Answer Addiction

Tag: prison

  • When Purell is Contraband, How Do You Contain Coronavirus?

    Handwashing and sanitizers may make people on the outside safer. But in prison it can be impossible to follow public health advice.

    This article was originally published on March 6th by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

    When Lauren Johnson reached for a squirt of hand sanitizer on her way out of the doctor’s office, she regretted it immediately.

    In the Central Texas prison where she was housed, alcohol-based hand sanitizer was against the rules—and the on-duty officer was quick to let her know it.

    “He screamed at me,” she said.

    Then, she said, he wrote her up and she lost her recreation and phone privileges for 10 days.

    The incident was a minor blip in Johnson’s last prison stay a decade ago, but the rules hold true today and underscore a potential problem for combating coronavirus: Behind bars, some of the most basic disease prevention measures are against the rules or simply impossible.

    “Jails and prisons are often dirty and have really very little in the way of infection control,” said Homer Venters, former chief medical officer at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex. “There are lots of people using a small number of bathrooms. Many of the sinks are broken or not in use. You may have access to water, but nothing to wipe your hands off with, or no access to soap.”

    So far, the respiratory virus has sickened more than 97,000 people worldwide and at least 200 in the U.S. More than 3,300 people have died. As of late Thursday there were no reported cases in American prisons, though experts say it’s just a matter of time. (Ed Note: These were the numbers as of March 6th, 2020. At time of this publication, they have increased. See current stats here.)

    To minimize further spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests things like avoiding close contact with people who are sick, covering your mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze, disinfecting frequently-used surfaces and washing your hands or using alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

    But these recommendations run up against the reality of life in jails and prisons. Behind bars, access to toilet paper or tissues is often limited and covering your mouth can be impossible if you’re handcuffed, either because of security status or during transport to another facility.

    Typically, facilities provide some access to cleaning products for common areas and individual cells, but sometimes those products aren’t effective, and Johnson recalled women stealing bleach and supplies so they could clean adequately.

    Hand sanitizer is often contraband because of the high alcohol content and the possibility for abuse (the alcohol can be separated out from the gel). A spokesman clarified Thursday that the Texas prison system now sells sanitizer on commissary, though it is a non-alcohol-based alternative, which is not what the CDC recommends.

    Even something as basic as hand-washing can be difficult in facilities with spotty water access or ongoing concerns about contamination, such as in the recent Legionnaires’ outbreak at one federal prison complex in Florida. (Legionnaires is caused by contaminated water, though the source of that water is not clear in Florida).

    Aside from all that, prisons and jails are large communities where a sicker-than-average population is crammed into close quarters where healthcare is often shoddy, and medical providers are often understaffed. In an infectious disease outbreak, health experts recommend separating sick people from well people to prevent the disease from spreading, but in prison that can be nearly impossible, since prisoners are already grouped according to security and other logistical considerations.

    Given all that, correctional facilities often respond to outbreaks with the same set of tools: lockdowns, solitary confinement and visitation restrictions. That’s what some prisons and jails did during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and it’s what happened more recently in the Florida federal prison complex struck by Legionnaires’. In Texas and other states, prison officials regularly shut down visitation or institute partial lockdowns during mumps and flu outbreaks.

    This time, though, some public health officials—including former Rikers health official Venters—are proposing a different solution: large-scale releases, like those already underway in Iran. There, officials approved the temporary release of more than 54,000 prisoners in an effort to combat the spread of the new virus.

    “That’s a gauntlet for the U.S.,” said Jody Rich, a professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Brown University. “ Really? Iran’s going to do it better than we are?”

    Advocates in Indiana on Thursday called on the governor to consider releasing large numbers of elderly and sick prisoners, who are at highest risk of complications from coronavirus. People with chronic illnesses are vastly overrepresented in U.S. prisons and jails, and elderly inmates are the fastest-growing share of prisoners.

    Some in law enforcement immediately criticized the proposal.

    “I don’t think a viable solution for the safety of our community is to have mass releases from jails,” said Joe Gamaldi, president of the Houston police union. “As much as we have to balance the dangers that coronavirus poses to the community, we also have to balance that against the danger of letting violent criminals back out on the streets.”

    It’s not yet clear whether any prisons or jails are seriously considering widespread releases. A spokeswoman for the federal prison system did not respond to questions about the idea, instead saying that the isolating nature of prisons could be an asset in handling any potential outbreak.

    “The controlled environment of a prison allows the Bureau of Prisons to isolate, contain and address any potential medical concern quickly and appropriately,” said Nancy Ayers, the spokeswoman. “Every facility has contingency plans in place to address a large range of concerns.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • A Jail Increased Extreme Isolation to Stop Suicides. More People Killed Themselves

    A Jail Increased Extreme Isolation to Stop Suicides. More People Killed Themselves

    The “lonely cell,” as she called it, broke her in less than a day. She apologized. She told deputies she’d learned her lesson. More importantly, Taylor said, “I was just being quiet.”

    ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

    BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Shackled at the wrists and ankles, Christine Taylor followed a red line on the basement floor directing her to the elevator at Kern County’s central jail. She heard groans and cries from among the hundred people locked above, a wail echoing through the shaft.

    It was minutes before daybreak on a Monday morning in May 2017 as the elevator lifted her toward the voices. Jail staff had assigned Taylor to something called “suicide watch,” a block of single cells where she’d be alone 24 hours a day. The sound of other people would soon become a luxury.

    What a stupid mistake, Taylor fumed.

    Earlier, she had argued with jail staff during her booking at the downtown jail. Have you ever attempted suicide, a deputy asked. Taylor glared back, her hands trembling. She had never been in serious trouble with law enforcement, and she considered her arrest that night a gross misunderstanding.

    “Do you think I’m going to try to kill myself with my shirt?” Taylor responded, flippantly. “Maybe.”

    Her answer got her a glimpse of how the jail handles people it perceives as suicide risks.

    Within minutes, deputies moved Taylor into a changing room on the third floor and had her strip naked. They handed her just two items: paper-thin clothes that come apart under pressure and a blue yoga mat.

    Exhausted and scared, she followed orders, walked down a hall and stepped into a bathroom-sized isolation cell. The door slammed behind her. The floors felt colder inside, and a mold smell came up from the toilet-sink fixture. A bed was mounted to the brick wall. Hazy fluorescent lights reflected off the ash-white paint. And, as Taylor soon learned, jail staff never turned them off.

    To shield herself, she crawled under the bed and put the yoga mat over her torso like a blanket.

    She pressed her eyelids shut but couldn’t block the glare or the rush of tears.

    “Cruel and Unusual” Punishment; No Limits

    Each year, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office sends hundreds of people into this kind of suicide watch isolation. Inmates awaiting trial spend weeks and sometimes months in solitary, according to state and county records. When those cells fill up, deputies place people into “overflow” areas, rooms with nothing more than four rubberized walls and a grate in the floor for bodily fluids. They receive no mental health treatment, only a yoga mat to rest on.

    Kern County sheriff’s officials say they turned to isolation rooms to help prevent deaths after a spate of jail suicides that started in 2011.

    This wasn’t what state lawmakers envisioned when they undertook a sweeping criminal justice overhaul nearly a decade ago to alleviate what the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the “cruel and unusual” conditions for people in overcrowded state prisons. Those prisoners, the court found, would languish for months, even years, in “telephone-booth-sized cages” without treatment, resulting in “needless suffering and death.”

    California’s reforms, dubbed “realignment,” diverted thousands of offenders to county jails so, among other things, the corrections system could see to basic health needs and meet minimum constitutional requirements. That shift also transferred billions of dollars to local sheriffs to better run jails.

    Some, like Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, have rejected warnings from the state to improve the outdated and often brutal forms of isolation that helped trigger the state’s prison crisis.

    The state can’t do much about it, a McClatchy and ProPublica investigation found. The California Board of State and Community Corrections, which is supposed to maintain minimum jail standards and inspect local facilities, has no legal authority to force local lockups to meet those standards or ensure inmates are physically safe and mentally sound.

    Last year, for instance, a state board inspector called out the Kern County Sheriff’s Office for 27 violations, a majority of them for using yoga mats instead of mattresses in suicide watch cells. But his letter read more like an invitation than a warning. “If you choose to address the noncompliant issues,” he wrote, “please provide your corrective plan to the BSCC for documentation in your inspection file.”

    The sheriff’s office disregarded the findings and bought more than 100 additional mats this year, agency records show.

    “It’s completely unethical, and counter to clinical evidence for what people need,” Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer of New York City jails, said of Kern County’s suicide watch. “For any human, that represents punishment and humiliation.”

    Isolation practices save lives, Kern County officials argue. But records show the strategy didn’t work; inmates continued to kill themselves.

    In one case, an inmate hanged himself in a suicide watch cell, after grabbing an extension cord that guards left within reach. Since 2011, 11 others have taken their lives in other parts of the jail. During the past four years, Kern County had the highest suicide rate of the state’s 10 largest jail systems, with 5.61 deaths per 100,000 bookings, close to twice the statewide rate, an analysis by ProPublica and McClatchy found. Overall, inmate suicides declined slightly in California county jails over that period.

    The state’s board has no authority to investigate deaths in local lockups. The agency answers to the Legislature, which has not held a single hearing about jail inspections or the dozens of gruesome deaths in facilities across the state in the past eight years.

    Texas and New Jersey, meanwhile, have boards that regularly examine such deaths.

    “California is flying blind without a state regulatory agency that has meaningful enforcement authority. It’s time to correct this institutional failure,” said Ross Mirkarimi, the former San Francisco sheriff who is now a jail consultant. “It is a perfect opportunity for the governor to arc from the era of realignment into a new period of reform for California jails.”

    Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, chairs the California Senate Public Safety Committee. She voted in support of realignment in 2011, when she was in the Assembly. Skinner said “there’s a lot of frustration” about how passive the state board has been in overseeing county jails.

    “The sheriffs do have the authority here, and they could do the right thing,” Skinner said in an interview. “We as the state definitely have to improve our oversight.”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, in a written statement, said Kern County’s jail practices are unacceptable, and local officials should reform their policies.

    “County jails should not hold people in their custody in isolation indefinitely, no matter what the situation is,” the governor’s statement reads. “This is troubling, and it is this Administration’s hope that the findings in the reports issued by the Board of State and Community Corrections will catalyze change and reforms at the local level, where authority to make those changes ultimately resides.”

