The hope is offenders required to enroll in treatment are prepared to get clean once they leave Inverness Jail
The jailhouse experience might start to feel more like rehab for some Multnomah County inmates.
As soon as Oct. 1, a 59-bed dormitory inside Inverness Jail in Northeast Portland will exclusively house male inmates participating in a new drug and alcohol treatment readiness program.
The program is aimed at helping offenders who are required to enroll in rehab upon their release to understand how substances have negatively affected their lives. The hope is that when inmates are escorted to treatment — straight from jail, courtesy of Multnomah County Probation — they are ready to get clean.
“We find that people aren’t always ready to fully engage in treatment just because they’ve been sentenced,” says Ginger Martin, deputy director of the county’s Department of Community Justice . The program is a partnership between her department and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office .
Sheriff Dan Staton issued a statement in support of the program, saying, “If it reduces their recidivism, it could help alleviate pressure on jails as this population shifts back to local systems.”
Martin says getting offenders to start thinking about their drug and alcohol problems while they’re still on the inside will help some of them get past the “denial that people typically have before they’re ready for treatment.”
The average stay at Inverness Jail is about two weeks. For inmates in the treatment readiness dorm, that time will be filled with treatment-oriented activities.
For five days each week, inmates will engage with group counseling twice a day. They will also have weekly one-on-one sessions with counselors and homework to complete.
They may also participate in other existing jail programs, such as self-help groups and in-jail work programs.
Martin says the county needs to find a way to include female inmates, as well.
For male inmates staying in the treatment readiness dorm, it will add $18 per day to the cost of their jail stay. Funding for this additional cost stems from a grant program established by House Bill 3194 in 2013.
This grant program was created to slow Oregon’s prison population growth, which was expected to increase drastically with the harsher sentencing guidelines brought about by measures 11 and 57. Each county receives a grant to invest in programs that either reduce recidivism or divert offenders from prison.
In Multnomah County, the grant was used to establish the Justice Reinvestment Program. This program gives some inmates destined for prison a second chance by giving them the option of entering intensive probation instead of serving time.
Offenders who opt in are enrolled in a variety of wrap-around services based on their needs, such as parenting classes, mental health and drug and alcohol treatment, career counseling and housing. If they fail to follow the rules of their probation, they’re removed from the program and sent to prison. There are 280 people under Multnomah County’s Justice Reinvestment Program supervision, and only 13 have had their probation revoked.
Jail inmates who agree to this intensive probation program are the priority for the treatment readiness dorm at Inverness, but Martin says the county wants to keep the dorm full, so other inmates being referred to treatment after they’re released will be able to move in when there’s vacancy.
“We don’t want a resource like that not being used,” she says.
As Street Roots reported in March , state funding for the grant program that made the county’s Justice Reinvestment Program possible was in jeopardy when the Oregon Legislature’s draft budget didn’t include enough money to fund grants that would be large enough to sustain existing programs.
While proponents of the grant program originally asked for an investment of $58.5 million for the 2015-17 biennium, the draft budget allocated only $20 million. After further deliberation, the Legislature approved a $40 million investment.
This was enough for Multnomah County to get a grant of about $8 million so it could continue to not only fund but also expand its Justice Reinvestment Program, Martin says.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES: Partnership for Safety and Justice: Reinvest in justice
The county had to abandon some plans that would have been possible with a full investment of $58.5 million, such as hiring five more probation and parole officers and securing additional housing, Martin says. However, she says, the treatment readiness dorm and her department’s ability to get the program up to full capacity, serving 160 offenders at any one time, was not hindered.
The grant also pays for the $214,500 contract the county is seeking a nonprofit treatment provider to sign. This outside provider will operate the in-jail readiness program. Additional funding will pay the salary of a Sheriff’s Office program administrator.
Multnomah County had a similar in-jail treatment readiness program 15 years ago, but it was ended because of lack of funding, Martin says.
Katie Burgard, the Multnomah County Jails counseling program manager, says voluntary recovery services have been offered at each of the county’s two jails for years, although they “come and go” based on the jail population’s stability, staffing, resources and operational challenges.
Programs currently or previously offered within the jails include Alcoholics Anonymous , Narcotics Anonymous , anger management, mediation and relapse prevention.
