ASHLAND — Annette Ward considers herself a seed planter.
She’s a drug and alcohol counselor based at the Ashland County Jail, contracted through the Ashland County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. Doing her job means she might never see that seed grow into a thriving plant outside of the jail’s walls.
“Unless they come back through here, I may never see them again,” she said.
But some do come back.
Ashland County Jail administrator Capt. Joe Perry estimates up to 70% of the jail’s 121 inmates are addicted to alcohol, opioids or other substances.
Only some of those inmates register for the jail’s medication assisted treatment (MAT) program, which offers a combination of counseling and the administration of buprenorphine and Vivitrol — drugs used to prevent relapses of alcohol and opiates.
That doesn’t necessarily mean failure, though, Ward said.
“Recovery looks different for everyone,” she said. “Say you have someone using drugs for a long time. Success for them might look like pulling a couple months (of sobriety) together.”
Ward coordinates with a mental health counselor from Appleseed Community Mental Health Center. Together, they see inmates who volunteer to be part of the program that’s been in existence at the jail for at least a decade.
The jail has a program room for these sessions and both Ward and the mental health counselor have their own offices attached to it. They each see five to 10 inmates daily.
Those working at the Ashland County Jail know recovery looks different for each and every person. So defining success for the MAT program — funded through the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services — is not easy.
“There’s no clear-cut answer on what success looks like. If we have an individual that gets out of jail and then goes 30 days without using or getting in trouble, is that success? Or they go six months? Or we never see them again?” Perry said.
Tracking recidivism — the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend — is not a regular practice at the jail, municipal or common pleas courts. Officials have said tracking that information would require time and resources they don’t have.
Instead, the data is anecdotal.
Ashland Municipal Court Judge John Good said 70% of the court’s criminal caseload is drug-related.
“In one way or another, they’re related to drugs. And many times we see those people over and over again,” Good said, adding charges could show up as theft, marijuana possession or getting caught with drug paraphernalia.
“Those hooked on heroin don’t get caught with heroin — they tend to use it as soon as they have it. They get caught with needles. And those are misdemeanors, so I see them fairly often,” he said.
Felony possession cases go to Ashland County Common Pleas, which also does not track recidivism.
Perry said the jail is doing its best to offer recovery services to its inmates. But there’s always room for growth, and he’s open to suggestions.
One of those suggestions that has popped up in recent years is a jail recovery pod system, which is a separate area within jails that offer recovery-related programming to inmates who want it.
Sam Quinones, a journalist best known for his reporting that chronicles the opioid crisis in America, believes “jail may in fact be the best place to initiate addict recovery.”
Quinones examined Kenton County Detention Center’s recovery pod, a 70-man pod that offers inmates GED classes, counseling, 12-step meetings, prayer and meditation, a Vivitrol shot, connections to jobs outside of jail and other resources as part of a six-month recovery regimen.
The goal of the program is to cut down on the number of times judges like Good see the same names and faces on their dockets and court rooms before heading back to jail.
It’s working.
A 2015 study conducted by the Kentucky Department of Corrections and the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research found fewer risk factors for recidivism 12 months after release of the 339 inmates surveyed.
The study found 70% of those surveyed were not incarcerated, 68% were employed at least part-time; 86% were housed; 76% said they spent most of their time with family and 50% said their illicit drug use had decreased.
This jail recovery pod system has been duplicated in jails and prisons in Illinois, Ohio and Florida, to name a few.
The key to a recovery pod’s success seems to be separation, said Dave Ross, executive director of the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Ashland County.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to a pod where it was supportive. Having a recovery environment, that might be really helpful,” he said.
Ross said he does not pretend to know how that would work logistically in Ashland County Jail, where inmates currently are only separated by risk level based off offenses.
Perry said inmates are categorized by low-, medium- and high-risk while jailed in coordinated pods that have a general meeting area.
Creating a separate pod designated to inmates who voluntarily register for mental health or substance abuse services could work, Perry said, but he has some reservations.
“I don’t know if we’d be taking a step back by doing that,” he said. “If we have inmates in pods that don’t go back to general population, that might stifle growth of the program.
“A lot of the inmates are reluctant to go to a program until they hear from someone else.”
The jail administrator also pointed toward the average stay for Ohio county jail inmates, which is only eight to 24 days. In some cases, inmates are awaiting pretrial or sentencing. Rarely, inmates get sentenced anywhere from six months to a year.
“So the type of treatment depends on how long they stay in our facility. The less time they spend in jail, the better. When they’re released, it’s up to them to seek more help,” Perry said. “More often than not, they return to the lifestyle. It’s hard to change that person but we do our best to educate our population and help them.”
Ward thinks separating the general population inmates from those in recovery programs is a good idea.
“I feel that sometimes when people come to group sessions or individual session, and then go back into a pod where inmates are not serious about recovery, that pulls them out very quickly. Because, unfortunately, a lot of people just want to fit in someplace,” she said.
If that were to happen, though, Ward said the screening and vetting process would need to be stringent.
“You can say a lot of things to make it sound like you’re very true and sincere,” she said. “If you set up pods like that, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch.”
In Kenton County, the recovery pod took 18 months of trial-and-error for exactly the reason Ward pointed out. That’s why the man in charge of running the unit developed rules that sent inmates back to the general population if broken.
Ward only gets to connect with a small portion of the inmates at Ashland County Jail. She hopes the limited time provides an opportunity to plant that seed — which hopefully sprouts into someone who is not afraid of asking for help that eventually keeps them out of jail.
“Asking for help is not a sign of weakness … it actually takes more strength to reach out,” she said.
