Prisoners Suffer Without Methadone Programs

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

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The Fix said:
More inmates than ever are now forced to withdraw cold turkey, a prisoner tells The Fix.

In recent years almost every methadone program in prison or jail has been terminated. "When I came to prison I was cool the first day," one heroin/methadone addict and current prisoner tells The Fix. "But then I had seizures and convulsions and they didn't do shit for me, just told me it was part of the detox. They left me in population. I was shitting my pants, had the shakes and was deathly ill and they didn't do anything for me or even give me a change of clothes," he continues. "But that's nothing new. I have seen dudes have epileptic seizures—your heart can stop. Dudes get taken out to the hospital, they have chest pains, get pale and sick. They should implement something in prison to help addicts detox instead of locking them in and letting them sweat it out. In county where I was at they don't give you nothing, only Ibuprofen, thats it, period. I didn't take that shit."

Recovery advocates have argued that cutting addicts off from methadone is akin to taking insulin from a diabetic. But most prisons still don't cater to prisoners who are already on methadone. "It's one of the gnarliest drugs ever," the prisoner says of methadone. "On the street they have detox places where you can go and pay like $30 a week, but in prison there's nothing. I've seen dudes go cold turkey in here and they have heart attacks. But the prison doesn't care. When you quit it you are supposed to gradually wean yourself down. Unless you want to have seizures and convulsions, you have to wean yourself down. But in here they let inmates sweat it out and get the shakes or whatever. No treatment. It's inhumane."
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http://www.thefix.com/content/lack-methadone-programs-prison91249

The Fix said:
No Methadone Therapy for US Prisoners
Riker’s Island offers methadone to addicts, and gets them into community programs after release. Other prisons, not so much.

Addicts in prison don’t have it easy. They’re thrown into a cold turkey environment, where genuine treatment is haphazard or nonexistent. Thank goodness they can avail themselves of a methadone maintenance treatment program while they are prisoners so that….

No, excuse us, we were thinking of prisons in most European Union nations. We were thinking of the “best practice” recommendations made by the World Health Organization, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and many other expert international organizations. No matter: U.S. prisons, with a few noteworthy exceptions, don’t allow in-prison methadone programs. The U.S. criminal justice system believes that giving psychoactive drugs—"exchanging one narcotic for another"—to inmates is a bad idea. And it certainly is—except that at the normal dosage and usage patterns, prisoners don’t get anything like a heroin high. This cheap and simple method of treating heroin addicts in prison not only aids addicts seeking to recover, but also cuts down on in-prison heroin smuggling. While it's true that some methadone gets black-marketed in prison, this problem can be solved in part with an alternative treatment—buprenorphine—which doesn’t have to be administered daily, making black market resale more difficult.

Methadone programs are in place at New York City’s Riker’s Island Correctional Facility, and at selected prisons in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, and elsewhere. A National Institute of Drug Abuse (N.I.D.A.) study earlier this year, covered in a previous post, estimated that only one-fifth of the nation’s inmates needing formal treatment are able to get it. Writing in the Atlantic, Jessica Wapner quotes Joanne Csete of Columbia University's Mailman School for Public Health: "In clinical terms, opiate addiction is a chronic disease. [It's not] a weakness of character, where if only they had the personal strength they wouldn't need methadone." Csete compares withholding methadone from imprisoned addicts to refusing to give diabetic prisoners insulin.

In addition to being the medically ethical approach, methadone therapy is also cost effective, argues Wapner, citing study findings that for every dollar apent on methadone treatment that results in a successful recovery, taxpayers spend four dollars for offering no treatment, which results in much higher rates opf crime, disease, and incarceration. “In other words,” she writes, “drug addicts cost the country more than recovering drug addicts.” Prisons seem to be missing a prime opportunity for turning the former into the latter.
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http://www.thefix.com/content/no-methadone-therapy-us-prisoners
 
Thank you, Toothpastedog, for reminding us all of these atrocities committed against our fellow American citizens. It's highly disturbing to know that many prisoners in other countries are treated much more humanely than they are here, in what's regarded as one of the greatest countries in the world. And they wonder why we have such a problem with recidivism. Compassion changes everything, and it also makes people want to change. We can only hope and pray for the day when the powers that be make the necessary changes to correct this situation.
 