    Many local jails across the country use variations of suicide watch to remove hazards and increase monitoring of vulnerable inmates. But Kern County uses isolation far more aggressively, and often exclusively, to prevent suicide deaths. “In my career, this is how suicide watch is done,” said Chief Deputy Tyson Davis, the jails’ top administrator. “They go into a cell by themselves with as few points to hurt themselves on as possible.”

    That runs counter to best practices advocated by mental health experts, who are increasingly critical of isolating and stripping people considering suicide. A growing body of research shows the practice can harm a person’s mental health and actually increase their suicide risk once they are released from watch.

    Youngblood, the sheriff, declined multiple interview requests, and his office declined to discuss specific cases, including Taylor’s.

    After McClatchy and ProPublica asked questions about Kern County’s isolation practices and its use of yoga mats, the sheriff’s office replaced the mats with blankets that are resistant to rips. And Davis said in September that he is working to add mental health specialists to inmate screening, which deputies alone have long conducted. The new clinical positions are not funded yet.

    Bill Walker, Kern County’s behavioral health director, is in charge of mental health care in the jails. When asked in August if isolation without clinical treatment is harmful, Walker replied, “I would be the first to agree with you.” However, he continued, Kern County’s suicide watch is better than the indifference institutions inflicted decades ago on the people they detained.

    “We used to bury people in the state hospitals in unmarked graves,” Walker said. “The humanity of safety is to keep them alive.”

    This account is based on interviews with Kern County’s top jail administrators and deputies, county behavioral health directors, former inmates and families of the deceased. The sheriff’s office took reporters on tours of its jail facilities and to see the suicide watch cells. McClatchy and ProPublica also reviewed and analyzed state inspection documents, autopsy reports, court filings, jail purchasing records and state data on in-custody deaths.

    An Uptick in Suicides, Then Yoga Mats

    In 2011, Lorena Diaz tried to end her life by jumping off a highway bridge. She survived, and a county mental health clinic released her, apparently no more stable than before.

    Desperate, her mother called Diaz’s parole agent to ask for help, to find a place where her daughter would be safe. The agent alerted local police, who promptly arrested and booked Diaz into the downtown Bakersfield jail, according to sheriff’s office records. But within two days of her arrival, staff found the 29-year-old mother hanging from a bed sheet tied to a wall vent.

    The death was the first in a string of suicides over the next year: A 42-year-old man charged with crashing into a sheriff’s patrol car cut his wrist with a razor and bled out while his cellmates slept. A 20-year-old murder defendant who told deputies he heard voices hanged himself in an isolation cell.

    In response to the suicides, Youngblood and his jail staff began sending far more people to suicide watch cells, records show. The practice continues to this day.

    “The tripwire to get on suicide watch is fairly light,” said Lt. Ian Silva, who oversees many of the jails’ day-to-day operations. “We don’t want to take any chances.”

    The sheriff’s office also added a new feature to its suicide protocol. In March 2012, the agency purchased 25 blue yoga mats, finance records show, and ordered 109 more in July of that year. The mats are a half-inch of foam designed to cushion people doing floor exercises.

    They became the only thing Kern County’s suicidal inmates got to sleep on, besides the cement floor or metal bunk. They were also a signal that isolation was no longer a fleeting experience. People began spending longer periods of time on suicide watch.

    In state prisons, at-risk inmates receive mattresses. Silva said the sheriff’s office chose to give yoga mats instead to ensure inmates cannot impede deputies from entering cells. “Our big concern with full mattresses is barricading,” Silva said.

    Because people with suicidal thoughts often spend their time searching for methods to end their lives, jail experts say suicide watch cells should not contain anything a person can use to asphyxiate or cut themselves.

    Kern County deputies violated that rule in August 2013, after deputies booked Luis Campos on a stack of domestic violence charges. Campos had tried to kill himself before, so deputies put him in the watch cell closest to their desk.

    The aging facility’s air-conditioning system regularly faltered in the summer, internal investigation records show. So deputies rigged up a portable fan with an extension cord and duct tape to blow air at their watch station as the afternoon heat topped 90 degrees.

    They found Campos dead during morning rounds two days later, dangling from the cell bars, an extension cord noosed around his neck.

    Until last year, the sheriff’s office had only 11 specialized suicide watch cells across its three jail facilities, and they were always full. So deputies began using what are called safety cells as suicide watch overflow.

    Safety cells are closet-sized rooms with nothing but four walls and a grate in the floor. No bed. No water fountain or toilet. They’re temporary storage boxes for people who’ve lost control.

    California jail standards say safety cells should only hold inmates who are damaging the building or showing an active intent to hurt themselves or others. Medical staff members are required to evaluate each inmate within 12 hours, and a jail administrator needs to reapprove holding them in the safety cell every 24 hours thereafter.

    By early 2015, Kern County’s jail deputies were sending nearly three dozen people a week to suicide watch, a 29% increase from a year earlier. Some were removed from watch in hours. Others stayed for days.

    Still, elsewhere in the jails, the suicides continued. That January, a 31-year-old man hanged himself. He’d first tried to kill himself days earlier, a nearby inmate later told detectives. The following September, a 25-year-old man with a history of depression died the same way in a group cell after telling his parents he would kill himself if they did not bail him out.

    Deputies said they were unaware that either posed a suicide risk, according to autopsy records.

    Meanwhile, state inspectors from the corrections board made their routine tours of Kern County’s jails and reviewed their internal records every two years. By the time an inspector arrived in June 2016, 10 inmates had taken their lives in 5 1/2 years. The inspector did not mention the deaths in the reports. And in evaluating safety cells, one of the reports simply noted “documentation for the use of those cells were good.”

    Two more men hanged themselves in January and February 2017, as deputies sent upward of 36 inmates a week to isolation cells.

    Christine Taylor was soon among those on suicide watch.

    “When Am I Going to Get Out?”

    Keys banging on the door woke her that first morning.

    “Taylor!” the deputy making the morning rounds shouted. She crawled from underneath the cell bed, where she had been hiding from the lights, and moved toward the metal door. She looked out the smudged plexiglass window. It was like peering through a porthole on a space shuttle, she said.

    The person on the other side wouldn’t open the door. Kern County jail staff almost never do during these routine cell checks and brief behavioral health evaluations. So Taylor crouched on her knees and spoke to the specialist through the food-tray slot in the door. She said she was not suicidal. She was only on suicide watch, she pleaded, because she hadn’t cooperated with deputies during intake.

    “When am I going to get out?” Taylor asked as the staffer walked away.

    “Well,” she heard, “we’ll see.”

    Police had arrested her on suspicion of elder abuse. Her father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, claimed that she attacked him during a middle-of-the-night disagreement. But Taylor, then 47, had video showing the opposite; in fact, officers had responded to similar calls at their home before, for offenses imagined or badly misunderstood. This time, deputies refused to watch the tape.

    Now Taylor was alone, a dozen yards from the deputy desk. She tried to sleep. It was the only thing to do — inmates on suicide watch in Kern County don’t get books to read or recreation time to interact with other inmates because even that could be too dangerous, sheriff’s officials said.

    So she covered her eyes from the light with her clothes and rolled up her yoga mat to use as a pillow. About four hours crawled by after she entered the jail when staff returned to the door and said they were moving her.

    For a moment, Taylor felt a rush of excitement. She thought about all the things this might mean: a pillow, a toothbrush, a shower, maybe even a cellmate, someone to talk to.

    Deputies instead led her around the corner to another suicide watch cell, next to a deputy’s desk. The furnishings were the same: bed, toilet and yoga mat. But the move shortened the distance the deputies had to walk as they signed off on the required twice-every-30-minutes checks. And she could see staff and inmates walking out of the elevators past the window. There were people around, Taylor thought, people to hear about how she’d been wronged.

    “Innocent until proven guilty!” she screamed, calling out to other inmates to join her protest. No one did. “I didn’t get my phone call! I didn’t get my phone call!” Taylor chanted.

    Her confusion had given way to resentment. There was nothing the jailers could do to her that would be worse than being in that cell, she thought, so Taylor vowed to make everybody in earshot hear her outrage. She’d become part of the collective wail that greeted her just hours earlier.

    Jail staff ignored her.

    Taylor tried another tactic: She ripped a piece of material from her paper-thin shirt and fashioned it into a small nooselike loop. She said she dangled it in the porthole window. (Jail staff wrote that she put it around her neck, sheriff’s office records show.) Deputies stormed the cell and restrained her, Taylor said, and records show staff replaced the clothes with a hunter green, tear-resistant suicide smock.

    The following day, around noon on Tuesday, jail records show deputies transferred her to a punishment cell, known as administrative segregation.

    “If They’re Committed, It’s Hard to Stop Them”

    Kern County’s behavioral health department doesn’t provide treatment to inmates on suicide watch, aside from dispensing medication for previously diagnosed conditions, said Walker, the department’s director. Last year, the county agency doubled its jail staff, which now employs about 40 caregivers.

    Counties usually have a written agreement with the behavioral health provider working in the jails. The contract — among the most foundational parts of jail-medical operations — dictates what the provider will do, as well as the consequences for failing to deliver services. But in Kern County, the jail has had no such agreement for “several years,” Walker said. That means there’s no written accountability for when things go wrong. County officials maintain a contract isn’t necessary.

    The behavioral health department does not reliably track how many people have attempted suicide in the cells, why people were placed in isolation or how long they stayed, he said. It also does not keep data on inmates sent to outside hospitals because of mental illness.

    After every death of a mentally ill inmate, behavioral health and jail staff meet to review the case and determine if there are ways to prevent similar fatalities in the future. However, officials have not examined the jails’ suicide deaths as a whole at any point since 2011, Silva and Walker confirmed.

    During an interview in August, the county’s top behavioral health officials demurred when asked why Kern County’s jail suicide deaths had increased dramatically.

    “I don’t think I have an answer I could give you at the moment,” Walker said. Deputies don’t send all suicidal inmates to behavioral health staff. Greg Gonzales, head of correctional care, said suicide prevention cannot keep all inmates safe. “If they’re committed, it’s hard to stop them,” he said.

    At the sheriff’s office, Silva partly attributed the increased deaths to “bad luck.”

    The behavioral health department provides inmates the best care it can afford, Gonzales said.

