By Eric Scicchitano
The News-Item
COAL TOWNSHIP — Drug and alcohol education for Northumberland County inmates has yet to resume since fire destroyed the prison in January.
The education initiative is more of an awareness program; it’s not treatment.
There remains no individual or group counseling for addiction at the county prison, and that was the case before the fire, according to both Warden Bruce Kovach and Glenda Bonetti, director of Northumberland County Drug and Alcohol Program.
However, with county commissioners considering plans to build a new facility, it could be an opportunity to add a treatment regimen, Bonetti said.
“It could be a proposal for the prison to have a drug counselor on hand when the new facility is built,” she said.
Money, logistics at issue
Kovach says logistics scuttled the education initiative administered by Gaudenzia after fire destroyed the 139-year-old jail in Sunbury.
Females inmates are now at SCI-Muncy. The much larger male population is housed at SCI-Coal Township, and earlier this week moved into a more permanent setting in their temporary quarters, J and K blocks. There’s more room now to resume drug and alcohol education and other programs, Kovach said. Programs will return, he added, but there’s still no start date.
As for drug treatment, money is an issue, but again so is logistics - in this case both time and space.
Bonetti said some inmates have sentences too short for intensive, individualized counseling. The cost isn’t built into her program’s budget or the prison’s. Drug and Alcohol has a near $190,000 budget for in-patient treatment, spent largely on self-referred low-income patients at a cost up to $6,000 or more each.
“My thinking is they’re in the prison and they’re safe,” Bonetti said.
Growing problem
Nearly half of criminal arrests made in the Shamokin area in the first quarter of 2015 were for drug crimes.
Nearly 2,500 Pennsylvanians died of drug poisoning in 2014, a figure tallied by the state coroners’ association. The number will almost certainly rise as end-of-year toxicity reports are completed. It’s also missing data from 13 counties, including Northumberland, Montour, Columbia, Snyder and Schuylkill.
Northumberland County’s figures weren’t in the report, but according to numbers provided to The News-Item earlier this year, fatal drug overdoses tripled. There were seven cases in 2012 and 20 on record in 2014.
The figure for 2014 is actually higher, according to James F. Kelley, Northumberland County coroner. A glitch in his office’s reports allowed him access only between May 1 and Dec. 31 when reached for information on the topic in April. Based on his previous estimates, upward of 28 overdose deaths occurred in 2014.
Drug and alcohol awareness appeared to have heightened locally in 2014 and 2015. Rep. Kurt Masser, R-107, hosted a series of drug awareness events at area high schools. Chris Herren, a basketball prodigy whose career was derailed by years of drug abuse, is slated to speak at an event on Sept. 15 in Mount Carmel.
The Center for Rural Pennsylvania released a Legislative report in September 2014 proposing an expansion of treatment and drug court services, and more money for county drug task forces. A new state law allows police to administer a drug reversing the effects of a heroin overdose, and provides immunity for individuals dropping an overdose victim off inside a hospital rather than dumping them at the front door.
But there remains the issue of addicts in jail.
Wasting tax dollars
Kovach agreed that inmate treatment options must be reviewed. In-prison treatment would increase spending, but it could also have the opposite effect if successful. Same goes for a variety of re-entry programs to ease inmates’ transition upon release.
“The only way we’re going to save money in corrections is to reduce the population. We can’t keep the revolving door of justice we’ve had the last 20 years,” Kovach said.
“We’re wasting tax dollars just by not giving these guys programs,” he added.
County in pilot program
Northumberland County is one of 10 counties enrolled in a pilot program with Medical Assistance offering in-patient drug rehabilitation to inmates on their way out of jail.
Inmates are transferred to a rehab immediately upon release and can stay up to six months. Since the county began the program in September, Bonetti said just one of the 25 to 30 participants enrolled left rehab early. If that occurs, she said they’re immediately jailed.
But Bonetti said drug and alcohol counseling as a whole needs to be expanded, not only for inmates but for anyone in need.
“The only problem is they’re not giving us the money to do it. They all recognize the problem but they’re not raising any money,” Bonetti said.
Improving ‘transition’
Longer prison sentences aren’t the answer, Kovach said. The corrections industry as a whole has learned that.
“Crime certainly didn’t go down,” Kovach said of harsher sentences.
“We need to start introducing these guys back into the community and have some type of transition,” he said. “Definitely when we get into a new facility, there will be a definite push to improve transition.”