🔵 By Kenneth Zamarron. Photo by lauragrafie.
It was damp and bone-chillingly cold that morning. A miserable rain had stopped just minutes before, and a thick foreboding fog blanketed the prison courtyard. As I walked by, there they stood, waiting. Broken in body and broken in spirit, hopeless and feckless, the old prisoners in their tattered, stained, worn and often putrid prison garb, waiting for their medications to be dispensed to them. Their vacant, sunken eyes betrayed their vacuous existence. They were the dregs of society; the shunned, those wretched lost souls destined to die in prison, destined to die alone, destined to die knowing full well nobody truly gave one iota whether they lived or died, and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt nobody would miss them when they were gone. Yes, those miserable souls were waiting in the medication line every morning and every evening, but they were waiting in another line as well – a line from which there was no possible escape in this life. They were all, metaphorically at least, in line awaiting the end of their miserable existence. They were just waiting to die. Even more sadly, there are ever more younger prisoners, who always stand at the back of that medication line, who have no real hope of ever being released, who will soon join the old prisoners at the front of the line.
I just shook my head and kept walking, as I couldn’t overcome the thought that what I had just witnessed could have been the introduction to an Edgar Allen Poe tale or possibly the opening scene of an old episode of “The Twilight Zone”, and I concentrated on suppressing the unmistakable shudder I felt reverberating from the very core of my being.
I was on my way to begin my participation in a new program involving a concerted attempt by the Indiana Department of Correction to engage prisoners in intensive, rigorous rehabilitative drug treatment known as “Recovery While Incarcerated”, more commonly referred to in prison parlance as “RWI”. For the next several months, I and my fellow participants in the inaugural RWI class would be in the vanguard of the newest cognitive-behavioral therapy program which, at least purportedly, would focus on relapse prevention and treatment of criminal and addictive behaviors. I soon learned the curricula included a textbook; weekly homework; random, unannounced urinalysis screenings which one must pass; and by the end of the program, the completion of an individualized relapse prevention plan. Each week thereafter saw the introduction of key questions for hopefully, insightful cogitation and classroom discussion, such as:
– What are external and internal triggers?
– How does one best cope with cravings?
– What is a balanced life? And
– How does one best avoid high-risk situations or environments both within the prison and once released?
I see the RWI program as an attempt at rational rehabilitation in action. It seems to me that programs such as RWI are the criminal justice system’s concerted effort to combat recidivism, given the undeniable fact that drug use and drug addiction are inextricably intertwined with criminal conduct on so many different levels. As such, I would respectfully submit our criminal justice system should espouse deterrence by the following:
1. Being tough on crime;
2. While concurrently being tough with respect to rational rehabilitation programs.
As a result, the nagging question I cannot shake is, should such programs be mandated for all incarcerated individuals? I firmly believe a cogent and compelling argument can indeed be made for such mandates. Moreover, given the fact I was immersed in the world of illicit drugs for more than a decade prior to my incarceration, and considering my incarceration was itself in large part the result of my own alcohol addiction, personally, I vociferously and unambiguously support those whose position it is that such drug treatment programs should in fact be mandated for all incarcerated individuals. Given the fact numerous studies have shown that a large percentage of incarcerated individuals have a significant history of drug and or alcohol abuse, those relatively few inmates who have no such experience will, through such mandated classes, at least gain some empathy for a better learn how to deal with those who do have such addiction issues. After all, I it seems to me that oftentimes the best way to avoid trouble is to avoid those situations most likely lead one to such a result.
I found it noteworthy that of the hundreds of questions posed throughout the RWI class I completed, from my perspective, the most impactful question of all was: “What will motivate you, once and for all time, to wash your hands of addictive behavior and its associated criminal lifestyle?” The various participants in the references class offered such pabulum responses as, “my family”, “my kids”, and “my faith”, but everyone in the class was taken aback and looked at me perplexed and with consternation when my response to the question posed was, “the medication line”. A fellow RWI participant looked confused, then asked if I could add content to what I meant by “The Medication Line”.
I told him, “every day we pass the medication line to get to class, and see fellow incarcerated individuals in their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, having served 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years. They are fated to die in prison. We in this class are relatively young. Some of you are going home this year, and we walk pass that medication line and ignore our own potential reality due to our addictions and criminality. Unlike you with outdates, I have a de facto life sentence, I face the reality that I may very well die in prison, hopeless and friendless, as so many other inmates are destined to do. Nonetheless, what saddens me most is some of you in this class may join me in that bone-chillingly cold medication line one day when I am elderly myself. That is why I, and I hope others of you, took the lessons of the RWI class seriously, and why I, and I hope many of you, continue in this determination to remain free from criminality and addictions: to avoid the medication line from which there is no escape.“