Impact of “Opt for Help and Hope” on drug overdose deaths among NJ criminal defendants, 2020-2025

Opt for Help and Hope (OHH) is a new prosecutor-led diversion program that will pilot in six municipal courts between March 1, 2023 and February 28, 2025.  Participating municipalities will connect low-level non-violent criminal defendants whose alleged offenses are likely influenced by substance use to health and social support services. Defendants who elect to participate and are meaningfully engaged in services may have their charges downgraded or dismissed. The aim of this evaluation is to estimate the effect of participating in OHH on defendants’ risk for subsequent overdose. To identify defendant overdoses, we will provide iPHD an identifiable panel of all NJ criminal defendants charged between March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2025 with OHH eligible offenses. For members of this panel, we are requesting iPHD provide healthcare utilization and mortality data from the Emergency Medical Services, Hospital Discharge Data Collection System, and Mortality datasets. Using linked data, we will compare rates of overdose among OHH participating and non-participating defendants. We are requesting pre-approval to obtain data through August 28, 2025 (“Plan A”). However, if that request cannot be granted in this cycle because of the long delay between application and fulfillment, we are requesting access to data for the period Jan 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, to establish the feasibility of linkage and a baseline for our evaluation (“Plan B”).  Our intent would be to then apply at a later date for data between January 1, 2022 to August 28, 2025.