Pubdate: Thu, 06 Mar 2008
Source: Billings Gazette, The (MT)
Copyright: 2008 The Billings Gazette
Contact:  http://www.billingsgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/515
Author: Jennifer Mckee
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

GOVERNOR TOURS TREATMENT CENTER

BOULDER - Christine Sutherland has  been locked up for most of her 
13-year-old son's life.

A methamphetamine addict since junior high, Sutherland,  29, asked to 
be sent to a meth treatment prison before  one was even built.

Now, she is 80 days away from graduating from the  Elkhorn Treatment 
Center, a women's lockdown meth  prison here, and aspires to the 
"normal life" she has  never experienced: a job, taking care of her 
boy,  making dinner after work.

Sutherland hopes to be one of the "ones who make it"  whom Gov. Brian 
Schweitzer talked about when he toured  the center Wednesday.

Even as the rest of the country increased the number of  people 
behind bars last year, Montana saw a nearly 4  percent drop in the 
number of incarcerated, according  to a national study released last 
week by the Pew  Charitable Trusts. Montana's drop was the 
largest  decline in the number of incarcerated residents of all  50 states.

Schweitzer told the women here that facilities like  Elkhorn drove the decline.

"We could have poured more concrete, bought more barbed  wire," he 
said. But that, Schweitzer said, would not  have turned many lives 
around and it wouldn't have  saved state taxpayers any money.

Roughly 50 percent of felons in Montana have some kind  of mental 
illness, Schweitzer said, and 90 percent are  addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Montana has two meth treatment prisons, including a  men's facility 
in Lewistown, and expanded treatment  prison options, including a new 
alcoholism treatment  prison in Glendive. It also has added drug and 
alcohol  treatment at many large probation and parole offices.

The 40-bed Elkhorn center opened in April 2007. About  20 women have 
graduated from the nine-month, intensive  treatment program. After 
leaving the facility, the  women spend six months getting follow-up 
care in a  pre-release center.

Schweitzer told the women that he took a risk on them.  Some people 
have complained that treatment prisons are  easy and, Schweitzer 
acknowledged, some people will  graduate from the program and fail.

"I promise you. There will be a lot more of you that  will be 
successful, successful with your families  again, successful at work 
again," he said. "Those are  the ones we pray for every day. Be the 
one who has your  child on your lap again."

About 75 percent of the women in the program are  mothers, said Sue 
Carroll, operations manager for Boyd  Andrews Community Services, the 
Helena correctional  nonprofit company that built and runs the 
Elkhorn Center. The center tries to accommodate visits as much  as it 
can, she said.

Schweitzer toured the facility with four women being  treated there. 
They showed him their sparse, albeit  comfortable rooms where they 
rise every day at 6 a.m.  They showed him the computer lab where they 
get their  high school equivalency diplomas and learn about  keeping 
a checking account, applying for college,  getting money for college 
and making a resume.

And they showed him the thick, black ankle band or  wrist band each 
woman wears that tracks her movements  at all times.

All the furniture is made by inmates at Montana State  Prison; the 
meals are made at the prison's "cook-chill"  kitchen and bused to the 
meth facility. Their  mattresses are 2-inch foam and, Sutherland 
said, if  their clothing comes between their skin and 
their  bracelet, an alarm may go off.

Dorothy Gorder, 25, a Bozeman woman with a long,  drug-related rap 
sheet, said she's been to prison  twice, and the Elkhorn Treatment 
Center is a lot  harder.

In prison, she said, you can choose to do nothing. But  here, "you 
have to dig deep," she said. "It's very hard  work."

The women spend most of their days in intensive  treatment.

Gorder said she has learned that she is also smart,  something she, 
as a user since the age of 11, never got  a chance to discover about 
herself. She has enrolled in  college and hopes to become an 
addiction counselor and  mother to her two boys, ages 9 and 2.

"I begged to come here," she said. "I wanted recovery."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom