By Jon Collins

MPR News/90.1 FM

Tony Fondie drives to jails across the state to pick up inmates as they’re released. During the sometimes long drives back, he shares his own story with the passengers.

“Methamphetamine, meth cook: I loved everything about it at the time,” Fondie said. “I was enslaved by them.”

Fondie was incarcerated for making or possessing meth in 2003 and 2008. He’d enrolled in treatment to get out of prison, but sobriety didn’t stick.

“You get out there and things were happening that I didn’t plan on happening,” Fondie said. “I got discouraged, started using again, and then I came back again when I got in trouble in 2014.”

After he was released that final time, Fondie went to the Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge long-term treatment program. This time he stayed with it. He now works shepherding inmates from jails to the treatment programs.

“There is hope, and you’ve got to make a choice,” Fondie tells the passengers. You’ve got to make that choice for the rest of your life, and then you’ve got to do it a hundred times a day.”

Amidst an opioid overdose epidemic that now claims almost 50,000 lives each year in the United States and rising rates of meth use, county jails and treatment programs have started to work more closely together. Teen Challenge is just one organization working directly with inmates in Minnesota’s 87 counties to try to help get inmates access to treatment, and to avoid the danger of overdose faced by people leaving jail.

Interrupting the cycle of drugs and jail

Ramsey County Sheriff Jack Serier has seen law enforcement’s approach to drug offenders begin to change over his three-decade-long career.

“We’ve kind of grown up in law enforcement to understand that, yes, there are dealers and people creating these drugs that we need to deal with,” Serier said. “But when it comes to the end user, our role is to help them find hope and help them find ways to get out of addiction.”

The Minnesota Department of Corrections estimates that about 90 percent of inmates in state prison could be diagnosed as chemically abusive or dependent. Getting help for drug dependency or addiction can be more difficult in a county jail setting than for those in the state prison system, which operates its own treatment programs. The average stay in Ramsey County jail is just six days.

Serier said his department has staffers who can assist inmates dependent on opioids or other drugs while they’re in custody, but they’ve also built relationships with groups outside the jail.

“For some folks, especially those who say, ‘I need that help and I need it right now,’ we’re going to start to connect them,” Serier said. “But really the long-term needs they have are going to have to be taken up outside our facility.”

Studies show inmates who receive drug treatment and aftercare were less likely to go back to jail later.

That’s where treatment programs like Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge take over. They now do outreach in about two-thirds of the county jails in the state, including Ramsey County’s facility.

Tim Walsh, vice president of long-term recovery and mental health for Teen Challenge, said about 40 percent of the people going through their treatment program have some sort of legal conditions tied to their use of drugs or alcohol. Teen Challenge’s 11 treatment facilities across the state serve about 850 people a day.

“If they’re coming here just to satisfy the conditions of probation [or] to satisfy the court, that’s good enough as far as we’re concerned,” Walsh said. “We just want them in the door and to be in a safe, structured place where they can get the help they need.”

People going into treatment from jail often have one advantage: they’ve likely already gone through withdrawal, which for opioids can be excruciating. But they’re also facing enormous pressure, Walsh said. They’ve lost their support networks, have limited job prospects and need to cooperate with court-ordered treatment or face legal sanctions.

For the full story visit: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/09/25/drug-treatment-program-jails-work-together-to-prevent-opioid-overdoses