The city of New Orleans, Louisiana requested assistance in implementation a law enforcement assisted diversion program. The LEAD National Support Bureau was selected to fulfil the request and conducted working group sessions and discussions with New Orleans personnel onsite form July 17-29, 2018.
Since the 1970s, cities around the United States, including New Orleans, have responded to mental illness, addiction, poverty, and trauma through arrest and incarceration. In New Orleans, this, coupled with the closing of Charity Hospital in August 2005, caused the jail to become the city’s “de facto” drop-off spot for people in crisis. For the most part, NOPD has two options for where to bring a person in crisis: the jail and the emergency room. In early October, the New Orleans Police Department will pilot Pre-Booking Diversion in the city’s 8th District, which includes the French Quarter, parts of the Marigny, the CBD, and the Warehouse District. PBD empowers officers with an additional tool: they can redirect someone at risk for arrest to intensive case management. Pre-booking Diversion is inspired by the proven-successful Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) model that has been implemented in other cities, such as Seattle, WA; Santa Fe, NM; Albany, NY; and Fayetteville, NC. Officers will divert individuals they think would be better served by a public health intervention than jail and connect them to a dedicated case manager, who will assess their immediate needs, make clear that they should not return to the location where they were almost arrested, and get all the information they need in order to follow up with them consistently moving forward. Pre-Booking Diversion will reduce unnecessary arrests and should—based on comparable program analyses—yield better public health and safety outcomes. By choosing diversion over arrest, officers stop the revolving door of familiar faces cycling through the jail and the courts.
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The final date(s) for training will be determined once the case management agency has been selected. The City will be releasing an RFP in the next week or two soliciting bids and we except the entire process (including hiring) to take approximately 90 days.