On a more personal note, my late mother was repeatedly incarcerated for drug law violations-what else?! During those times, she confided to me that she and many other inmates were forced into CT withdrawal. Even if they had legitimate prescriptions, they were denied their meds, and of course, anyone on MMT was SOL. I was told that even with diarrhea running down their legs, they were refused any OTC help whatsoever, no loperamide, kaopectate,nothing. In fact, the guards jeered at them, telling them it was part of their sentence. I can't imagine a more worst-case-scenario in my life! If they'd just be merciful enough to treat these folks, they wouldn't have nearly the same level of black market drug activity as they do now. They are forcing terrible sickness and pain on people while they're locked up, and won't even give the bare minimum care. They're making people desperate by withholding treatment and then charging them for breaking the rules when they get caught. It seems what they are doing to our prisoners should be a crime.
 
Captain.Heroin said:
You'd think if they could afford the $10,000+ per year per inmate in jail, they could afford to give them methadone too.
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They can easily afford to, and it would have MANY benefits. But that's not WHY it's not done. It isn't about lack of funding for such programs. It's because, in some ways, it makes prisons and politicians look bad to provide ANY such comforts for the inmates. The masses have this misconception, this false view of reality, that suggests that helping criminals who are addicted with their opiate dependancy is tacitly saying that the use was somehow "ok". Sure, it doesn't at all, in any way, suggest that your addiction was "ok" - providing medical help to addicts (whether or not they are criminals) is just the opposite, really.

But some people (the masses) tend to see it this way: They were criminals and they fueled their addiction with their crimes. They use drugs (thus, they must be evil). Let's not give them methadone, "that'll teach 'em"! Surely prison with enforced withdrawal is BETTER for the criminals - it teaches them that drugs and crime are both proscribed! Yay for not understanding drug use or better prison management!

Honestly, they somehow pervert reality to the point where it seems fine to do this to people.

It's sad, because it's clear that providing addiction management services to prisoners will not only improve their time in prison, but will enable them to try to deal with their problems in an efficient and proper manner. This means that we could probably lower recidivism extensively through these programs, which means that future crime rates for individuals could be lowered using this. That is, ironically, people don't like the suggestion that programs like this are used because they think that it somehow promotes crime and is "soft on criminals", despite the fact that it would have the opposite effect on crime.

Anyone with a serious understanding of these programs for addiction would clearly support their use. But most people have no understanding, and don't care. Thus, prisons and politicians care about the views of these people, and try to stop doing what makes logical sense but is unpopular.
 
Portillo said:
The last thing we should want as a society is for inmates to be rehabilitated.
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I know what you mean, and you're right. But too many people view inmate rehabilitation programs, and associated programs like addiction management programs, as being bad for keeping crime down. A lot of people also think that these things are no longer the right to criminals, once they've been arrested and sentenced. They just ignore the fact that they are causing undue harm with their opinion and are not logical and/or informed about their views at all.
 
Successive Presidents have made major cuts to public mental health funding. Most people with severe mental health problems end up in prison these days, and as many of us know, addicts tend to be people informally treating mental health problems.

I know there are worse countries than the U.S. but the prison system in America is still a crime against humanity. Forcing addicts to WD on their on with no help is completely inexcuseable, especially while private prison owners are raking in obscene profits from the crime and punishment system the U.S. plutocrats have created for themselves. They could take a fraction of 1% of the annual prison profits and turn it into a detox program, no problem. These corporate bastards can't take a shit without making money, but their kind of addiction is one that is promoted by the system.
 
I think it's cool how folks in the UK have sued the gov't over forced methadone detoxed c/t while in prison/jail, but their law and sentencing guidelines over there are generally a little more humane than here in the states. Thanks for all the great responses!
 
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