    Over the past two decades, researchers have examined suicides in local jails, where death rates are often higher than among the general public and in prisons. They’ve consistently opposed the use of isolation, saying it increases the likelihood that inmates will attempt to hurt themselves. A guide from the World Health Organization states, “Prisoners at risk should not be left alone, but observation and companionship should be provided.”

    The key to keeping people safe in local jails is paying attention, said Sheriff Tom Dart from Cook County, Illinois, whose Chicago-area jails are increasingly a model for humane practices. Dart said he eliminated isolation as punishment when his department’s data showed the practice actually led to more rule violations and security problems.

    “If you value something as a society, you study it,” Dart said. “You analyze it. You spend money on the data. If you don’t care about something, you don’t study it.”

    A 2014 statistical analysis of New York City’s jail inmates found serious mental illness and solitary confinement were the strongest factors in suicide attempts.

    Lindsay Hayes, a national expert on correctional suicide prevention, said jails use isolation with good intentions. “I truly believe that correctional officials and mental health and medical officials and leadership are not intentionally trying to punish people, to create tortuous types of environments,” Hayes said. “They’re just being extremely careful and, in many ways, over-protective and over-reactive.”

    A “Lonely Cell” and Endless Daylight

    Taylor felt worlds away from another human being. In the punishment cell, around the corner from suicide watch, no one walked by. She couldn’t hear voices or the clatter of activity. Distance muted everything.

    “It was the loneliest feeling I’ve ever had,” she said. “That feeling is what made me decide that I wanted to be good and go back to the cell behind the deputies.”

    The “lonely cell,” as she called it, broke her in less than a day. She apologized. She told deputies she’d learned her lesson. More importantly, Taylor said, “I was just being quiet.”

    Deputies moved her back to the suicide watch cell by the desk that Wednesday morning, two days after being booked into the facility, according to jail records.

    She tried to measure the hour by watching how much sunlight streamed onto the jail hallway floor. Peering through the window, she learned to tell time by making mental notes about when one deputy’s shift ended and another person’s began.

    She marked the hours with scraps of food and shreds of a paper plate, but it was all guesswork. The constant light triggered sleep deprivation and confusion. Taylor had lost track of just how long she’d been in Kern County’s jail.

    Bedbugs, Yoga Mats and a Shrug

    In California, this kind of isolation is entirely permissible.

    To bolster oversight of county jails and distribute funds in the realignment era, state lawmakers created the corrections board. Every two years, it sends an inspector to each facility to make sure sheriffs and their officers are following the rules.

    Steven Wicklander, an inspector for the state board, arrived at the Kern County jails in June 2018, a year after Taylor’s arrest. The central receiving jail was in the midst of a bedbug infestation. The sheriff’s staff was not regularly cleaning cell mattresses, Wicklander wrote in his notes. They handed out dirty beds and only washed them when the mattresses were “contaminated.”

    Conditions weren’t much better in the newest jail, opened last year and built with $100 million in state funds to cope with an influx of inmates serving longer sentences in county facilities under realignment. Its expansive infirmary is primarily for suicide prevention, and its 14 isolation cells were constantly full.

    Over three days, Wicklander toured the suicide watch halls at each jail facility. He saw maxed-out cells and deputies putting suicide watch inmates in safety cells for more than a week straight.

    “The safety cell cannot be used as a substitution for treatment,” Wicklander wrote in his final report in August 2018.

    There were violations at every stop. Kern County jails are so understaffed the sheriff’s office requires deputies to work overtime to cover the shifts, causing deputies to fall behind on safety and security checks. Suicide watch and safety cell practices, particularly the yoga mats, were against the rules.

    Agency officials do not have authority to make county leaders change and generally see themselves as partners, not regulators, said Allison Ganter, deputy director overseeing the inspection team.

    “We are not enforcement,” she said.

    Youngblood and his staff waited eight months to respond to Wicklander’s report.

    They wrote back this April and rejected the board’s findings that yoga mats violated the standards. The sheriff’s office spent $4,500 to buy 60 more mats the same month, finance records show.

    Yoga mats, they wrote, provide people on suicide watch “the comfort of padding, albeit minimal, in an environment which is uncomfortable by design.”

    A New Caregiver, and a Long Walk Home

    As the week went on, Taylor tried to talk to anyone who walked by her cell. Once, a woman sat near her window, and they chatted briefly about being arrested and their legal cases. “She was telling me her story, which was almost like my story,” Taylor recalled.

    She tried to get the staff talking. Taylor said she noticed a picture of a puppy on a deputy’s monitor and complimented the pet’s cuteness. The deputy scolded her and turned the screen away.

    “The most exciting part of the day was when they would give me my food because there was actually somebody there,” Taylor said.

    Saturday marked her sixth day in the jail. That morning, a different behavioral health specialist met with Taylor and decided that her suicide risk — however deputies calculated it initially — was gone. She moved to a space with the rest of the inmates in the jail’s general population ward, where she was thrilled to receive a toothbrush, soap, clothes and a mattress.

    Deputies also gave her access to a phone for the first time since she’d been put on suicide watch early Monday morning. Taylor called her mom, who helped arrange for her to post the $35,000 bond. (Two weeks later, prosecutors dropped the charges. Taylor sued the county for wrongful detention, but the suit was dismissed.)

    The sheriff’s office said it is not permitted to discuss her case under state law and would not answer reporters’ questions about her time in jail.

    It can take hours to be formally released from custody, and oftentimes inmates are released in the middle of the night without reliable transportation. Late Sunday, the doors of the downtown Bakersfield jail swung open for Taylor. A 4-mile walk in the dark awaited her.

    She had been in sweats when police arrested her and didn’t have a bra to wear for the trek home. Taylor asked if she could borrow one of the jail-issued ones.

    “It’s bad luck to take anything home from here,” a deputy replied.

    “Good advice,” she said.
     

    If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:

    • Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

    • Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741

    This originally appeared at ProPublica

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Never-Ending Drug Hustle Behind Bars

    The Never-Ending Drug Hustle Behind Bars

    “While I went to high school with casual weed smokers and worked at various jobs with weekend coke snorters, I was entirely unprepared for what I’ve seen in state prison.”

    This article was originally published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

    I was on the phone with my wife as usual on a Saturday evening a few months ago when my prison’s P.A. system crackled and a stressed-out voice announced: “All rec yards are closed; offenders will report back to their dorms immediately.”

    Something big was clearly afoot, and everyone rushed to the front windows to get a better view. People spoke in hushed voices, not the usual clowning, speculating about what might have happened.

    It turns out that eight people had overdosed at once, most likely on “spice.” They passed out on the recreation yard, laid out side-by-side on the concrete while nurses and guards ran around with stretchers and wheelchairs trying to keep control and render medical assistance, in that order.

    As far as I know, one of them is now dead, while seven have since recovered and were transferred to other compounds. I think the one who died only had about 30 days left on his sentence.

    You can bet on two things following from that sort of trainwreck. One, the addicts in here will continue snorting and smoking anything they can find. And two, the rest of us will pay for the mess they’re making.

    I guess I was a little naive when I was first locked up, thinking it must be hard to obtain drugs and get high while incarcerated. But to my shock, it was as common or more so than on the outside. (I’m probably in the minority in here because I don’t use, it’s that pervasive.) Spice, weed, Suboxone, Neurontin, Seroquel, orange peels—people try to get high on whatever they can find, everywhere I’ve been locked up, and no matter what security measures are in place to prevent it.

    When I was first in the jail in Washington, D.C., inmates openly smoked “K2” while gathered in cell doorways. You smelled that synthetic stuff more often than weed or cigarettes, though those were common too. Some bothered to try and conceal it by blowing the smoke down the toilet, but most didn’t.

    I would see correctional officers walk by and pretend not to notice; they aren’t paid enough to care. People knew which C.O.’s would write them up, and that was an awfully short list.

    And while I went to high school with casual weed smokers and worked at various jobs with weekend coke snorters, I was entirely unprepared for what I’ve seen in state prison. These are mostly desperate addicts with little else to organize their days around besides the next fix. Getting high is their whole bid. The money they hustle up or that their family sends them, every hard-earned dime of it, is spent on drugs. All they get is small amounts of low-quality stuff, but they’ll take it. Because even at the ridiculously high prices this stuff sells for behind bars, that crummy, overpriced little piece will keep the shakes away for another day.

    To give you some idea, a 16th of a strip of Suboxone (a “piece” in our parlance) can sell for $15 here, when supply is scarce. Go Google what a Suboxone strip looks like, imagine that cut in fourths, and then fourths again. It’s miniscule. And then remember that those $15 could have bought that addict 50 ramen soups from the commissary.

    Even at the normal price of $5 for a piece, it’s a terrible waste. Five dollars is a lot of money in lockup.

    They hustle to get it—they steal from the kitchen and sell the food, they gamble on sports or cards, they iron shirts or wash dishes, whatever it takes. Sometimes they even use sex as currency for the price of a high, or are coerced into it to cover their drug debt.

    Or their families, or girlfriends, or buddies back home, are sending money, thinking it’s going toward keeping them well-fed and well-clothed. It’s likely money that was hard to come by, because most people in here are decidedly not wealthy. Rich drug abusers go to treatment, not prison.

    Plenty of inmates have prison jobs, but those pay on average about a couple bucks a day—and you can’t get high too often on just that.

    Most drugs only come in here in one of three ways: mail, visits, and corrupt C.O.’s.

    Prison officials can take steps to block the first two kinds of smuggling, of course. Blocking the mail route is easy: Prisons are moving to give inmates photocopies of letters instead of the originals. And at visitation, they can strip-search us and make us wear embarrassing jumpsuits that zip up the back (the officers have to do that part). They also harass our visitors about what they’re wearing and their feminine hygiene products, to make sure that nothing gets in.

    And then when people overdose, they lock us all down, and shake down our lockers, and take away our recreation time. They do random drug tests, and run drug-sniffing dogs through the dorms now and then.

    But it doesn’t change anything. Until they pay correctional officers a decent wage, or strip-search them every day, there’ll always be a few guards who will take the risk of bringing in small quantities of drugs to sell, given the enormous paydays at stake. Again: Have you ever seen a Suboxone strip? It’s so small and nondescript, it’s like it was made to be smuggled.

