Pubdate: Sun, 26 Jun 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Brian MacQuarrie

WORCESTER JAIL HELPS INMATES CONFRONT ADDICTIONS

WEST BOYLSTON - Antwan Stevenson has been behind bars, time and 
again, for a total of more than five years since adolescence. The 
24-year-old has run with a violent Dorchester gang, several friends 
have been killed, and his father was shot dead in January.

"I have to change," he said, sitting on a bunk in a 9-by-11-foot cell.

Finally, this father of three thinks he has found a way: an intense 
six-month program at the Worcester County House of Correction in 
which inmates confront the reasons they abused drugs or alcohol and 
the bitter consequences that followed.

The program is voluntary, its 36 participants must be screened and 
approved, and attendance is mandatory at daily classes that range 
from anger management to the architecture of the criminal mind.

No other county in the state has an addiction program as long as this 
one, jail officials said, and the support does not stop when these 
inmates walk free. Follow-up services are designed to make their 
progress more than a temporary change.

"I wanted to understand why I do the things I do," said Stevenson, 
who was convicted of burglary. Only when he woke up in custody, 
Stevenson said, did he learn he had broken into a police officer's 
home in a crime he did not remember.

"I don't want to die the way my friends have died, in the way my 
father died," Stevenson said.

For Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis, the Substance Treatment Opportunity 
Program - or STOP - is designed to give inmates the mental and 
emotional tools to resist temptation when they leave this 
medium-security facility. By doing so, the thinking goes that their 
communities also will be safer.

"This is not about coddling anybody," said Evangelidis, a former 
prosecutor and state representative. "But what we do is we meet 
people halfway."

Results are encouraging.

The recidivism rate - which measures how many inmates are convicted 
again after release - is 26 percent for STOP graduates. For the 
facility as a whole, the rate is 40 percent after three years and 56 
percent after five years, correction officials said.

"Enough is enough, you know?" said Edwin Ortiz, a 34-year-old from 
Worcester who is serving time for assaulting his girlfriend.

"I knew that I had an addiction problem, but I didn't think I was an 
addict," said Ortiz, who previously had been convicted for dealing 
heroin. "I have three daughters with three different mothers. In 
order to be there for them, I have to be in the right state of mind."

That state of mind is being shaped in a stand-alone unit at the 
all-male facility, which houses more than 1,000 prisoners who have 
received sentences up to 21/2 years long or have been detained until trial.

Although Ortiz's cell has only a tiny sliver of natural light and a 
toilet without a seat, he and his STOP colleagues have more 
privileges than many other inmates.

There is more freedom of movement, for example, and there is a weight 
room. The inmates live in single-bed cells, instead of being 
double-bunked. But with those benefits comes strict responsibility. 
Classes cannot be missed, and instructors and other inmates must be respected.

Otherwise, a prisoner can be discharged from the program.

Ortiz said he takes the rules seriously. He pointed to a legal pad, 
where he had written this goal for the day: "Eliminate the negative 
and destructive people in my life. Just to keep my circle small and positive."

The workload is daunting and immersive. Classes and meetings stretch 
over 12 hours - from about 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. three days a week - and 
about eight hours on three other days. From discussions about 
anxiety, to coping strategies, to the framework of addiction, the 
inmates are exposed to the "why" of their behavior as well as the 
"how" of change.

At its core, the program insists on accountability.

Peter Kosciusko, the facility's director of substance-abuse programs, 
said part of his job is to judge whether applicants truly want to 
change, and to weed out inmates who simply want better living conditions.

"I want to see the desperation and motivation," said Kosciusko, who 
designed STOP in 2006.

David McCarthy, a Leominster hair stylist who completed the program 
and has been released, said he knows desperation.

"I was a miserable SOB," said McCarthy, whose journey led him to 
crippling addiction and crimes to feed his drug habit. "The God's 
honest truth is you have to be honest with yourself, but most people 
won't do that. We don't want anything jammed down our throats except 
for the poison."

STOP changed that outlook dramatically. McCarthy said he remained at 
the jail for two extra months solely to complete the program. Its 
educational benefit is pivotal, he said, but so is the empathy that 
inmates receive.

"This is the first encounter they've ever had with an adult who 
didn't tell them what a piece of crap they are," McCarthy said.

The respect seems to be returned. At a meeting with Evangelidis, the 
inmates sat rapt and attentive as the sheriff asked how many believed 
they might relapse if they did not take the program.

Every arm - white, black, brown, and most of them tattooed - was lifted.

"Being in this environment, everyone is considered family," said one 
middle-age inmate who asked that his name not be used. "It's one 
addict helping another addict. You realize you can tell your story, 
that you can shed a tear."

Elsewhere in the jail, he said, "people will prey on that."

Within the walls of the STOP building, the tough-guy persona has been 
softened with an acceptance that change is not only possible, but 
long overdue. It's an attitude that means a former gang member like 
Stevenson, bespectacled and quiet, can lay back on his bunk and 
digest a self-help book by Dr. Phil.

There are no guarantees, but it's a start.

"We can only give you the tools," Evangelidis told the group, "and 
then it's up to you."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom