A New Model for a New Jail
By Albert B. Kelly
Over the last couple of years, there’s been considerable
thought and discussion on the idea of building a new County Jail. Given the
fact that over $800,000 was necessary in repairs and maintenance alone last
year, there is an obvious need to replace the current aging facility that serves
Cumberland County.
I was part of the effort that wrote the grant to expand the
jail back in the early 1980’s, but I would like to consider a new county jail within
the context of the addiction epidemic that is overwhelming. This discussion is
necessary, because the bulk of the “overwhelming” happens at the local level
with the county jail as the point of the spear.
I say that because the further away you get from “local”,
whether state capitals or in Washington DC, the more the addiction epidemic
looks like just a big mound of statistics. But it’s locally where the
enforcement happens, where the care is administered, where inmates are released
into the community and it’s locally where too many struggle and fail.
At a time when we’re starting to realize that addiction
belongs more in medicine than in the courts- that mental health is part of the
equation also- the administration is seeking to cut the guts out of the
Affordable Care Act and any number of other programs that might allow for
meaningful long term treatment.
But even in the best of times, there were too few options to
adequately address addiction crisis or mental health needs, and even if there
were more facilities and programs, it is doubtful that the people who need it
most would have the insurance to cover treatment or the money to pay for it-
which brings us back to the local level and local solutions.
A recent piece by freelance journalist Sam Quinones in the NY
Times talked about a unique approach taking place in Kentucky at the Kenton
County Detention Center; namely a unit in the jail providing longer term
treatment for addiction.
The thinking there is that new treatment centers are more
difficult and expensive to build and with insurance and funding for treatment
that much harder to come by given the posture of the administration in DC,
jails are the point of contact and the intersection for the addicted and the
one place where it’s possible to provide a less expensive approach to the
crisis.
This thinking makes sense. A significant number of those
being arrested are addicts and the idea is to use jail, which is the common
landing spot, as the foundation for treatment rather than punishment. This is
wall-to-wall treatment, just as it would be in an inpatient setting.
The idea is that this type of intervention, taking place at
the jail level, may well be the thing to keep an inmate whose primary issue is
addiction, with or without mental health issues, from graduating up to the level
of state prison time.
As we get set to embark on building a new county jail
facility, why not take this as an opportunity to “design in” this approach to
treatment for those whose primary problem is addiction? This opportunity comes
just as we’re getting the initial results on bail reform and that has
implications.
Recall that statewide, with bail reform in place, the jail
population has declined by roughly 20%. Here in the Cumberland-Gloucester-Salem
area, jail populations have dropped by 6%, 39% and 45% respectively. Why not
use that freed-up capacity in other ways?
In the Kentucky program, there is instruction on
criminal-addictive thinking, 12-step programs, overdose resuscitation training,
physical exercise, counseling, prayer and meditation, inmate self-governance,
extensive writing assignments, GED classes, and beds made military style.
As the article points out, recovery is messy. In follow-up visits
one year out on 339 inmates who went through the program, 70% were NOT
incarcerated, 68% were employed, 86% had housing, and 50% reported
significantly less drug use.
I think we can all agree that with $800k a year in repairs
and maintenance on the current jail, we need a new facility. Using this as a
springboard, and in light of the 7 suicides that took place in the jail in
recent years, baking treatment for addiction and mental health services into this
cake is a discussion worth having.
Since we’re not going to arrest our way out of this crisis,
let’s try a new model- in a new facility- that appears to work.