Changing practices to save lives. The dynamics and ambiguities of diversion programs implemented by police departments to address the opioid crisis

This article analyses Massachusetts municipal police departements’ implementation of diversion programs for drug users. It shows how these new practices were developed and how the police officers came to question the effectiveness of their usual methods. Faced with an avoidable death, they practice compassion to help drug users and their families. This humanitarian approach is reflected in the deployment of forms of benevolent coercion leading drug users to make the choice of recovery. As such changes are contingent on local political will and the availability of human, financial and health resources, they tend to reinforce territorial inequalities. As diversion programs coexist with a search for social and racial justice, these two competing logics are contributing to the reclassification of drug and addiction problems as public health problems rather than public safety problems.