Home > A new approach: a prosecutor’s guide to advancing a public health response to drug use.

Cloud, David and Marque Heydari, Alissa and Paul, Rena (2021) A new approach: a prosecutor’s guide to advancing a public health response to drug use. New York: Institute for Innovation in Prosecution.

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External website: https://www.prosecution.org/publichealth


For decades, the United States has relied on the criminal system to respond to substance use disorder — with minimal success. With that in mind, the IIP published A New Approach: A Prosecutor’s Guide to Advancing a Public Health Response to Drug Use and several corresponding videos that provide prosecutors with strategies for advancing drug policy grounded in principles of harm reduction, public health, and racial justice. The publisher's website has seven videos featuring directly impacted people, prosecutors, and experts discussing this new approach for prosecutors.

This document seeks to provide U.S. prosecutors with a set of guiding principles and strategies for advancing drug policy grounded in principles of harm reduction, public health, and racial justice. These recommendations convey ideas informed by best practices, empirical evidence, and the collective wisdom of a working group of prosecutors, defense attorneys, advocates, people who have personally experienced incarceration for drug-related crimes, and public health experts from diverse jurisdictions. This Guide’s central goal is to provide practical advice to prosecutors on how they can use their discretion on a daily basis in a way that promotes public health. Our hope is that this resource, along with corresponding short video presentations, will stimulate creativity among prosecutors and inspire them to chart a more promising course of U.S. drug policy.

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