WASHINGTON C.H. — The criminal justice system can’t handle the surge of women incarcerated for drug-related crimes. With populations rising of inmates incarcerated for low-level non-violent drug crimes, there has been a 700 percent increase in the number of women incarcerated since 1980. More than one-third of all women behind bars are there for drug-related crimes.
The resultant overcrowding inside jails — today blame is placed on the heroin/opioid epidemic, in past years mandatory sentences for minor marijuana possession was blamed for institutional overcrowding of inmates—has caused outbreaks of disease, repeated state inspection violations and unsanitary conditions that create safety risks for the inmates living behind bars.
Such is the case in the Fayette County Jail.
Opioid and heroin users are regularly booked into the Fayette County Jail. If a user overdosed and the medics were called, the police respond and locate the syringe and any other paraphernalia and drugs. The person who overdosed is charged with a felony for possession of drugs or possession of drug abuse instruments.
As they sit in jail and await pre-trial services and arraignment, the inmates who are addicted to opioids and heroin begin the slow, painful withdrawal process.
Some inmates sit in the jail’s drunk tank: a cell lined with concrete benches with a drain in the middle for the physically sick. Severe symptoms can last up to three days and can include nausea, vomiting, chest pain, difficulty breathing, psychological troubles and coma. Once they’re physically able, the inmates appear in court, at which point the judge may decide to send them back to jail without release until they can be sentenced to a drug treatment center.
When drug offenders are released—after spending days or weeks in jail withdrawing and detoxing the drugs out of their systems— they hit the streets to score more drugs, but with their tolerance for the drugs now lowered, it could cause another overdose, leading them back into jail. And sometimes, if they don’t overdose on the street, they risk an overdose in jail, as contraband being conveyed into the jail has been a “huge problem,” said the deputies who work in the jail.
Tiara L. Adams was booked into the Fayette County Jail June 3 following an indictment for possession and trafficking of heroin. She was taken by squad to the Fayette County Memorial Hospital five days later and treated for an overdose; law enforcement officials said narcotics had been smuggled into the jail, leading to Adams’ overdose.
She was brought back to the jail, separated from the other inmates, and left in the booking room with the lights off, according to deputies. They thought she was sleeping — yet eventually realized she was non-responsive and was taken to a medical center in Columbus, where the 22-year-old mother died two days later. Adams’ family declined to speak to the Record-Herald.
Drug treatment within the county itself is limited and transitional sober housing doesn’t exist for those trying to get out of the cycle of addiction and institutionalization. In return the jail has become the sober living house for the county’s low-level, non-violent drug offenders.
Inmates may spend weeks or even months sitting in the jail waiting to be sentenced to a drug treatment facility. Drug treatment centers in the state have waiting lists, but centers in Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton (each about an hour’s drive from Fayette County) provide hopeful options for drug offenders.
The Fayette County Jail has the capacity for 50 beds but population has spiked to over 80 inmates, with the average population around 64 inmates per day in 2016, according to statistics provided by Andy Bivens, chief deputy at the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. On average, the number of women in the jail comprise about one-third of the jail’s daily population.
Women between the ages of 25 and 29 have the fastest growing incarceration rate in the state. Forty-two percent of all women incarcerated in Ohio between the ages of 25 and 34 were incarcerated on drug-related offenses in 2016.
As a growing number of women cycle through addiction, poverty, homelessness, treatment, probation and supervision, and jail, their time in jail may be one of their only opportunities for sober living.
For 35-year-old Annette E. Burris, the Fayette County Jail is her sober home. Burris moved to Fayette County when she was 6-years-old. She has been in the Fayette County Jail 39 times and at the time of this interview had been in the jail for 42 days waiting to get into a treatment center.
Burris said all her stints in jail have been alcohol and drug-related.
“When I get drunk I will do just about anything that gets put in front of me, so, I’ve had one possession of heroin charge that was just for residue,” Burris said.