    The news media has reported statistics that highlight the scale of the problem: Virginia has just under 30,000 inmates spread across more than 40 facilities; they received almost two million pieces of mail in 2018 and 225,000 visits. That year, there were 562 seizures of drugs inside those penitentiaries; 57 emergency-transport runs to hospitals carrying overdose patients; six interceptions of substances coming in through the mail; four prison employees prosecuted and 13 who resigned or were fired for smuggling. The numbers say that the state is barely scratching the surface of the problem.

    Meanwhile, treatment programs just don’t work in here. Prison is dismal and there isn’t much that’s positive to focus on, to keep an addict’s mind more productively occupied. The incarcerated person who is secure and self-aware enough to admit he has a problem and needs help is a rare breed.

    “It’s wide open over there,” you’ll hear addicts say with glee in their voice, when they’re called to pack their belongings because they’re being shipped off to the two-year residential treatment facility that Virginia runs.

    The big picture—that we incarcerate people for their addictions and then don’t give them adequate treatment—is a silent national disgrace. But it’s the little picture that I have to live with every day, that angers me and breaks my heart. It’s the individual human beings who have been failed by the system, and the often-already-poor families who are devastated even further by loved ones caught up in the cruelties of a vast enterprise.

    One of my last bunkies was pitiful: a lying, scheming, thieving addict who ended up having two fistfights within hours over his drug debts and the stealing that he was doing to support his habit. He was about the worst I ever saw, snorting stuff about six times a day. “I have sinus issues,” he’d often claim with a straight face, as he fit the toothpaste cap to his nostril and threw back his head once again. One day I came back from work to find him frantically rummaging through his mostly empty locker, and crawling around on the floor.

    “What’s up?” I asked, somewhat reluctant to involve myself.

    “Someone stole a piece out of my locker,” he said, panicky.

    This was certainly possible, since the addicts always seemed to be taking anything they could get their hands on, especially from each other. But instead I told him, “You probably just lost it,” hoping for less drama. I also pointlessly reminded him that a piece looks a lot like a paint chip, and those are everywhere.

    Around that time I’d started composing a country song titled, “My Bunkie Is a Junkie,” but I found that not much rhymes with Suboxone. Now he’s in another housing unit, pulling the same stunts. Still, I can’t hate him for any of that, or for stealing some food from me to support his habit; it’s just too depressing.

    In my time in the jails and prisons in D.C. and Virginia, I’ve been astonished by just how many people are locked up for drug crimes or, it’s important to note, drug-related ones. Black, white, Hispanic, it doesn’t matter: In state prisons and local jails, 15 percent and 25 percent of inmates are there for drug offenses, respectively. In federal prison, it’s even worse: More than 45 percent of inmates are there on drug-related charges.

    That’s a mind-boggling number of human beings locked up because of their addictions, either directly or indirectly. Our response to this problem is to put them in prison, where they’ll get little to no help and have all the time in the world to sit around scheming about getting high.

    I don’t have some smart solution for all of this. Just like on the street, little works for people who don’t want to quit using. But I know that most of these addicts don’t belong in here. Trying to incarcerate our way out of the problem is not helping them, and it’s not making society any safer either.

    Because these people will all be out on the street again in a few years—and all they learned in prison was how to cheat and steal and hustle more creatively to get high.

    Daniel Rosen, 49, currently resides at the Greensville Correctional Center in southern Virginia, where he is serving a five-year sentence for computer solicitation of a minor. He spent 15 years working for the departments of State and Defense on national security issues.

    The District of Columbia Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment about allegations of drug use in its facilities. A spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections declined to answer questions about the incident in which eight inmates overdosed.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Heidi Fleiss Talks Sex, Drugs, and Saving Macaws

    Heidi Fleiss Talks Sex, Drugs, and Saving Macaws

    I’ll get high to hide my pain and as an excuse. It’s stupid, just plain stupid. I’ve never known drugs to help anyone. It’s so crazy to hate it so much but to do it still. I don’t understand that insanity.

    The “Hollywood Madam” lives today with scores of noisy exotic birds in the small town of Pahrump, Nevada. Remembering her prison days, she now dedicates herself to freeing macaws from their cages.

    When Fleiss was arrested in 1993 for charges including attempted pandering, her escort service employed 500 beautiful girls-next-door who were like porn stars in the bedroom. They charged clients what today would be almost $3,000 a night, and Fleiss grew rich by keeping 40 percent of those earnings. Partying hard and living in the fast lane led to struggles with addiction.

    Although she never served time for her work in the sex industry, a federal tax evasion case led to 20 months in prison in Dublin, California. While incarcerated, she longed for her freedom; this longing served as the genesis of her efforts with macaw rescue.

    We recently got the inside scoop from Heidi on prison, reality TV, addiction, and her mission to free birds.

    The Fix: Today, your passion is providing freedom to dozens of macaws, beautiful parrot-like exotic birds that you live with on the outskirts of Pahrump, Nevada. You describe how seeing a caged bird reminded you of your experience in prison. Is being of service to these birds who once were forced to live in boxes a reflection of personal redemption?

    Heidi Fleiss: You pretty much got it. After prison, I did see the world differently. I saw a beautiful macaw in a cage, and it really bothered me. I asked the owner when was the last time it was out of its cage. She said, “I don’t know. Maybe 20 or 30 years.” The bird actually had dust on it. I realized I could not go on with my life, knowing that bird was still in that cage. It seemed so awful to have wings and be stuck in a cage, of all things. Imagine 45 years in a basement with another 45 years to go.

    It has never been properly addressed. We are a civilized society. How can we do this? The subjugation of this species is selfish and self-absorbed. It’s a tortuous, bleak existence. It’s so painful for them because their bodies aren’t meant for sedentary lives. They struggle with this lonely, painful existence. Do you really think these animals with wings are on this earth to say bad words and to dance for us? It’s disgusting, and everybody should find it offensive. Are we really that selfish?

    Before prison, I never paid attention to or cared about a bird in a cage. I lived with this one rich boyfriend, and we had lots of birds in cages. I’d walk by them every day, and I looked at them like I looked at pictures on the wall. It didn’t matter. Now that I’m aware, I can’t ignore it. I have to be proactive. I rescue them from parrot prison and give them a life outside of a cage. (In the background, macaws screech loudly.) They need to have some other option beyond living and dying in a cage. Today, I am that option. I did not want to do this with my life. I still do not want to do this, but somebody has to do it.

    In terms of your attempts to maintain your sobriety, you say, “I struggle. I struggle with my addiction. And it’s tough because I’ll be doing so well. And I don’t know what will make me flip.” When you have fallen off the proverbial wagon in the past, what triggered you? What tools do you use today to avoid such triggers?

    I am just coming off of a slip right now. I’m barely off of one. Obviously, there are some personal demons that I can’t confront. Sometimes I cannot accept the mistakes that I’ve made. Dealing with a relapse seems easier than continuing to deal with the pain. I’ll get high to hide my pain and as an excuse. It’s stupid, just plain stupid. I’ve never known drugs to help anyone. It’s so crazy to hate it so much but to do it still. I don’t understand that insanity.

    Was the business a pure money-making venture for you? How many of the women involved in the sex business view it purely as a money-making business, and how many of the women struggle with substance use or behavioral disorders like love addiction and sex addiction? Do you think a madam is to a sex addict what a dealer is to a drug addict?

    Absolutely not. In any professional field, whether it’s the medical industry or the legal industry or education or the sex industry, you’re going to find the same amount of problems: sex addiction, drug addiction, hang-ups from being molested, or this and that. You’re going to find just about the same ratio that I went through in the sex industry with just about any of these other professions. You really will.

    As for the sex addiction question, that’s the man’s point of view. They think the women do it because they love it. They don’t do it because they love it. They do it for money. And they are introduced to a world they would never have experienced otherwise. Who else gets to spend a summer yachting on the French Riviera? The people that worked for me traveled the world, and many had incredible, unique experiences. It’s very hard for people to understand the world that I was in. When you are dealing with the wealthiest people in the world, what happens is rare and beyond expectation. A million dollars is nothing to a billionaire. It’s hard to fathom that kind of life when it’s combined with having a good time.

    You don’t have to have a golden pussy to get a hundred thousand dollars. It has nothing to do with that. Rather, it’s about the circles you travel in, and I was able to access the people with that kind of money. That’s what it’s all about, and it’s really hard to understand the way money works at that level. All that stuff was a long time ago, it was a lot of fun, but it seems silly now to me, particularly in light of what I do today.

    Speaking to Vice, you said that the public humiliation you experienced on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew was actually therapeutic. Can you help us understand how it was therapeutic to have dirty laundry aired on national television? 

    When I was asked to do that show, I was like no way. I’m not going to be humiliated on television. You have to be a real idiot to do that show. There’s no way on earth. I turned it down, and then they contacted me again. I changed my mind. I don’t know why I decided to do it, but it was probably the five hundred thousand dollars. It turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life, and I wish they would start doing that show again.

    Really?

    Yes.

    Why?

    I think it’s really helpful to people both on and off the show. Yes, you’re watching someone else’s train wreck, but that’s what we always do. I don’t think it’s any more exploitive than anything else. You learn when you watch other people that you’re not alone whatever you’re going through and that there might be a way out.

    Dr. Drew is a genuine person and a great guy. He truly cares, and I found him to be one hundred percent sincere. He’s the real deal. He’s not a fraud or a phony. Ever since I first met him when I was 27 and sent to my first rehab, he’s been a consistently wonderful guy.

    You are famously quoted as saying, “I was too lazy in bed to be a prostitute.” Did this laziness change when crystal meth entered the picture? Was your sexual relationship with Tom Sizemore as charged and powerful as Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew made it out to be?

    I hate crystal meth. It still plagues me. I don’t see it as a sex drug. I think if you connect with someone, you connect with someone. I did crystal meth before and after I was with Tom, and I didn’t have these freakily intense sexual relationships. If you do not want to sleep with someone, drugs certainly do help. They really help.

    Personally, when it comes to sex, I don’t want to see anyone disrobe in front of me again. When it comes to sex, I’m done. I don’t want to have sex ever again. And this is from someone who’s slept with everything and everyone. I slept with a guy who rode on the Queen Mary when it was a ship, and I’ve only known it to be a tourist attraction. I’m not saying that I’m a new virgin or anything, but I don’t even want to have sex ever again. It doesn’t matter to me at all.

