Back on Track (BOT) is an innovative demonstration project working with first-time, low-level narcotics sellers between the ages of 18 and 30 to illustrate the effectiveness of employing a workforce development strategy, in lieu of prosecution and incarceration. The BOT model is intended to show that early intervention with this population can mean reduced recidivism and even permanent exits from the criminal justice system. By providing participants with a means of avoiding a first felony conviction and the consequential obstacles to future educational, employment and life opportunities, BOT could effectively alter a pattern and practice of weakening family ties and destabilizing communities. The long-term intergenerational effects of a social structure in which imprisonment is becoming the social norm is undeniably a part of everyday life with many of our families and communities. BOT aims to demonstrate the economic and social efficacy of diverting resource streams that have been funneled into prosecution and incarceration of low-level narcotics offenders and redirecting them to front-end, community-based prevention and intervention efforts. BOT is a project of a public-private partnership which includes the San Francisco Office of the District Attorney, the Public Defender’s Office, the Superior Court and Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin. Goodwill Industries of San Francisco has hired LFA to build a cost/benefit model of the BOT initiative. This model will estimate the benefits of the program in terms of both the cost savings to the public sector of BOT, and also the monetary value of some of the social benefits that result from program participation. It will balance these benefits against the costs of the program to demonstrate the estimated return on investment in the BOT initiative.