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Disrupting “Pill Mills”: Using Data to Investigate and Prosecute Prescription Drug Diversion

Presented by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, Innovative Prosecution Solutions (IPS) Grantee

The opioid epidemic has devastated communities across the United States, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the past two decades. In response, some state and local prosecutors have taken a data-driven approach to the crisis. This webinar spotlights the experiences of an Innovative Prosecution Solutions (IPS) grantee’s efforts to tackle one troubling aspect of the opioid epidemic—doctors and pharmacists who inappropriately disseminate opioid medications. Tamara Holland of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office in Texas discusses data-driven methods to identify and prosecute “pill-mill” practices, such as analyzing prescription history data through Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and overdose death data from medical examiners’ offices.

Upon completion of this session, participants will be better able to:

– Collaborate with allied professionals to collect and analyze comprehensive data.

– Identify connections between at risk-patients and drug-diverting pharmacies and doctors.

– Utilize data analysis in conjunction with other intelligence-building techniques to inform charging strategies for prosecuting “pill-mill” doctors.

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Technology Implementation: Preparation and Pitfalls

Today, law enforcement officers not only address crime, but serve as front line responders to homelessness, mental health crises, and substance use disorders. While many police departments have mental health evaluation or Quality of Life teams, they often do not have the tools readily available to connect or reconnect the individuals they encounter to necessary services. 

This webinar spotlights the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s Office’s efforts to tackle this real-time information gap for police officers. City Prosecutor Doug Haubert and Legal Technologist Byron Bolton will discuss the creation of the Government User Integrated Diversion Enhancement System (GUIDES), a phone application that allows officers to immediately access relevant criminal justice and treatment information about an individual from anywhere in the city. This app not only grants law enforcement an extra measure of safety when encountering new individuals—by allowing them to search for any outstanding court orders or histories of mental health—but enables officers to make better-informed decisions about how to approach these individuals and which services to connect them to. Implementing this innovative technology required multiple partnerships and information-sharing protocols. The presenters discuss these crucial steps as well as the hurdles they overcame to launch this innovative application.

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State, Meet Federal: Prosecuting Law Enforcement Involved Sexual Violence

Those who commit crimes involving sexual violence often exploit the disparate power dynamic between victim and offender — whether the relationship is between teacher and student; producer and actor; coach and athlete; or law enforcement officer and arrestee, probationer, or inmate. By wielding weapons of authority, the perpetrator leaves the victim with little choice but to submit to sexual acts and stay quiet in the aftermath, fearing that they will be disbelieved or blamed if they try to report it. This is especially true in the law enforcement context, where victims are usually in the custody of their offender and have a history of criminal activity, which often has an impact on their credibility in the eyes of untrained professionals, juries, and the public.

This presentation addresses the reaches of federal jurisdiction to prosecute sexual violence by those acting under color of law at all levels of government. It discusses how coordination among federal and state authorities can enhance investigations into reports of sexual violence, and if the evidence permits, help determine in which jurisdiction to bring charges. It further focuses on three critical Federal Rules of Evidence that can be used to corroborate a victim’s account and build a strong case — even where there is no physical evidence or eyewitness testimony.

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The Prosecutors’ Guide for Reducing Violence and Building Safer Communities

This Guide discusses the essential capabilities necessary for a prosecutor’s office to effectively prevent and respond to crimes of violence. It suggests practices that are customizable and scalable, from foundational to enhanced, depending on an office’s available resources and experiences, as well as jurisdiction-specific needs and challenges . This Guide is intended to enable the executives responsible for operating a prosecutor’s office to identify policies and practices that can be readily implemented, as well as those that represent actionable goals to work toward. Every prosecutor’s office — whether a small tribal or rural office, a mid-sized suburban office, or a large office serving a major metropolitan area — can build the capacity to improve its response to violent crime by systematically incorporating promising practices that will harness all available resources to achieve the goal of a safer community.Prosecutors Guide for Reducing Violence and Building Safer Communities

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Forced Criminality: Understanding Human Trafficking Through the Lens of Utah’s Victor Rax Case

 As human trafficking awareness has risen across the United States and the globe, there are still blind spots that prevent law enforcement from recognizing the exploitation of the most vulnerable people in the their communities. To bridge this disconnect, law enforcement must learn to see abusive and exploitative circumstances through a human trafficking lens, even if those circumstances do not match how movies, television shows, or even well-meaning awareness campaigns portray human trafficking within the United States. The reality of human trafficking is that it most commonly involves an offender who positions themselves as trustworthy and then identifies, recruits, and exploits vulnerable individuals to turn a profit. These same tactics used to identify, recruit,, and coerce victims are also designed to allow the trafficker to escape accountability. However, as Utah’s case against the prolific trafficker Victor Rax illustrates, when law enforcement, prosecutors, and victim service professionals collaborate, human trafficking in all its forms can be identified, offenders can be arrested and charged, and victims can be supported to start rebuilding their lives.Forced Criminality Through the Lens of the Victor Rax Case

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Confronting Racial Bias Against Black and African American Victims in the Prosecution of Sexual Violence, Domestic Violence, Stalking, and Human Trafficking

The history of racial discrimination against Black Americans in the United States created structural barriers and inequalities that Black women continue to face as victims of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, and human trafficking.. The article offers examples of how racial bias has shaped the criminal justice response to these crimes and provides prosecutors with tangible tools for eradicating biases against Black victims. Confronting-Racial-Bias-Against-Black-and-African-American-Victims

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A Prosecutor’s Quick Guide to Opioid Overdose Investigations

This is a summary of a comprehensive resource entitled Seeking Justice and Solutions: A Prosecutor’s Guide to Opioid Overdose Investigations. This Quick Guide provides an overview of areas for consideration, including investigative steps and prosecutorial decision-making. The full Guide provides further discussion of these topics, various examples of how prosecutors’ offices of all sizes have addressed these complex issues, and a self-survey to evaluate an office’s capacity to respond to overdoses.

 

A Prosecutor’s Quick Guide to Opioid Overdose Investigations

 

 

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Seeking Justice and Solutions: A Prosecutor’s Guide to Opioid Overdose Investigations

The opioid epidemic has presented prosecutors with new challenges and questions.  “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem” is the new tagline of the epidemic. Through the opioid crisis may be the result of criminal actions by pharmaceutical companies, profit-driven drug sellers, and corrupt physicians, modern prosecutors acknowledge that addiction itself is a medical condition, not a crime. The prosecutor is faced with decisions on two fronts, how to address the criminal activity of drug sellers and how to treat the medical issues of drug users. There is no simple answer. The goal of this guide is to provide options and to highlight innovative, effective strategies for improving prosecutors’ responses to overdose deaths. These responses range from providing access to treatment to prosecuting overdose deaths as homicides.Seeking Justice and Solutions- A Prosecutor’s Guide to Opioid Overdose Investigations

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The Problem-Solving Prosecutor: Modern Variations on the Crime Strategies Unit

This comprehensive document provides guidance on developing or enhancing intelligence-driven prosecution through a Crime Strategies Unit (CSU), or through processes that accomplish goals similar to those of a CSU. Based in part on interviews with prosecutors, crime analysts, and other specialists in the field, the guide discusses building foundational partnerships, methods for gathering data and intelligence, and ways in which data can inform and support investigations and prosecutions.

 

The Problem-Solving Prosecutor- Modern Variations on the Crime Strategies Unit