    Do you think people can be addicted to sex? What about addicted to love? Do you believe that you have suffered from sex addiction or love addiction?

    I definitely have never had a sex addiction. I’ve had a sex drive, and I’ve had lots of sex, it’s never dominated my life. I’ve felt that I’ve got to get laid or I got to have sex or my life will fall apart. That’s not me. Mind you, I’ve had mornings where I’ve woken up and looked over to find someone in my bed, and I have to ask myself, “Is that a boy or a girl?” Never ever has sex been the driving force in my life. I think the word “addiction” can mean a lot of things. People always talk about moderation, but I don’t believe in any of that. If you want to ruin your life, just do drugs.

    Love addiction can be co-dependency. I know women who do not feel complete unless they have a man in their life. I also know girls who go out at night with one purpose in mind. If they don’t get laid, then no matter what happens, it’s not a good night. It’s only good if they get laid. Father complexes and mother complexes drive those behaviors. They feed off of abandonment issues and get even complex.

    Also, my girls were not sex addicts or love addicts. They were prostitutes, and they were professionals. I went for the best. I wanted the cover of Seventeen magazine. None of them were underage, but I wanted the girls that looked like cheerleaders. I wanted the girls that knew how to fuck like a porn star but looked like the girl next door. (The squawking of the macaws intensifies.)

    You once lived a life that most people cannot even imagine. You told Vice about the parties at your house in the Hollywood Hills, saying, “They didn’t have sex for money at my house, but they would come to hang out. It was social… You’ve got people like Jack Nicholson and Mick Jagger partying at your house… I remember coming home, and Prince was dancing in my living room.” Do you miss those days?

    I remember walking out of my bedroom to see Prince dancing in my living room. I thought it was way cool, and I couldn’t even stick around to enjoy it. I had to go to a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow to check in so I could manage my business. It was too loud at my house to get anything done. There were a lot of good times, but I also worked hard.

    Do I miss it? (There is a pause as a macaw screeches in the background.) Look, when you’re young and a girl in Los Angeles, it’s hard to do any better than I did. For a long time, I had the best of everything: food, sex, drugs, people, clubs, hotels, and more. I was having a good time, and it seemed like the party never ends.

    As a woman gets older, it’s harder and different. When those things don’t work anymore, it changes you. The only thing I miss about Los Angeles today is there’s a lot of opportunity there. I don’t miss that life even when these birds are driving me crazy. I’ve had a great life and good times, but saving these birds right now is the only thing that matters to me.

    (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • I Can’t Wait to Hug My Brother: A Conversation with White Boy Rick’s Sister Dawn Wershe

    I Can’t Wait to Hug My Brother: A Conversation with White Boy Rick’s Sister Dawn Wershe

    Whenever they needed something, our police and government, the FBI, they made all these big promises: You do this and we’re going to give you this. But when it came down to it, nobody was there for Rick.

    When Rick Wershe was 14 years old, his older sister Dawn didn’t live at home. She was shacked up with her boyfriend smoking crack. She remembers the day her dad came over to tell her that Rick had been shot. They rushed to the hospital where Rick was in a bed, hooked up to all these wires and monitors. Dawn just lost her mind. She was hysterical and the nurses had to give her a Valium to calm her down.

    The .357 bullet entered Rick’s stomach and came out his back, just barely missing his main artery and blowing his large intestine in half. After Rick was discharged, Dawn moved back home to take care of him. His recovery was long and slow, and Dawn didn’t understand why he was so paranoid. Later she found out that Rick had been informing on local drug crews to the FBI, DPD and Prosecutor’s Office.

    You’ve probably heard of White Boy Rick. His odyssey has been covered in magazine, newspaper, and internet articles, a feature documentary, and a major motion picture with Matthew McConaughey. But while the injustices of his case have been widely profiled, the collateral damage to Rick’s family has received less attention.

    As Rick remained in the public eye, Dawn faced her own problems, including battling a 30-year addiction to crack cocaine. The Fix sat down with Dawn to discuss her drug use, how she’s dealt with her brother’s continued incarceration, how it felt to be portrayed on the big screen, and what it will be like to finally have him home.

    The Fix: When did you get involved with using drugs and do you recall the first time you experimented with drugs?

    Dawn Wershe: The first time I’d ever smoked crack cocaine was actually at my father’s house when he was in California. It was my girlfriend and these two guys. They’re like, “Hey, we’re going to go get this stuff. We want you to try it.” I think I was 15 years old. After that I smoked it now and then. When I was 17, I had a boyfriend who used to go rob people. Then we would go smoke. It was crack, but back in the 80s they called it freebase.

    When we were freebasing in the 80s, it was pure cocaine. It was an unbelievable high. I became addicted. My boyfriend ended up going to jail when I was 18 and I struggled with my addiction for probably a good year until my family said it’s either rehab or we don’t know what to do with you, so I checked myself into rehab. It was over on Michigan Avenue. I met a lot of strange characters there. I got clean and had my daughter. I stayed clean for a long time. I had a relapse when she was two.

    You battled addiction off and on for close to thirty years, what was that like?

    I got clean and had my second daughter. Another relapse, got clean, and had my third child, my son. Another relapse, got clean, and had my fourth child. It was a vicious cycle. Sometimes I’d only relapse for a

    day or two. After I had my fourth child, another son, I just said enough is enough and I was clean for over ten years. But after he turned ten, I relapsed again. My relapses were like daytime trips: going places I

    shouldn’t have been. Soon my relapses started becoming more frequent, and some longer than day trips. They became two-day trips, three-day trips, depending on how much money I had to spend. Always crack cocaine, that was my drug of choice.

    My addiction started spiraling again, I was using more frequently. I would disappear for a day or two back then. Maybe I went a month without crack, maybe I went a week. It depended on the situation, but it all was bad looking back. I can’t think of one time that I was happy and smoking crack or freebasing. Most of the time I was paranoid and worried my family was going to know; it was like how am I going to deal with this? I have to get back home. The streets are ugly. I saw and heard things that nobody wants to see or hear.

    How do you think your addiction hurt and affected you and your family?

    My addiction crushed my family. It was horrible. Now that I look back and see things I did, and what the outcome of them was, it mortifies me that I’ve put them through that. Especially my kids when they were younger. It’s something I would never want to put anyone through again. The biggest regret I have is putting my family through that. Something [would] happen in my life, let’s say my husband cheated on me and I found out. I’d be off to the races. Bam, I’m gone. Because I’m going to show him, I’m going to pay him back. But in actuality I was hurting myself and I was killing my family.

    It didn’t hurt him, he didn’t care. I would leave and then I would feel so guilty. The guilt consumed me. As soon as you take that first hit, it’s like, “Oh my God. They’re going to know I’m high. They’re going to be so disappointed.” That was the worst thing I could’ve done. I never robbed anyone, I never stole anything, I never sold my body. I never did any of that. I would just leave and lie to everyone. I’d say, “I’m going to the gas station” and just not come back. It breaks my heart. I just thank God that my children have unconditional love for me.

    When was your last relapse and how long have you been clean now?

    I relapsed in March of 2017. Right after the documentary about my brother premiered in Detroit. I was clean 11 months prior to that. Right now I’ve been clean a little over two years. I don’t think I’ll ever relapse again at this point, because I hit the bottom of the barrel and that last time I had an epiphany. It wasn’t a good epiphany, it was me dying. And my children having to deal with that: having to deal with the way I died, where I died, how I died. And it devastated them. Nothing anyone says or does to me at this point in my life could make me want to use drugs. Not a boyfriend, not a man, not my kids, not a stranger. Not anyone could say or do anything to me that would make me say, “Well, I’m going to go get high. I’ll show them.” That Dawn is gone.

    What’s it been like watching your brother go through his ordeal with the criminal justice system and the insane amount of time he’s been forced to remain incarcerated?

    When Rick started selling drugs on his own, I was there with him. I told him it was going to be bad. He ended up going to jail not too long later. He was only selling for a year on his own after he wasn’t an informant. And when they sentenced him, I was mortified. I mean, I had just lost my little brother. Then the very next day they took my dad. They arrested my dad for threatening a federal officer at Rick’s trial. They ended up dropping that and charged him with components to make silencers. He got convicted on that.

    In two days I lost the only family I had. The only one I had left was my grandmother, my dad’s mother who helped raise us. And she wasn’t good, she was in and out of the hospital and living in a nursing home. I wish back then we had home healthcare where I could’ve let her live with me, because she raised Rick and I with my dad. It was very devastating to lose my dad and my brother, and then nine months later, I lost my grandmother.

    Every week I went to the prisons to see my dad and my brother. I would gather up my kids, sometimes go get Rick’s kids, sometimes pick up my mom and go visit them at the prison, which is an all-day thing. It killed me because I didn’t have my family. That was my whole support system — my brother, my dad, you know? It was the Three Musketeers, and now we’re no longer. I feel that they used Rick as a child. They took away his childhood from him.

    People talk about them doing it in China and foreign countries, but our police and government, the FBI, they did it here. They did it to Rick. Whenever they needed something, they made all these big promises. You do this and we’re going to give you this. But when it came down to it, nobody was there for him. Nobody came to bat for Rick at his trial. Nobody came to bat for Rick at his parole hearings until 2003 and then more recently.

    What was it like to see yourself portrayed on screen in a big Hollywood movie and be a part of the Shawn Rech documentary?

    I was in the documentary, which I’m quite certain helped gain my brother his parole in 2017. And that was put together and orchestrated in the best way possible. It gives the solid answers and the truth. In the documentary we don’t talk about my drug addiction.

    When the Hollywood movie came out, I saw it for the first time in public and cried the first 30 or 45 minutes. They had me on screen looking like I was a dope fiend. They had my dad — Matthew McConaughey — with greasy hair; the clothes he was wearing and the car he was driving were never anything that my father wore or had. I told everybody before it happened it wasn’t going to be real, it wasn’t going to be right. That movie just caused me so much grief, aggravation, and pain that it’s a wonder I didn’t relapse.

    Rick got paroled from Michigan and now he actually has a date, what’s it going to be like having him finally come home?

    He had to go to Florida to do a five-year sentence for something that happened while he was in prison involving a car theft ring. He was turned down for clemency in March 2019. But next year in 2020 he’ll come home. I can’t wait to stand there and watch him walk through that gate, because it’s going to be so surreal. I probably will pass out because I won’t believe it.

    I can’t wait to be able to hug my brother. To have him home. To show him how different life is out here now from the life that he left. To be with us as a family. To be around his grandkids, my grandkids, and to just spend time together. It’s just going to be one good time after another. It will be dinners, barbecues, trips, just family time. It’s going to be family time for a long time with us when he comes home.

    (Images of Dawn and Rick Wershe via author)

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Journey from Heroin to Prison

    My Journey from Heroin to Prison

    As soon as I was out of prison, it took one argument with a girlfriend for me to go running right back into the arms of the one that always made me feel better: heroin.

    I have been a man of many realities. I’ve been a son, a student, a friend, a lover, a brother and finally a drug dealer. Well, at least, I thought that was my final phase. But then I shot heroin for the first time and I entered a new world. I felt warmth comparable to a mother’s embrace. It was something in my life I no longer received. It was a feeling I craved desperately, setting me on a course of destruction and pain that I tried to blot out with even more heroin. And every time I came to, the pain seemed to get worse.

    I didn’t start off as a heroin user. I found my niche in high school selling weed. But when I was forced out on my own, I knew I needed a better source of income. So, I started selling the Adderal and Atavan that I was prescribed. In that life, it really was only a matter of time before I started abusing the drugs I was selling. To support my growing habit, I started selling cocaine. It was fast and easy money from an older crowd. I didn’t plan on using it myself; my biological mother was addicted to crack cocaine and I was afraid of following in her footsteps.

    But there came a day when I gave in to temptation. Coke took me to another level. After cocaine it was Percocet and then, eventually, at the prompting of the girl I loved, I tried heroin. As I pushed the plunger, I felt all of the pain in my life fade away as the warmth of the dope enveloped me. It was a night of warmth and sex. When I woke up in the morning, all I felt was sadness that the feeling was over. Reality came crashing over me and all of the feelings that I had so desperately tried to bury came rushing back to me. It was a toxic mix of guilt and anger and disappointment. Pain.

    I never liked dealing with my feelings, and heroin helped me to avoid them. But I tried to avoid them too much. Two nights before Christmas 2009, I overdosed for the first time. The life I had been living took its toll on me, mentally and physically. I was alone and the pain of losing my family and my friends to my addiction became too much for me to handle. All I wanted was to keep running from it. I ended up using too much heroin to blur out the pain.

    I didn’t want to die but I just didn’t know how to live.

    When I opened my eyes, it was like a dream. Ambulance lights flashing, people overhead asking questions. All of the voices seemed as if they were under water. Christmas morning, when I came to in the hospital, my family was there at my bedside. I hadn’t seen my brothers and sisters in a long time because my mom wanted me to stay away. She wasn’t my biological mom, of course. The woman that gave birth to me was too in love with crack to be a mother to me. She abandoned me when I was five. But my mom, she took me in and looked after me until I was 14. Then she kicked me out too. 

    When I woke up in the hospital bed and saw her face and the looks on my siblings’ faces, I broke down. At that point in my life, I thought I had forgotten how to cry. But I cried because they cried. I cried because I realized my siblings were seeing their hero at his worst. I cried because I felt bad for all the things I did to my mom. I always wanted to make my adopted parents proud. I felt like I owed them my successes because they gave me a second chance at a decent life. I had to show them it wasn’t for nothing. But looking into my mom’s eyes that morning, all I saw was the pain and disappointment I had caused her.

    When I was released from the hospital, I was too ashamed and embarrassed to show my face to my brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to deal with the pain of what I had done. Instead, I crawled backed into bed with my new love, heroin, who kept my emotions nonexistent as long as I stayed with her. I turned away from my family and searched for a new one – a family that would accept me without me having to change my destructive behavior. I found that sense of belonging with the Latin Kings.

    My “Original Gangster” – the Latin King member who took me under his wing – showed me a side of gang life that I hadn’t ever expected. He told me the Nation was dedicated to uplifting the Latin community from poverty, oppression, and abuse. He showed me broken families, homeless people and how my life would be if I continued on the path I was on. He was a man who didn’t owe me a thing but tried to show me a better way. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. And I wanted what he had: respect, power, and the ability to make a difference in the lives of the people who looked up to him. I had no direction and nothing going for me so I agreed to be a part of his world, with no consideration of what that really meant.

    I began living a lie. I pretended to be clean, but anyone who stayed around me long enough could see that I was on drugs. My OG would ask me occasionally if I was using and I would always make up a story. He never pushed me any further on it. But the other Kings knew. They didn’t care, though, as long as I did what they asked of me. Some of them even supplied me with drugs to make sure I was ready for a “mission.” In our world, a mission involved shooting at the opposition or robbing someone.

    In my heart, though, I was never a gangster. I never wanted to hurt people. The things I did on my missions made me feel like I was a losing a part of myself. My life became an endless cycle: wake up, get high, complete my mission, get high, be with my girlfriend, get high, black out, wake up, repeat. Then one day I was given a mission that no amount of drugs could ever convince me to do.

    I had sworn loyalty to my gang but when they told me to kill my OG for being a suspected police informant, I couldn’t do it. Three members of my gang beat me unconscious for violating their order. When I came to, I was in the hospital with a concussion and my phone was ringing. My OG’s wife was crying on the other end. He was dead. My heart sank and hardened at once. I detached myself from the machines and left against medical advice. I needed to get back to heroin. It was my love, and at that point, it also became my life.

    Supporting my habit got harder. I was using too much to be able to sell and still have enough left for myself. So, I found a new profession as a male escort. It was during that time that I was raped by one of my drug dealers. I was unable to live with myself after that happened. For the first time, I intentionally overdosed and ended up on a friend’s front porch. He brought me back to life. Throughout the night, he talked to me about life. He told me “life is good, good is life.” I eventually had those words tattooed on my forearms to serve as a reminder. He not only gave me a second chance at life but also a new outlook. From that day forward, I tried to fight my addiction.

    It wasn’t easy and I didn’t manage it very well. I tried my first stint at rehab at 17. That lasted two weeks. Soon after rehab, I caught my first case for armed robbery. Strangely, when they put me in the cop car, I was relieved. My first night in jail put me in a bad place mentally. All the pain I was running from was suffocating me. I had the phrase “life is good, good is life” in my mind but, at that moment, I had no idea what was actually good in my life. All I knew is that I wanted to live.

    I served three years and change on my first sentence. I was in the best shape of my life, both physically and mentally, and I thought I had everything figured out. But nothing had really changed for me. As soon as I was out, it took one argument with a girlfriend for me to go running right back into the arms of the one that always made me feel better: heroin. I wasn’t out of prison four hours before I had a needle in my arm.

    Seven months later, I caught my second case and that’s what I’m serving now. Since going back to prison this time, I’ve worked hard to better myself, gain an education and become someone. But I still carry around the fear that I might not be strong enough to stay clean and make something of myself when I get out. In the past, that fear would have stopped me from even trying. But during this sentence, I’ve learned that the only way for me to succeed is to have the courage to fail and pick myself back up without having to turn to my old love for support. I used to believe I was nothing and that meant my life would amount to nothing. But I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that I have the tools I need to succeed. And that gives me hope that, maybe this time, everything will be different.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • National Prison Strikers Demand More Drug and Mental Health Treatment

    National Prison Strikers Demand More Drug and Mental Health Treatment

    Effective drug and mental health therapy requires sincerity and trust. But prison is not a trustworthy environment for inmates. For example, all “therapeutic” prison spaces are recorded.

    Improved drug and mental health services were demands of the 2018 National Prison Strike in the U.S. and Nova Scotia. Just ask Isa, age 50, who is held in the federal prison system in Georgia. Why was better rehabilitative programming among the prisoner demands? Because confinement mixed with authoritarian corrections culture and dollar-driven bureaucratic mandates present almost insurmountable conditions for people seeking recovery from substance use disorder or mental health conditions.

    Isa explains:

    “Rehabilitation is used as behavior modification program where they (prison authorities) want to mold the inmate into being a better inmate against the greater good,” Isa told The Fix. “It’s a control mechanism in every facility.”

    Prisoners’ rehabilitative programming looks good on paper, he said, but is less so in practice. Why? Effective drug and mental health treatment requires sincerity and trust, according to Isa. Prisoners can and do see the lack of both. “They are not stupid,” he said. 

    While the notion of rehab in prison appears noble, below the surface we find that there’s a fundamental structural “conflict of interest” between prison administration and prisoner rehabilitation. According to Isa, prison is not a trustworthy environment for inmates. The simple fact of inmates divulging information to staff about their lives can be as problematic as the fact that all “therapeutic” prison spaces are recorded. For example: you would probably not talk in a support group about the fact that your whole family does opioids because you don’t want to risk putting them on law enforcement’s radar.

    Another example of the structural silencing of prisoners is that Isa participated “morally” (meaning in a less proactive fashion) in the 19-day 2018 prisoner strike due in part to fear of retribution. It’s no exaggeration to note that authorities in the federal prison system have a history of retribution against organized resistance.

    Speaking of relevant U.S. prison history, September 9, 1971 was the day the Attica prison riots began in upstate New York to honor fallen prison activist George Jackson, who perished in San Quentin after a battle with prison officials. On that day, Attica prisoners took control, leading to a four-day stand-off with authorities that saw 42 staff taken hostage. In the end, 33 prisoners and 10 officers and prison employees died as a result of the Attica authorities’ armed assault.

    In 2018, 47 years later, this infamous prisoner rights anniversary is recognized as the official end of the National Prison Strike that involved at least 10 states in work and pay stoppages as well as hunger and medical strikes at facilities in U.S. detention centers and locations in Nova Scotia. The inclusion of Nova Scotia speaks to the far-reaching appeal of striking for North American prisoners: inmates shared similar demands across national boundaries.

    Prisoner strike demand numbers 7 and 8 on the list of ten are crucial: “No imprisoned human shall be denied access to rehabilitation programs at their place of detention because of their label as a violent offender” and “State prisons must be funded specifically to offer more rehabilitation services.”

    The demand to provide prisoners with mental health services, including drug rehabilitation, is pervasive throughout the prison system and prison reform movements globally. In fact, the word “rehabilitation” has become such a prison industry buzzword as to have all but lost its legitimacy; unfortunately, we lack a better way to describe the improved facilities that prisoners and their supporters are fighting for.

