Tuesday, the council’s public safety committee is hearing how difficult measuring diversion can be.
In the planned presentation (PDF) from the Seattle Office of the Inspector General, officials say delays and missing information hinders the analysis and one of the main goals of the measurement in assessing how many drug users are diverted to treatment is currently impossible in Seattle.
“It is not possible to causally prove to what extent if at all the ordinance increased the rate and number of diversions,” the OIG report reads.
“Substantive data access delays and missing data structures hindered many areas of analysis.”
Under the law, reported offenses and arrests have soared but officials caution that the diversion totals included in the report are “likely inaccurate.”
CHS reported here on the September 2023 passage of the change enabling the City Attorney’s Office to prosecute drug use and possession on Seattle’s streets. Drug prosecution had previously been left to the county where the prosecutor’s office said it did not have the resources to charge people arrested under the state’s harsher penalties for low-level drug crimes.
The new Seattle law incorporated elements of statewide changes allowing the city attorney to prosecute a wider spectrum of drug cases while adding new policies about arrests, plus tying funding for treatment and services to the legislation by shuffling $27 million in budgeted spending toward enhanced treatment facilities, new addiction services, and improved overdose response for first responders including capital investments in facilities to provide services such as post-overdose care, opioid medication delivery, health hub services, long-term care management, and drop-in support.
An early version of the ordinance was rejected due to the plan’s lack of investment in city resources for treatment and diversion.
Leaders including Mayor Bruce Harrell and then-Council President Sara Nelson pushed for an expanded version of the legislation that eventually was approved despite opposition in a 6-3 vote. Part of the compromise to pass the legislation were commitments to measure the impact of the new law.
Tuesday’s annual review includes datapoints that tell some of the story but officials say more of the key metrics are either missing or will take more time to collect.
In the presentation, OIG officials promise “to examine as many areas of analysis in the next annual review as possible.”
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