REHAB THRIVES BEHIND BARS

Drug Program Borrows From AA

Henrico County Sheriff Mike Wade means it when he says his jails are fast
becoming a haven for drug addicts and alcoholics.

A haven, that is, where many substance abusers, down on their luck and too
broken for society to handle, can check in for intense lessons in sobriety
and putting their lives back together.

When he took office in 2000, Wade took stock of his new dominion.

He saw need for improvement.

"I looked around and noticed the inmates spent most of their time watching
TV," said Wade, who has a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling from
Virginia Commonwealth University.

Frustrated with what he saw, Wade went to his staff at the county's Jail
East facility in New Kent County with the idea of turning certain jail
blocks, called pods, into total immersion substance-abuse rehabilitation
programs.

"Call it a therapeutic community," he said.

Wade also calls it Back to Basics, as does Alcoholics Anonymous, from which
he has borrowed much of his program's structure.

That structure goes back to the beginnings of the AA movement and its
12-step, peer-sup-port concept.

The jail now has three men's pods using Back to Basics, with a similar
program planned for a woman's pod. Inmates are shifted from Jail West off
Parham Road to Jail East to participate in the program.

Initially, Wade met heavy resistance from his staff. Faced with buzzwords
and mumbo jumbo, "the security staff was totally against it," he said.

"It got called 'TFP' - the touchy, feely pod," Wade said of Pod 4-A, where
the program has been piloted. He breaks into the wide grin of someone who
feels he's had the last laugh.

Wade may laugh, but he and the 70 to 100 men who are enrolled at any time
are also life-or-death serious about what this program means to them.

"I'm Travis, and I'm an alcoholic," intoned a young man, a link in a wide
circle of denim jeans and blue oxford shirts.

"How are you doing, Travis?" comes a chorus of friendly, but rehearsed,
greetings from his companions.

Travis has a captive audience, but it is one far more full of enthusiasm
than is found in the pods surrounding his cell on 4-A.

Another in the group takes his turn. Introducing himself as Clarence, he
proceeds in classic AA fashion to talk candidly about himself, his
addiction and what led him to occupy a plastic chair among his companions.

"I had character defects that I couldn't identify by myself," Clarence
said. "In my addiction, I isolated myself. I didn't speak to people, I
didn't speak to my family. For 20 years, I've been in and out of jails.

"I knew I had a problem, but I didn't know the problem I had."

That problem, Clarence said, is clearer to him now. And he hopes his new
knowledge will make him a new person. He has begun to open up to friends
and family.

"I have a support group that I've been building. I plan to use that support
group to the best of my ability.

"It's truly a blessing to be in here," Clarence said.

Few prisoners consider their incarceration a stroke of good fortune, but
since Back to Basics was introduced, grateful has become a legitimate
description for many in the three pods being used in the pilot phase of the
sheriff's plan.

L.C. called his latest stint behind bars an eye-opener. He has seen jail
programs for substance abuse before, but none were so inclusive. And none
ever had any effect on him, other than as a chance to break the monotony of
jail.

"What's unique about this is, we're all convicts - you're talking about 36
grown men able to sit down and cry sometimes and talk about how they feel,"
L.C. said. Before, "I wouldn't have sat down with another man and told him
how I feel."

"I can B.S. a psychologist, a counselor - I know I can, I've done it," said
a young man who goes by the nickname Nuke. "But here, I'm with 35 other
guys with degrees in B.S.'ing people, so you just can't do that. Here . . .
it comes together, and that's when the healing takes place."

A lower recidivism rate is characteristic of inmates enrolled in the
program, Wade said. And the program's audience is tailor-made. "When you
look at it, 75 to 80 percent of them are in there for drugs."

Wade said any program aimed at preparing a convict for a productive life
needs to consider addiction not just a symptom but a part of the cause.
"You catch the biggest group by focusing on that."

Addiction and its associated behaviors are problems that Capt. Tom Lobrano,
security division commander at the jail, has seen daily for years. And they
are something he expects to continue to see. That is why he railed against
Wade's proposal when he first heard about it.

"I thought it was a waste of time, money and effort," he said.

