Apr 22 2024KFF Health News Clark was at the jail to pick up his sister, who had just been released. The siblings think this time will be different. They are both sober. Shantel Clark, 33, finished earning her high school diploma during her four-month stay at the jail. They have a place to live where no one is using drugs."She saved my life probably, for sure," Garrett Clark said.
"A missing puzzle piece," Sgt. Gretchen Nunley, who runs educational and addiction recovery programming for the jail, called Swapp. The idea that county sheriffs might owe it to society to offer medical and mental health treatment to people in their jails is part of a broader shift in thinking among law enforcement officials that Mahoney said he has observed during the past decade.
In most places, people are released from county jails with no health care coverage, no job, nowhere to live, and no plan to stay off drugs or treat their mental illness. Research shows that people newly released from incarceration face a risk of overdose that is 10 times as high as that of the general public.
Related StoriesEvidence is mounting that the model of training people to help their neighbors connect to government and health care services is sound, said Aditi Vasan, a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania who has reviewed the research on the relatively new role.
Swapp listened to Draper's story without interruptions or questions. Then she asked if she could run through her list with him so she would know what he needed."Your birth certificate, you have it?""A long, long time ago," Draper said. "DUI from 22 years ago. Paid for and everything."Swapp has some version of this conversation with every person she meets in the jail.