    Anyone familiar with current prison conditions will laugh at the notion that today’s prisons are aspiring progressive rehab centers. In Live from Death Row and other works, author and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal describes these current penal conditions as variations on a theme of death sentences, including the physically and sexually abusive climate, austere conditions and filth of the facilities, the low quality of food, water, and medical services, and the lack of cultural and educational opportunities for the incarcerated.

    Now for the fight. 

    Rehabilitation automatically leads to discussions of drug use and abuse. Some drug use is recreational, but some people use drugs in order to self-medicate, to treat mental or other conditions. Therefore, we end up with a lot of prisoners who directly or indirectly require drug rehabilitation. If charges are drug-related, generally, incarcerated individuals have a better chance of qualifying for in-house or court-ordered outpatient rehab programs.

    But unfortunately, budget cuts and a lack of commitment to prisoners’ well-being have led to understaffed or nonexistent programs. Sometimes, you’re lucky if you’re able to attend a weekly Narcotics Anonymous (NA) or Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) meeting.

    It seems like there are at least three levels of needs here.

    The first is the need for specific programs targeting immediate and more emergency-based drug abuse issues. These kinds of programs would mean that a person entering with a drug addiction or mental health issue would immediately receive relevant services. Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse estimates that 90 percent of addicted inmates do not receive substance abuse treatment.

    The second level would be something like general wraparound services to incorporate mental health into a larger healthcare paradigm. Inmates who do not use drugs would have an opportunity to get support at this level. These rehabilitation services, like counseling, educational events and support groups, may be voluntary, but they would be well-funded enough to attract inmates and encourage sustained involvement.

    The third level would restructure the entire prison facility so that it becomes a rehabilitative atmosphere instead of a simple list of programs tacked onto a bulletin board with a signup sheet. Much easier said than done. This is the most utopian category because it requires a fundamental restructuring of mental health and wellness concepts. Prison abolitionism argues for the eradication of modern prisons because they are inherently unhealthy. It is virtually impossible to rehabilitate an atmosphere that is predicated on the social engineering, racism, sexism and the maximization of profit in a punitive climate marked by what some equate to slave labor conditions. Where the profit motive begins, quality rehabilitative programming in the federal prison system tends to end, according to Isa.

    Demands 7 and 8 relate to the first two levels described above.

    According to the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, “Approximately half of prison and jail inmates meet DSM-IV criteria for substance abuse or dependence, and significant percentages of state and federal prisoners committed the act they are incarcerated for while under the influence of drugs.”

    At arrest, almost three quarters of arrestees have drugs in their system — especially marijuana and cocaine. In 2000- 2013, we saw the increase of opioids and methamphetamines. Considering that currently only 11 percent of inmates receive any form of drug rehab, any improvements in this area are welcome. At present, many inmates don’t even get the prescribed medication needed to overcome addictions or treat mental illnesses; increasing the availability of prescribed drugs would be an automatic improvement in any facility.

    Let’s take a look at the recidivism rates for jailed inmates: “… in the two weeks after release, inmates are 12 times more likely to die — and 129 times more likely to die of an overdose — than the general population.” If drug use rates are that high, then crimes associated with drug use are also more likely to occur just after release.

    Providing methadone or Suboxone to opioid-addicted inmates before release, and then “connecting them with providers in the community who can continue to prescribe the medication when they leave” considerably increases the inmates’ survival chances and also decreases the likelihood of crimes related to drug use on the street.

    A good sense of the rehab climate can be found in our state and federal facilities. The Federal Bureau of Prisons offers Drug Abuse Education classes to inmates. It also offers nonresidential, residential, and community-based treatment programs. While this list seems comprehensive, as it allows for variation inside as well as community-based treatment, we must consider that overcrowding, staff shortages, and limited funding impair inmates’ access to existing services.

    It’s these obstacles and others that led prisoners to strike this month.

    In all, such obstacles function as contradictions that render “prison rehabilitation” an oxymoron. The prison structure provides such a specific type of authoritarian environment; these conditions of confinement cannot structurally provide necessary skills and training. Sure, inmates can be taught life or job skills, or learn about themselves and their own addictions so they can function better. However, confinement itself is viewed by prison abolitionists as inhumane and therefore a non-rehabilitative climate. We are expecting inmates to learn and retain information about their own health in a place where their main focus is frequently just on daily survival. Inmates are expected to “recover” in structures designed to maximize their status as incarcerated people who are subject to the whim of prison authorities.

    As an example, Isa explained that the prison warden had effectively dismantled the mental health services for prisoners. How? He moved prisoners receiving mental health services to new locations throughout the detention facility. As a result, their mental health issues worsened as their housing changed. They suffered more. “A lot of these prisoners cycled back in and out of segregation, including solitary confinement,” Isa said.

    When we compare prison reformers’ vision of rehabilitation with the prison abolitionist credo that if prisons reformed people they wouldn’t be prisons, we see that they meet in the middle when it comes to drug and mental health issues. Rehabilitation is a marketing concept that redirects fundamentally critical views on prison conditions towards new programs and therapeutic services. That these services are delivered in a hostile environment, where inmates cannot be expected to trust therapy and health staff, is one problem. Another problem is that outside staff unfamiliar with the overall facility operations do not have an obligation to their patient/prisoners once the prisoners complete a program.

    Working with what is available in conditions of aggression and scarcity, one would expect all available avenues to be on the table. Two that loom large are to ensure continuity of care and the safekeeping of inmates. However, given the fundamental conflicts of interests involved, prisoners’ health and safety get short shrift time and time again.

    So much for rehabilitation?

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How Gigolos' Garren James Found Recovery and Success

    How Gigolos' Garren James Found Recovery and Success

    The client base is diverse, ranging from the ladies who want to go out and have a fun night on the town to those who are recovering from a traumatic experience or dealing with a terminal illness.

    Garren James is a man filled with surprises. The stunning former model is more than just a handsome hunk. He is the CEO, producer, and star of Cowboys 4 Angels, the male escort company featured on Showtime’s hit series, Gigolos, which is entering its seventh season. With a beautiful wife, kids, and successful career, James seems to have it all. But what many don’t realize is that the journey to this dream life was filled with obstacles that only he could overcome.

    The innovative businessman recently celebrated ten years of sobriety. Rather than continuing to keep his recovery quiet, James felt he might be able to provide some hope or inspiration by sharing his experience, strength, and hope with a wider audience. Here, James shares his story publicly for the first time.

    “I’m tired of hearing about people dying. Let’s equal it out, let’s talk about the successes,” he says when sharing his story with me. The Florida native had a slew of prior arrests. After numerous stints in various rehab centers that were not successful, James was finally ready to hit rock bottom. His addiction to crack, powder cocaine, and various other substances had completely taken over his life.

    “I was living in a garage and the girl who was letting me stay there told me if I got high one more time that she would kick me out. So, I went out and I got high.”

    To his surprise, she kept her word and he was out. James found himself with no place to go.

    In desperation he chose to break into her property, hoping to retrieve something that could be pawned for cash. At the time he was in the height of his addiction and thought that she would surely understand what he was doing. She did not. The police were called and he found himself leaving with handcuffs shackled to his wrists and nothing to pawn.

    “I was in a jail cell laying on the floor. I didn’t care.” Rather than looking back with regret, James speaks of his arrest with gratitude: “That was the day the Brown County Sheriff department saved my life,” he recalls. This was not his first experience with prison time, but he was hoping it would be his last.

    For the next ten months he contemplated his future while behind bars. His situation improved when he was offered a chance to go to a halfway house. After getting involved in a 12-step recovery program and attending meetings within the system, he began to discover that life was worth living.

    “I worked my ass off in recovery…I was loved back into being a person who had confidence.”

    It’s normal to be fearful of life beyond your comfort zone, especially when it’s one in which you’ve been thriving and learning a new way of life. When it came time for James to seek employment, he was hesitant and nervous. Acclimating to life clean and serene was as intimidating as it was wonderful.

    “I thought I should have been on disability. I was nervous about getting a job based on my past.” He was encouraged to try. Wearing a pair of slacks and an $8.00 shirt from The Salvation Army, he went in search of employment. Almost immediately, he was hired by an art gallery. From there, he began to rebuild his life.

    His business, Cowboys 4 Angels, started slowly. First, he developed a website. Straight male escorts were available to provide companionship to females. It was a service that would provide compassionate and handsome men to women in need. His big break came when he was featured on The Tyra Banks Show. Before Tyra he was receiving a few calls a month; after his appearance, his business began to boom. He started getting up to 50 bookings a month and the website stayed near the top of Google searches.

    The love that James received during his experience getting sober informs the way he runs his company, and especially when it comes to his interactions with the women who approach him. Cowboys 4 Angels’ client base is diverse, ranging from the ladies who want to go out and have a fun night on the town to those who are recovering from a traumatic experience or dealing with a terminal illness. It’s more than just a dinner date, it’s about having a connection with another human being.

    Ten years later, James’ life has exceeded his expectations. Now happily married with children, with a business and television series on Showtime, he is in a place he never imagined. And James is adamant he has achieved this all because he has never lost sight of his recovery. That is where the real work started.

    “With recovery, anything is possible,” he says with conviction.

    One of his most recent and proudest achievements was rallying for a meeting to be held in the very prison he once did time in. This was finally approved and every other Sunday he personally visits the facility and works with the inmates.

    All the while keeping his coffee commitment at his home group.

    “There are no big shots in recovery.” Garren James says smiling.

    Follow Garren James and Cowboys4Angels on Twitter and Instagram.


    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Walk

    The Walk

    I can effectively express two emotions, anger and rage, and if someone fucked with my little girl, they would be getting a double load of both.

    I hadn’t been back in the free world a month, but I was rolling. This time I was flat, no parole, no PO to fuck with, no fines, nothing. Things were back on track and it happened quickly. I had established an entirely new set of contacts on the inside who were in need of a man with my skill set. They helped me get up and running so I made sure I made good on their initial investment. After that, I carved out a deal to set myself up. My supply was steady and demand was… Well, demand in the drug game is something you never have to worry about.

    I got a text on my phone, not the prepaid burner phone that goes off non-stop, but my actual, personal phone. Only three people have this number and two of them are my children, so of course, I opened it immediately. It was my daughter, the one person who can melt my heart with a single word, touch, or look. She is 19 and a thing of pure beauty. She is the best of her mother and very little of me (I pray).