Things have gotten bad over the years. Her drinking began at age 13 when her father committed suicide. In between her time in jail, she lost her mother, kids, spouse, home, vehicle and job.
This time she was placed in the jail after overdosing on heroin and being revived by medics.
“I don’t normally do heroin. I was drunk as a monkey, I went to a friend’s house and they had like a little tiny line of heroin, and they had to send two squads,” Burris said.
Years ago Burris had a prescription for Xanax and Vicodin, but she doesn’t attribute the prescription pills to her gateway into alcohol and drug dependency.
“I have a family history of alcohol and drug abuse. My mother passed away of hepatic (liver) failure just a couple years ago. It goes back generations on both sides of my family. I am a genetic alcoholic as well as I have learned through behavior,” said Burris.
Addiction experts emphasize that addiction is not genetic. There is no gene or character trait associated with addiction, said Brad Lander, an addiction medicine specialist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He says that addiction comes solely from learned behavior.
“As people get into addiction and get addicted, they get more alike,” said Lander, which explains why people in the same family have similar patterns of addiction.
So far Burris has been to six different residential treatment programs. The last treatment center she lived in was in Dayton, where she completed a program for cognitive behavioral therapy.
“I passed with flying colors,” said Burris. “When I came home, I got a job within a couple days.”
She said she believes drug and alcohol treatment works, but, she said, “The problem I see a lot in Fayette County is right now, I had to go to prison for my heroin possession charge, when I got out, there was really nowhere for me to go in Fayette County. When I get let out of jail this time I’m going to be right back on the street.”
Burris always relies on family and friends for a place to live. All of them are drug and alcohol users.
“The thing is, family members are still using. After about three months of … constantly being around alcohol and drugs, one thing led to another … and I got addicted.”
As the jail now acts as the warehouse for women’s sober living, Burris said the county needs to start sober living housing programs for people who have completed treatment. This would give the hundreds of people in the county who are transitioning back into society a means to obtain sober living rather than going back into the familiar patterns of addiction among friends and family that lead them to jail time and time again.
Today there are two rooms full of women in the Fayette County Jail. When Burris first started coming to the jail, women were housed in a single four-man cell.
“I’ve seen 24 women in a 12-man cell. We’ve had seven women on the floor in here since I’ve been here. This is the most I’ve ever seen. And like I said, I’ve been coming here for quite some time,” said Burris.
Sgt. Matthew Weidman of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office is the jail administrator. He has seen the number of women in the Fayette County Jail skyrocket due to drug-related offenses. Weidman recalled that when he began working at the jail 20 years ago, there may have been a handful of women in the jail, five at the most. In 2016, the jail saw an average of about 19 women per day.
Weidman admittedly has a hard time managing the overcrowded women in the jail. He said it’s a complicated situation and that the women are sometimes not able to take care of themselves because of the drugs and withdrawal symptoms.
Jails with physical space limitations and inadequately trained staff are not only non-compliant to state jail standards but tend to have higher incident and misconduct rates, according to the Bureau of Adult Detention. The bureau cites correlations among staff training of administrators and supervisors to the overall jail security and incidences of contraband.
Despite the overcrowded and unsafe conditions in the jail, Sgt. Weidman remains optimistic. The jail consistently fails state inspections due to overcrowding but he said there’s nothing they can do to fix it until they can build a new jail.
Fayette County elected officials are looking to build a new jail, which would expand the capacity to be able to accommodate the growing number of low-level non-violent drug offenders being incarcerated and possibly provide adequate space for drug treatment classes and programs, which they don’t currently offer.
“We could do more for these programs if we had a new jail. The way our jail is laid out, we don’t have the space and the room for sit-down classes,” said Weidman.
Overcrowding isn’t unique to just Fayette County. The Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections rate of overcrowding increased from 115 percent in 2005 to 132 percent in 2016 when it looked at statistics for all institutions.
