LEAD is not an organization — instead, it’s a replicable strategy that helps communities increase health, equity, and safety.

LEAD Minneapolis is built on the LEAD model, which was first developed in Seattle in 2011 and which is now being replicated in diverse communities across the United States and around the world. Learn more about the LEAD model.

After decades of an expensive, harmful, racially inequitable, and ineffective war on drugs, it’s clear that we can’t arrest our way out of the problems related to drug use and mental illness. At the same time, the public disorder, crime, and human suffering associated with unmanaged behavioral illness cannot be ignored, and the people suffering with these challenges must not be abandoned.

LEAD serves people who have disproportionate contact with emergency departments, psychiatric health systems, public shelters, and the criminal legal system. Sometimes dubbed “familiar faces,” these are people who are not effectively reached by whatever safety-net services might be locally available.

In Minneapolis, LEAD provides an alternative public safety response to address non-violent community safety issues along the East Lake Street corridor, an area built and sustained by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and immigrant communities that had seen an increase in criminal activity driven by the effects of systemic racism and a lack of investment.

People can be referred to LEAD Minneapolis by local stakeholders, including residents, business owners, and visitors. Regardless of how someone gets referred into LEAD, the real shift happens after diversion. LEAD’s patient, coordinated, street-based, long-term, low-barrier, harm-reduction case management is the heart and soul of LEAD’s approach to transformative care.

LEAD is not a program but a framework for changing outcomes for both systems and individuals.

• Collectively, LEAD works to shift the systems that shape our collective responses to the crime and public disorder that can stem from current approaches to unmanaged behavioral illness.
• Individually, LEAD provides non-punitive, community-based, low-barrier case management and doesn’t require that anyone be in contact with law enforcement or the legal system to get help.

LEAD differs from many forms of diversion or alternatives to police response. Unlike other diversion models, LEAD doesn’t impose sanctions, isn’t court based, doesn’t require police contact, doesn’t require an immediate cessation of concerning behavior, and works with people as long as they want LEAD’s help.

Unlike crisis-response efforts, LEAD’s intensive case management isn’t limited to just a single encounter but continues as long as it’s useful. In contrast to specialty courts, LEAD doesn’t demand adherence to mandatory conditions. Consistent with harm reduction principles, LEAD doesn’t require abstinence, and unlike divert-to-treatment approaches, LEAD doesn’t establish treatment as a precondition to other forms of care. LEAD provides an ongoing framework to coordinate with legal system partners who often have other (non-divertible) cases involving an individual LEAD participant, to reduce the chance that the left hand will undo the progress the right hand has labored to achieve.

And by continuously engaging stakeholders who may traditionally have felt at odds with one another, LEAD shifts systemic policies, practices, and resources to improve both individual and collective well-being.

In order to meet the criteria for LEAD Minneapolis, an individual must either reside in or be a frequent visitor to the East Lake Street corridor, be 18 or older, and have a history of or be at risk for criminal legal system involvement due to unmet needs related to substance use, mental health illnesses, and extreme poverty. Complete a referral online.

LEAD Minneapolis is intended to provide a non-police response to problematic behavior like shoplifting, drug use in bathrooms, and loitering at transit stations. Not certain if the problem you’re seeing is right for a referral to LEAD Minneapolis? Contact us anyway — we’ll help determine the right response.

Anyone can make a referral, including residents, business owners, and visitors to the East Lake Street corridor. When it comes to public health and safety, all of us are stakeholders. Complete a referral online.

Complete our online form to make a referral and a case manager will reach out to you with additional questions. If you have information about any distinguishing physical characteristics or where this person typically spends time, please include this on the referral form to aid our case managers in locating this person.

LEAD Minneapolis’ current operating hours are Monday-Friday, 9AM-4PM. Get in touch.

LEAD Minneapolis is developed, governed, and implemented by three groups: the Policy Coordinating Group, Operational Work Group, and Community Leadership Team. Each of these groups is charged with specific responsibilities that contribute to the collective effort to address complex community problems, identify opportunities for improvement, and respond effectively.

Policy Coordinating Group (PCG)
The Policy Coordinating Group serves as the policy-making and stewardship body for LEAD. The PCG is composed of senior members of multiple organizations – community-based service providers, criminal legal agencies, health agencies, elected officials – who are authorized to make decisions on behalf of their offices. Together, they develop the vision and goals for LEAD, make policy-level decisions for the initiative and within their respective agencies, and ensure that resources are dedicated for the success of the initiative. In addition, the PCG establishes and ensures plans for evaluation, communications, growth, and sustainability.

Operational Workgroup (OWG)
The Operational Workgroup provides a common table for day-to-day line staff who coordinate daily activities and collectively monitor, identify, discuss, and address operational, administrative, and client-specific issues. Using this ongoing inquiry, the OWG develops protocols to ensure that the operations reflect and are consistent with policies established by the PCG. In some cases, robust communications platforms supplement or may even supplant the need for an OWG.

Community Leadership Team (CLT)
Quite often, systems-led initiatives are developed and decided behind closed doors, and community engagement becomes little more than a box to be checked. With LEAD Minneapolis, it is imperative that the community hold a meaningful role in its planning, launch, and ongoing operations. To this end, many LEAD sites establish a CLT to advance communication with and connection to the project’s larger community of stakeholders.

Project Manager
A dedicated Project Manager coordinates the work of the three bodies while managing all aspects of the initiative’s day-to-day activities for LEAD Minneapolis. A trusted partner of all stakeholders, the Project Manager works to identify and address problems and opportunities, shepherds strategic development, and constantly fosters fidelity to the model.