    “Daddy, I need you.”

    I can’t describe what went through me when I saw these words on the backlit screen of my phone. I’ve spent literally thousands of sleepless nights wishing I could do something, anything, to make up for the pain I’ve caused this sweet girl. This might be my chance.

    “what wrong” “u ok” my archaic thumbs desperately trying to type the letters and press send.

    “I’m fine Daddy just need to talk to you.”

    “where are you now”

    “at home.”

    “I’ll brite there”

    “??????”

    God damned mother fucking phone. “I’ll be right there”

    “Okay Daddy cu soon”

    I look around the house and think about what I would need. I dusted off a thousand dollars and stuffed it into an envelope. That’s not enough, I thought, and got fifteen hundred more. My phone… my keys… my gun… No, not the gun. Not around my baby, at least not until I know more. I lit a cigarette and got in my car.

    The drive was over too soon. I was consumed by anticipation. I was so happy to be going to see my girl, at her request, and to be wanted by her, or at least needed if not exactly wanted. That’s almost just as good. For a moment, I came close to letting myself be happy, but before the happiness set in, the worry of why she might be needing me kicked in. Happiness is something I have never quite been able to handle. I don’t think it’s meant for me. Of all the people she could have called, she called me. Her mother always handles the emotional stuff. Her stepdad is a good man, he makes decent money, but she called me. I am not a good man. I can effectively express two emotions, anger and rage, and if someone fucked with my little girl, they would be getting a double load of both.

    When I saw her standing there in her driveway, I forgot all about that.

    I got out of my car and walked up to her. She welcomed me in with a hug. Not the sideways kind either, but with her head turned, cheek against my chest, full embrace. The sweet smell of her hair filled my nostrils and transported me back to a time almost forgotten. My God this feels good, I thought to myself.

    “When did you grow up, baby girl?”

    “It happens fast, Daddy”

    Before I could ask her what was happening, she took me by the hand and started walking. It was a late spring day that was made for being outside. Her neighborhood wasn’t fancy, a bit run down, older, filled with young couples just starting out and old couples just finishing up. It was quiet today though, or perhaps I just wasn’t hearing anything around me. I was so intently focused on her, I realized, we were long past sight of my car or even her driveway.

    Just walking.

    She talked and I listened. She gave me the short hand version of the last 13 years of her life, the years I had wasted in prison. This remarkably strong, independent, young woman was five when she watched me get beaten until I was unrecognizable, handcuffed, and dragged out of our living room. She then watched as her home was completely torn to pieces for every dollar I had tucked away.

    But here we were today, walking.

    Stories of relationships, achievements, disappointments, highs, lows and everything in between went into my ears and swirled through my brain like an F5 tornado. I had no fucking clue whatsoever to say about any of it.

    So we walked, and she talked, and I listened.

    I listened to the struggles of a young woman, desperate to make her way in a hard, unforgiving world. I could hear the desperation and determination in her voice. Still, I had nothing to offer, no advice, no words at all.

    Before I knew it, we were back at my car hugging again. We were about to part ways and I had done nothing for her. Not one damn thing!

    “Wait! I brought you something!”

    I handed her the envelope that I brought and had forgotten until just then. She opened it a little, peeked inside, closed it, and pressed it against my chest.

    “That’s not why I called, Daddy. I just needed to talk to you. Thank you so much for walking with me, I hope we can do this more. I love you.”

    I was barely able to mumble “I love you too, baby girl,” before I got into the car. I drove on autopilot for a few minutes.

    “What the fuck just happened?” I felt the guilt of my life pile on so heavily I could hardly breathe. It was like a guy I heard about who had been hit by an avalanche. He said it was like the snow was all around him, squeezing him from every possible angle, and he had to make room around his body to get any air.

    This was a feeling I could not deal with. I did not possess any knowledge or skill that would allow me to work through this. The only thing I knew for sure was that I could make it go away. It would only be a temporary fix, but gone for right now was good enough for me. I knew what I had to do and getting home to do it as quickly as possible was my only objective. I had to get high.

    When I arrived, I went straight inside. I bypassed my personal stash and took out what I needed from my supply. I prepared a larger amount than usual and loaded it into a syringe. I considered that it may be too much and that I may overdose, but the way I felt, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. I pressed the plunger of the rig until I saw a tiny drop hanging on the bevel of the needle. I tightened the belt around my bicep and with a familiar prick of the skin, the anticipation building, breath holding, a ribbon of red flashed in the barrel and .. .. .. .. gone.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Newly Sober and Recently Incarcerated Find Purpose at DV8 Kitchen

    The Newly Sober and Recently Incarcerated Find Purpose at DV8 Kitchen

    People want to look into the eye of someone they’re helping by eating there, and our staff wants to see people enjoying what they’ve made.

    Whatever our experience with life is, was, or will be, there’s one thing we all have in common: food. It’s one of the things we need to survive, along with the social support and shelter we need to thrive. These things come together in a powerful way at a dine-in bakery in Kentucky called DV8 kitchen, where Rob Perez and his wife oversee a staff comprised entirely of people in recovery, many of whom are coming out of incarceration and looking for a second chance. After getting sober at 25, Perez, already a career hospitality veteran at a young age, decided to open a fourth restaurant located within walking distance from three different transitional living facilities. They serve homemade bread and southern breakfast-style foods, and, most importantly, employees and customers are always interacting with one another. We spoke to Perez about the employees he’s lost to addiction in the past, the ways in which the bakery is impacting the community, and that time NFL Quarterback Chad stopped by to teach a workshop on leadership and teamwork.

    The Fix: Would you say there is a stronger chance of sobriety if you set your employees up with a job in a sober environment?

    Rob Perez: When you do a job with quality, you build self respect, self-esteem and pride in a craft you’re developing. In recovery, we need a support system and an accountability system. And the camaraderie you get out of a job when you have common interests, backgrounds and circumstances, is pretty powerful. We’ve had a few employees tell us that it’s nice not to feel bad about turning down invites from coworkers to grab a drink after work, or even feeling pressured to do so. Our staff don’t leave programs or meetings or houses and come to a foreign environment 40 hours a week, they come to a place where we all speak the same language, have the same customs, and discussions, so its a 24/7 program.

    Are there any logistical benefits to the way it’s set up?

    From a practical standpoint, even if people have insurance, most of the time, a recovery center’s money runs out after 30 days, and people have to start to contribute to the house they’re living in. So if businesses don’t take a chance on someone who has a difficult schedule to work around and a past to have to deal with, these folks can’t get through the program they’re in, and, generally, outpatient programs are a minimum of six months to one-year. Also, many of our employees have mentioned how nice it is to work with others who truly understand what they’re going through.

    Have the people you work with at the sober living houses given you any feedback about your impact?

    They think it’s working well as there’s a lot of accountability on the residents (our employees) to stay on track with the program. They really need to follow their program while they’re at work or they will be asked to leave the program altogether. In that way, we work in tandem with the sober living houses to ensure the employee is meeting their goals and staying on a good path.

    What do your employees do about housing when their stay nearby is up?

    The houses we work with have separate sober living environments our employees can go to after their initial first year of treatment. If they’re interested, we can also connect them with community services that will help them find housing.

    Why do you think there is still so much hesitancy to give people a second chance?

    When you say you’re a second chance employer you run a risk of people thinking ‘second chance’ means ‘second rate.’ They don’t want to spend money on second rate. What we’ve been taught in society is to be hesitant in employing convicted offenders and recovering addicts. Through DV8, we hope to show them success and really convince them that it doesn’t hurt to offer addicts or those who were previously incarcerated a second chance. Though we’ve only been open for about nine months, I’ve noticed that a handful of our employees have directly reached out to government officials to discuss the importance of offering second chance employment opportunities.

    Did people know your triple-bottom line when you first opened?

    In our first two weeks, people felt insecure about coming to a place that had many people in recovery in it, but we also didn’t formally announce it. Without us saying it, they knew people had incarceration in their past. But once I started to contact the media and talk about our mission and the people, it all changed. People want to know that they’re making an impact, and that’s why the glass wall we have between our cooks and service people and the customers is so important. People want to look into the eye of someone they’re helping by eating there, and our staff wants to see people enjoying what they’ve made. Ultimately, though, we want them to be unidentifiable from anyone else. The way they stand up straight, the enthusiasm, their confidence, we can see that they’re changing the way the public thinks about recovery and addiction.

    Tell me about your personal connection to the mission.

    Addiction found me and has crossed the paths of 13 other people in our other for-profit restaurants and, now, they’re gone. It affected the best server we ever had, it affects my city, and it affected me. I was a binge drinker. I didn’t have to drink everyday but when I did, I would frequently get out of control. I was always the last to leave a party, and the deeper I got, the more blackouts I had, taking risks with driving and getting out of embarrassing situations I had to reconstruct the next day. I was not as attentive of a husband as i should have been. I wasn’t being a good person.

    Rob and his wife, Diane. Image via DV8 Kitchen.

    When did you decide to get help?

    I had a blackout, went back to my workplace (then, it was the Hard Rock Cafe, on the corporate side) and made a fool of myself. I got suspended from work and had to tell my wife I couldn’t be paid for two weeks and I said I needed help. Diane’s an angel. She loved me through it and kept me honest and kicked my ass if she needed to.

    It also helps when pro-athletes come teach you a workshop.

    We’ve had a bank executive come to talk to employees about personal finance, a yoga instructor to talk about mindfulness, and, yes, NFL quarterback Chad Pennington came in to talk about teamwork. During his workshop, he discussed his journey to the NFL and why both teamwork and leadership were important. He also shared more personal stories about how his Christian values have helped him through his career and life journey in general. But, all kinds of people in the community are signing up three months in advance to lead these workshops. They really want to help.

    What do you think it is about the food industry that makes it such a popular ‘second-chance’ job?

    My gut is it has to do with working really hard physically, it’s mental as well. You learn to get along with people, form long-lasting relationships, make mistakes without fear and be able to say sorry. Then you get to serve your food and get instant feedback. In recovery, we need to know what our results are. I think we thrive in an environment where we “know right away.” If someone likes it, or what you do, it’s good to know it. There’s something spiritual about a dinner table, too, and having a meal with someone. Food, dining, and breaking bread is special and is innate to our happiness.

    Image via DV8 Kitchen.

    View the original article at thefix.com