poledriver
Bluelighter
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A mother's last hope - Indiana's criminal justice system for drug offenders
By Michael Boren
Vickie Harpold's 30-year-old son looked as if he hadn't bathed in days. His clothes were wrinkled and he needed a shave.
He lay on the couch, watching television.
When his mother entered the family room of their Westside home he gave her an order: "You gotta take me to work in the morning,"
But she refused. She noticed that her son, Kevin, was nodding off. She told him she knew there were drugs at the moving company where he worked. A vicious argument flared up. He hurled insults at her.
"I felt like I was losing him," Vickie Harpold recalled. "And I had to try to save him."
So she stepped into the next room where her husband, Steve, was standing. Then she mouthed the words that still haunt her six years later: "Call the police."
Soon her son was escorted to jail, and for most of a year Vickie Harpold was glad. "I never thought I'd say I was actually happy he was in jail," she said. "But I was, because I knew he was safe."
Safe from heroin. Safe from himself.
Or so she thought.
The Harpolds' decision to call the police -- a call for help -- and the events that followed illustrate several problems with the way Indiana treats addiction. A chorus of corrections officials, judges, court administrators and treatment specialists told The Star that Indiana would be better off if it threw more addicts convicted of low-level crimes into treatment instead of prison. They argue it would cost taxpayers less in the long-run by slowing down the rapid rise in the state's prison population.
Instead, affordable treatment is hard to find. And addicts often resist counseling. So desperate parents sometimes reason that confinement - with no access to heroin during its agonizing withdrawal phase - can force sobriety in a way that softer measures can't.
Exactly how many Hoosier families make that choice is unknown. But Shannon Barrick, director of the Johnson County Court Alcohol and Drug Program, estimates it could be as high as one in five of the people she sees. G. Frederick White, a deputy prosecutor in the Marion County Drug Treatment Court, says he encounters two to three such families per month.
"Heartbreaking," he said. "Happens all the time."
As the Harpolds would soon learn, Indiana's criminal justice system lacks the resources and time to help the thousands of low-level drug offenders sentenced each year. Roughly 12 months after she mouthed the words, "call the police," after her son exhausted every treatment option available and was released from prison, Vickie Harpold would turn to her husband again in the same Westside home - in a panic - and shout, "Call 911!"
This time to restart Kevin Harpold's heart.
http://www.indystar.com/section/exclusive03
By Michael Boren
Vickie Harpold's 30-year-old son looked as if he hadn't bathed in days. His clothes were wrinkled and he needed a shave.
He lay on the couch, watching television.
When his mother entered the family room of their Westside home he gave her an order: "You gotta take me to work in the morning,"
But she refused. She noticed that her son, Kevin, was nodding off. She told him she knew there were drugs at the moving company where he worked. A vicious argument flared up. He hurled insults at her.
"I felt like I was losing him," Vickie Harpold recalled. "And I had to try to save him."
So she stepped into the next room where her husband, Steve, was standing. Then she mouthed the words that still haunt her six years later: "Call the police."
Soon her son was escorted to jail, and for most of a year Vickie Harpold was glad. "I never thought I'd say I was actually happy he was in jail," she said. "But I was, because I knew he was safe."
Safe from heroin. Safe from himself.
Or so she thought.
The Harpolds' decision to call the police -- a call for help -- and the events that followed illustrate several problems with the way Indiana treats addiction. A chorus of corrections officials, judges, court administrators and treatment specialists told The Star that Indiana would be better off if it threw more addicts convicted of low-level crimes into treatment instead of prison. They argue it would cost taxpayers less in the long-run by slowing down the rapid rise in the state's prison population.
Instead, affordable treatment is hard to find. And addicts often resist counseling. So desperate parents sometimes reason that confinement - with no access to heroin during its agonizing withdrawal phase - can force sobriety in a way that softer measures can't.
Exactly how many Hoosier families make that choice is unknown. But Shannon Barrick, director of the Johnson County Court Alcohol and Drug Program, estimates it could be as high as one in five of the people she sees. G. Frederick White, a deputy prosecutor in the Marion County Drug Treatment Court, says he encounters two to three such families per month.
"Heartbreaking," he said. "Happens all the time."
As the Harpolds would soon learn, Indiana's criminal justice system lacks the resources and time to help the thousands of low-level drug offenders sentenced each year. Roughly 12 months after she mouthed the words, "call the police," after her son exhausted every treatment option available and was released from prison, Vickie Harpold would turn to her husband again in the same Westside home - in a panic - and shout, "Call 911!"
This time to restart Kevin Harpold's heart.
http://www.indystar.com/section/exclusive03
