Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jan 2005
Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2005 News-Journal Corporation
Contact:  http://www.news-journalonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/700
Author: Deborah Circelli, and Karen Duffy
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

THE BUILDING OF HOPE

Serenity House Seeks Funds For Center

For more than two decades, 38-year-old Kurt has considered drugs a
staple in his life almost like food and water.

His days began smoking marijuana and drinking on a construction site.
Weekends, he was high on heroin.

On Monday, he'd roll out of bed $300 poorer and his cycle began
again.

Numerous stints in and out of jail over the years was not a deterrent.
In November, after Kurt spent two months in jail from another drug
possession arrest, a local judge sent him to a Serenity House drug
treatment program in DeLand. He was told he could have been sentenced
to prison for two years.

Serenity House is hoping to help more people like Kurt -- who did not
want his last name used since he's in treatment -- with a new 125-bed
treatment facility for nonviolent offenders with mental or substance
abuse problems.

But the agency wants the county to provide about $3 million to build
the facility, which would house men and women in Volusia County who
otherwise would be in jail.

Serenity House officials want the county to fund the treatment
facility as early as October as part of a plan for a new jail. They
say the treatment facility, which could be built near an existing
Serenity House site, would reduce the need for as many new jail beds.

But corrections officials say while the treatment facility is needed,
so are jail beds. The county corrections division is proposing adding
250 beds over the next two years and another 400 beds five years later.

The County Council plans to discuss the treatment facility and new
jail beds at a Feb. 1 goal-setting meeting.

"Isn't it better to try to turn a life around by giving them treatment
rather than warehousing them in our jail?" County Council Chairman
Frank Bruno asked.

Bruno said more jail beds are needed to address overcrowding, but he'd
also like to see the county support the treatment facility.

For Kurt, the 50-bed program in DeLand is teaching him to control his
cravings.

"It's been so long that my life has gone on with drugs. I wasn't sure
how to live my life without them," Kurt said. "The one thing I'm sure
of is that no matter how bad my life is, if I pick up drugs it's not
going to solve a thing."

In jail, his thinking was different.

"The first thing you think about is when they release me I'm going to
my dealer's house," said Kurt, who started using marijuana when he was
14 and heroin 12 years ago.

Randy Croy, Serenity House executive director, said the new treatment
facility would save money, reduce jail beds and "save lives."

Croy points to a 2000 study on a Serenity House program showing
re-arrest rates were down 64.3 percent after people went through the
program, prosecution costs dropped by 74.9 percent and medical costs
by 84.9 percent.

"(Treatment) is just the right thing to do to break the cycle of
addiction," said Joel Greenstein, chairman of the Serenity board.

Circuit Judge S. James Foxman, who serves on the Act Corp. board, said
the majority of felony cases he sees involve people with substance
abuse or mental health issues or both. Many times he wants to send
them to a program, but there's no space.

Foxman said a treatment facility "would be money spent better than on
a new jail.

"The drug problem is as bad as it has ever been since I've been in the
job," said Foxman, a judge for 25 years. "It's better to treat the
underlying program if you can."

Kevin Hickey, county corrections director, said that while adding
treatment beds is a good idea, he wouldn't want it mixed with the jail
project.

"We are talking about two different things," Hickey said. "Our
population projection shows we are going to need the beds."

Hickey said the county has not added jail beds in 20 years. The jail
has 1,558 inmates, a little over the recommended capacity. A study
projects there will be 1,711 by 2008. The new proposal would add about
650 beds and cost about $23 million for both phases, he said.

Serenity House has tried for three years to get funding through
Congress, but money has not been available.

Gail Gregory, president of the Mental Health Association of Volusia
and Flagler Counties, said jails try the best they can, "but they are
not equipped to deal with a person with a mental illness."

Debra Darcangelo, 24, of Daytona Beach, graduated Thursday from a
Serenity House program. She has a job and is working to get back her
3-year-old son, who is staying with his father and relatives.

She was arrested last July after stealing checks from her landlord to
buy pain pills. She said her addiction stemmed from an old car
accident. At times, she'd take 40 to 50 pills a day.

She stayed in jail for almost three months before a judge sent her to
Serenity House, where she learned to live without drugs and started
taking medicine for her bipolar disorder, which had gone untreated.

"I can remain calm and I don't have a lot of anxiety," Darcangelo
said. "Without Serenity House I wouldn't have known the tools I needed
to live one day at a time."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin