Robert Maynez was 12 years old when he first got into drugs.
"I started abusing heroin," said the 52-year-old father of four from a housing unit called East-23 in the Santa Barbara County Jail. The drug wasn't hard to get; he had older friends he looked up to who eventually gave him some after he persisted. After that, he was hooked.
He was clean a few years when he was into boxing, he said. But then life got complicated: he grew up, his marriage was difficult. The stress led him back into the arms of drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
For years he was a furtive user, but still functioning in other areas of his life. But then he lost part of his thumb to a work-related accident, and that, he said, was when he upped his usage.
Fast forward to today. Mr. Maynez is in jail on gun and drug charges. He's looking at a serious amount of time.
That's just one of the many stories that are told between the concrete and metal walls of the Santa Barbara County Jail. The accounts may differ slightly. For some inmates, their addictions started with alcohol; others discovered their addictions later in life, some are in on relatively minor charges while yet others are looking at spending years in incarceration.
What they all have in common, though, is now they're locked up. With Chuck.
"About 80 percent of the inmates that are incarcerated — this is nationwide — are in jail because they committed a crime around alcohol and drugs," said Chuck McClain, who heads up the Sheriff's Treatment Program, a suite of addiction recovery- related programs run by the county jail. Eighty percent means that a huge majority of inmates are in jail now for offenses related directly to the alcohol and drugs, like possession or sales; or because of things that happened while they were under the influence, like vehicular manslaughter or vandalism. Another set are in for choices they made to get drugs, like prostitution or robbery.
Chuck McClain is a large, candid, self-described "confrontational type of guy." He started counseling at the county jail in 1999; three years after Chief John Dafoe started the Sheriff's Treatment Program with the idea that incarceration wasn't enough, at least for inmates who come in addicted to alcohol or drugs. For years, said Mr. McClain, STP was the first and only program of its kind.
The thought was: if you didn't do something to give inmates the tools to cope without drugs, or help make choices that kept them clean and sober, it's likely they'll fall back into that environment and will be back in jail. In fact, said Mr. McClain, three quarters of the inmates who come in because of some activity around drugs or alcohol are likely to be back in a year, if they're not put through some type of rehabilitative program.
So it's Mr. McClain's job, the confrontational type of guy that he is, to get as many inmates into the program, which has been expanded from the basic offerings like 12-step program to include life skills classes, computer training, as well as programs to cope with triggers like loss or anger, or process the underlying reasons that led to addiction in the first place. It's not easy to get volunteers. Most people are referred by the judge. Others he will persuade.
"By the end of the second week it's like a light bulb goes on in some of them," he said. "They realize it's not about looking good for the courts or their families; they've got a serious problem."
And for some addicts the only place they may ever get seriously cleaned up, is in jail. Alex Raya knows. He came in hooked on cocaine, he said. It was all he could do to sleep and eat and sleep again until the drugs left his body.
"Thirteen months I've been incarcerated and I've been in STP for 10 months," he said. "It's the longest I've had clean." It isn't the first time for Mr. Raya; he's been coming in and out of the criminal justice system since the 1980s. Now, he said, he's taking stock of the toll his choices have had on his family and he's doing his best to change.
Elsewhere, in a classroom, instructor Christine Springer is lecturing a group of women on how they can respond to a fussy baby. It's one of the kinds of life skills classes Mr. McClain wants to expand, because women, he said, are devastated by incarceration, often much more so than men.
"It's unfathomable," he said. "They lose their kids, they lose their lives...the men, they get visitors almost every day. But the women get very few visitors.
"It's not a whole lot better when they get out. According to Mr. McClain if they wind up back in their old relationships and environment, they get back into the lifestyle. For many women, it takes severing many of their ties to improve their situation.
What everyone is racing against is institutionalization, where inmates cross the line from functioning in the outside world, to needing the jail system to take care of them. The longer they stay locked up, the more difficult it is to deal with the outside world.
RECIDIVISM RATES
After several years and over 7,000 inmates going through the program, rates of recidivism for those have been classified as "drug involved" inmates at the Santa Barbara jail, have dropped to around 40 percent for men and 35 percent for women. Participation in any rehabilitative program in jail is likely to reduce this recidivism to about 50 percent, said Mr. McClain, but the STP program seems to have pushed it lower. He says they're in the process of a long-term recidivism study, which may reveal more information about what works and what doesn't.
But the real effect is one that's hard to see if you're not looking.
For example, with an average stay of about 90 days for the jail, the county spends roughly $5,900 per inmate.
According to Mr. McClain, they put about 800 people a year through STP, so the county spends at least $4.7 million on drug-involved inmates per year. With a recidivism of 75 percent from this population without a program, it's expected that something like 600 inmates would return in about a year, which means, using the 90-day stay average, the county would spend something in the neighborhood of $3.5 million on returning inmates.
With the program, according to Mr. McClain, the money spent on the returning inmates would be about $1.6 million as the recidivism rate is typically 35 percent, which has reduced spending dramatically. "We're talking millions here," he said.
In fact, if this program works really well, ideally, you wouldn't notice at all.
"People need to know that 90 percent of the people that are incarcerated today will be our next door neighbors this time next year. Do you want someone in your neighborhood that just got out of jail or prison to have had treatment for their drug and alcohol problems or do you want that person to come out of the system just (angry) and ready to improve on their crimes?"
To taxpayers, perhaps the most significant number is zero, as in that's how much taxpayer money goes into the STP program. It's funded largely by the inmates themselves, through purchases made at the commissary, as well as a small grant from the county. According to Mr. McClain, the method can give the participants some feeling of investment in their own recovery, and it's a scheme that can be duplicated in other jails and prisons.
However, in jail, just like outside, spending fluctuates with the economy. So a poor economy also means less money spent on STP. County budgetary problems may also put a personnel squeeze on the program. Meanwhile, the list to get in has a wait of months.
State cuts and early release
In a perfect world, the rate of recidivism drops to the point where everyone who goes through the program and leaves to become responsible tax-paying members of society. Alcohol- and drug-related crime lessens throughout the community and everyone's happy. But at the Santa Barbara Jail that's just not so.
Sometimes, people re-offend and return, which might mean another go-round through the program. But these days there's also the twin blows from the state cutting its rehabilitative programs in its prisons to counteract the budget crisis, and the recent early release program, which would let thousands of nonviolent offenders in the California prison system out to save more money (It takes about $46,000 to house one inmate in the state prison system for a year).
The scenario that Mr. McClain wants to avoid playing out is one where unrehabilitated prisoners are released and go back to their old lifestyles, re-offend, and wind up in county jail en route to the state prison system. The county winds up paying, he said.
"It's like we save a penny now, and pay $50 tomorrow. Where's the savings?"
Of course even with a program like STP, or any rehabilitative program for that matter, there's no guarantee an inmate will stay out, said Chuck McClain. Try as they might, some inmates will come back. So it's hard to tell which participants from E-23 would be able to function, long-term, on the outside. It's hard to tell which women taking the life skills lessons will leave their precarious positions behind. But if the numbers bear out, then less than half of the inmates who come in today are likely to be seen again next year. And, added up, it makes a big difference, he said.
For some, STP means more than the decreased recidivism, or a means to ease the strain on what seems to be an intractable crowding situation on the state's jails and prisons, or saving tax dollars in the long term. For inmates like Robert Maynez, it's a lifeline.
"You know, I may not get out for a long time," said Mr. Maynez. "I'm looking at ten years right now. With my charges it could be 37 years. I want to get into a program...I want to continue doing what I'm doing here, and that's a program. That's what makes me feel good.
" I'm moving forward."
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