Now, you couldn't coax a bad word about the program out of him. "I've seen
it work. We have less issues of any type out of [4-A]."

Lobrano's worry about wasted money also now is largely forgotten, he said.

Wade estimates that during its two-year run, the program has cost about
$15,000. Books, videos and other reusable resources relating to substance
abuse and anger management account for nearly all of that expense.

"And everything we spent came from canteen funds," he said. The canteen
fund is money collected through the sale of food, clothing and other
incidentals to inmates. Wade also puts money made from the jail's phones
into the fund, which is earmarked by state law for uses that directly
benefit prisoners.

Benefits here are easy to see, said Morgan Moss, clinical supervisor for
mental health and substance abuse at the jail.

"Jail provides an ideal environment for them to do what they're doing
here," Moss said. "They have very structured rules that they have to abide by."

Surprisingly, he said, many of those rules are set by the inmates - rules
banning cursing and racial slurs and mandating room and common-area
cleanup. The rules the inmates institute often are more stringent than
those set for the normal population.

A tour of Jail East shows that the pods using the program are hands-down
the cleanest. Overall, the jail holds about 400 inmates. Up to a quarter of
them are in the Back to Basics pods. Carefully made bunks with hospital
corners that would make Nurse Ratchet smile contrast with the sheets and
blankets that spill onto floors in other pods.

Infractions in 4-A are punished by essay assignments. The length of the
essays is determined by the other inmates.

"We have had no major incidents - or anything you'd really call an incident
- - since the thing started two years ago," Moss said.

Moss was gratified when Wade proposed the plan, which closely mirrored
Moss' own ideas on what might treat substance abuse among inmates.

So is John.

John has been sober for nearly 20 years. He volunteers at the jail and
helps facilitate many area AA programs. He has been involved with Wade's
"therapeutic community" since December.

"It's a crash course taking people through the steps of AA so they find
recovery from a spiritual basis rather than a psychological basis," John
said. "It's one of those things where they pick up on it or they bail out.

"And very few bail out."

John is acutely aware of Nuke's claims to a degree in B.S. "These people
aren't exactly pure of heart, and I recognize that, and so does everybody
else," he said.

But as Nuke said, John reiterated that the program's success is based on
its participants being on equal footing.

"To a large degree, it's people who are addicted talking to people with
addiction problems. It's the whole expression, 'It takes one to know one.'
Before we got involved, there was no one talking their language.

"It breaks down the isolation and the defensive walls that people have
built to protect themselves from some real or imaginary danger," John said.
"And mostly it's imaginary.

"This takes away the individual. It takes away the color or the height and
. . . it makes them realize that they're all the same. And once you've done
that, these guys, they start liking each other and themselves."

John's role continues beyond the prison walls. He also acts as a liaison
for released inmates, helping them connect with AA groups outside. Moss
called this function a key to the program's overall strategy.

Jail officials and area AA representatives said they are unaware of any
similar programs locally or nationally.

John called the program unique. "I think what really is interesting is the
fact that this is the first systematic approach to apply the principles of
AA in a setting like this," he said.

Wade and Morgan said they have been able to keep only rudimentary figures
on the program's results.

Of the roughly 150 inmates who have gone through during the past two years,
about one-third were transferred as part of their sentence to state
prisons, leaving about 100 who have returned to their communities. Of
those, Moss said, he is aware of only 10 or 12 who have returned to jail on
new offenses. Typical recidivism rates nationwide are 60 percent to 70
percent within the first year after release.

Moss said he and other jail officials have received 25 to 30 phone calls
and numerous letters from the ones who still are out. They speak of
achievements.

"My phone is ringing a lot these days with people saying they are having
success . . . going to meetings, having jobs, getting back with their
families," he said.

Lobrano and other staff members also relate stories of former inmates who
call back to their old buddies to let them know they are succeeding.

It is the kind of encouragement that anyone needs after sinking to the
lowest level, said Dave, an inmate in the program. He said he was a veteran
of "a lot of top-notch treatment programs" before coming to 4-A.

"Now I've had answers that I've never had in my life before," Dave said. "I
can say, 'Hey, look now. I'm worth something.'"