‘Accountability for the enforcement of our laws’: Seattle city attorney defends High Utilizer Initiative

Seattle City Attorney Anne Davison is running for re-election against former federal prosecutor Erika Evans. The two have different approaches to the justice system.

Davison defended the High Utilizer Initiative, a program that doesn’t label someone as a “repeat offender,” but instead looks at how frequently they use city resources, whether that’s police departments, the court system, the prosecutor’s office, or hospitals.

“When we’re looking at it, the criteria was, we had at least 12 referrals in the past five years and one in the last eight months. That’s what we started with. And when we launched it in March of 2022, we had people with 40-something referrals to the city attorney’s office. They were skyrocketed way over, above criteria. Now we barely have people that meet that criteria,” Davison told “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “We are not seeing those same individuals. We update the data quarterly. And 234 people have come through that initiative part, and 90% reduction in recidivism of those people.”

Evans’ approach is more about getting to the core of the issue; she believes the reason someone commits a crime is usually because they have a mental health, drug, or alcohol problem that needs to be addressed first.

“If they’re incompetent, that’s something different, but we’re not in that space, that’s not where we are,” Davison responded. “We are talking about accountability for the enforcement of our laws, and if somebody’s going in, because theft was one of the items that automatically routed to community court, you committed theft — nobody looked at criminal history. So you could have 40 referrals for theft, but if you commit it 41 times, you’re going to community court. That’s what I walked into. I withdrew from that because it was increasing recidivism,” Davison explained.

And what I’m doing now, we did the High Utilizer Initiative, and now we’re not seeing those people. And am I in charge of reentry? No, but I absolutely work with those who are the appropriators who build out that treatment and services, whether it’s in custody or post-custody, but we need to be making sure we’re enforcing our laws and have accountability,” she continued.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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