A Utah county is seeing fewer people return to jail thanks to a former teacher’s aid

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The recidivism rate at the Sanpete County Jail has dropped significantly in recent months. The reason: A community health worker is meeting with every person booked into the jail soon after they arrive to help them create a plan for the day they get out.

Garrett Clark puts his arm around his sister, Shantel, minutes after she was released from the Sanpete County Jail in rural Utah in December. Cheryl Swapp helps smooth detainees’ transition to the outside as the jail’s community health worker. Ryan Montag has been helped by Swapp in the past.Garrett Clark estimates he has spent about six years in the Sanpete County Jail, a plain concrete building perched on a dusty hill just outside this small, rural town where he grew up.

On the day of her release from Sanpete County Jail in rural Utah in December, Shantel Clark hugs Cheryl Swapp, the jail’s community health worker, at the sheriff’s office. Clark’s sweatshirt had just been pulled from a supply of clothing for people who are released at a different time of year than when they were booked.

“We don’t lock people up for being diabetic or epileptic,” said David Mahoney, a retired sheriff in Dane County, Wisconsin, who served as president of thein 2020-21. “The question every community needs to ask is: ‘Are we doing our responsibility to each other for locking people up for a diagnosed medical condition?’”

“Don’t we have a moral and ethical responsibility as community members to address the reasons people are coming into the criminal justice system?” asked Mahoney, who has 41 years of experience in law enforcement. Nunley, the programming sergeant, remembers watching people released from jail walk the mile to town with nothing but the clothes they’d worn on the day they were arrested — it was known as the “walk of shame.” Swapp hates that phrase. She said no one has made the trip on foot since she started in July 2022.

“I thought, if I can just go and get high, I can deal with this s---,” said Draper. “But after you’ve been using for 40 years, it’s kinda easy to slip back in.” She told Draper she would try to get him into intensive outpatient therapy. That would involve four to five classes a week and a lot of driving. He’d need his license back. She didn’t make promises but said she would talk to his probation officer and the judge. He sighed and thanked her.

 

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