipment, for competitive bids.



The state inspector general's office agreed that seized drug money was exempt from state procurement rules because it is deposited in a “special law enforcement trust with specific restrictions as to how the money can be spent.”



The inspector general's written opinion, produced this past week in response to an inquiry from the Telegram & Gazette, urged public officials to, at a minimum, employ sound business practices in making purchases. The opinion also stressed that public officials have only “limited discretion” as to how they can spend the money.



For his part, Mr. Early maintained that he has wide discretion to spend the money for whatever he deems to be an appropriate law enforcement purpose.



“I think this is a very appropriate use of the funds,” he said of his youth sports spending.



Typically, Mr. Early said, he leaves it up to the group or league benefiting from the money to call around for price quotes if they wish.



That's what happened last fall when the Worcester Jewish Community Center on the West Side got $23,700 in seized drug money to repair its basketball and tennis courts, said Robert Berman, the center's health and physical education director.



Mr. Berman said the JCC hired Jolin Paving to do the work because the Flagg Street School Parent Teacher Group had used the firm when it repaved basketball courts at the school, also with money from the district attorney's office.



The JCC's sports programs had previously gotten public money from Mr. Early for sports equipment, an athletic motivational speaker and sports camp scholarships.



“I mentioned to him that we're doing all this stuff here, but our basketball and tennis facilities over the years had become somewhat dangerous, with large cracks in some of the courts. The DA came up here and saw that. He said, ‘Oh, my God, I can't believe you guys are playing on this court.' He said he could help out with that, and he did,” Mr. Berman said.



“He's a sports guy,” Mr. Berman said of the district attorney. “He's very involved with youth sports. If they can keep kids on the courts, they're probably not going to see them in the courts. I believe that too.”



Dr. Matilde Castiel, executive director of the Hector Reyes House, a residential drug treatment program in Worcester, agreed that youth sports can be helpful in keeping at-risk children away from drugs, but only as part of a comprehensive approach.



“They also need counseling, peer groups, jobs and all the preventative stuff that goes with that. It's not just playing sports. There's a lot more to it,” Dr. Castiel said.



In contrast to Mr. Early's steady stream of checks handed out to sports organizations based on informal requests throughout the year, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley solicits formal grant proposals from nonprofit human service agencies once a year. An independent panel appointed by Mr. Conley decides which proposals to fund, and the money is typically distributed in the winter.



Mr. Conley announced $75,000 in grants early this year, including donations to Teen Empowerment, Children's Services of Roxbury, Dorchester Youth Collaborative, Codman Academy, Casserly House and Sociedad Latina. In their various proposals, the nonprofits laid out how they proposed to use the money for programs with an explicit focus on combating substance abuse and violence among young people.



For example, Dorchester Youth Collaborative said it plans to use a $5,000 grant from Mr. Conley to enhance its substance abuse and gang prevention programs and to expand its GED program for teenagers who have dropped out of school.



Similarly, Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. requires nonprofits to fill out a written application for funding specifically addressing the goals of the program, description of the community to be served, qualifications of the program staff, budget, sustainability of the program in subsequent years, how the program measures success, and a list of staff and directors.



Among the programs Mr. Leone funded last year were a summer jobs program in Lowell, a substance abuse conference and the Wayside Youth & Family Support Network.



In announcing his grants last year, Mr. Leone said, “Whether it is funding summer jobs, providing transportation for kids who otherwise would not have access to go to summer camp, or sponsoring tomorrow's leaders to attend a drug prevention forum, these monies are going to truly remarkable causes.”