April 30: Beth and Melanie are confused about the wristbrands
While Beth was schlepping to the restroom, an important man whose name I never did catch handed out little rubber bracelets in honor of Corrections Week, May 5-11. I also missed what the bracelets were for (although I worked it out later). All I knew for sure is that a soft-spoken man was walking between the tables, handing out rubber bracelets wrapped in crinkly plastic.
Beth (re-seating herself): “What—?”
Me: “Dunno.”
Beth: “You can have mine.”
About then, they introduced the second two speakers, employees at the rehabilitation center:
Anna Lookingbill and Sergeant Barbara (Barb) Schubach. Sergeant Schubach had been with the jail for twenty-five years and was getting close to retirement. Anna was a licensed clinical social worker.
Anna: “You may have noticed I do not wear a uniform? I am actually a civilian attached to the Department of Jail Services.”
Anna was blonde, cheerful and determined. She spoke in animated, slightly rushed sentences, I think partly because she knew that she was the second of three presentations and her time to explain everything was limited, but also because her life consists of rushing from one emergency to the next.
However, she did not feel that this obligated her to dress down or skip hair and makeup. Really, just looking at her made me glad to be somebody else. Being Anna has to be absolutely exhausting.
She has been working in social services for twenty years. Her whole career has been, in her words, “high-acuity.” I looked it up. Basically the term means “the patient’s condition is severe and imminently dangerous.” Anna may not be a cop, but I think she, too, would go rushing down to the basement. With a packet of resources to help Jason overcome his mental trauma and inability to form healthy, lasting relationships.
Anna went from an (unfathomable) career in psychiatric hospitals and mental institutions to her current career, which is to run the reentry program. Anna was excited about (everything, but in particular) the changing world of jail reentry programs.
Anna: “We kind of joke that Reentry is everybody’s business.”
Sergeant Schubach was in uniform, and opted to sit during the presentation (I doubt Anna sits much. She probably sleeps standing up, like horses and flamingos.) The sergeant was long-faced and wore her brown hair in a low ponytail, and had spent years caring about other people while at the same time making every effort to go unnoticed. She wasn’t in it for the accolades (what few there are.) There were people who needed help, dangit.
Sergeant Schubach added that they had a small team, but were hopefully going to add an additional member in another day or so. Part of their role was to help inmates understand how to navigate the assistance and reentry system.
It was about here that Anna mentioned that. . . wait for it. . . they were understaffed and could use additional help. There is a part-time data entry position on the reentry team, for those who might be interested.
Then she explained that largely the people that the reentry program works with are pre-trial, meaning they don’t have a release date.
Anna: “It probably won’t come as a shock to anyone that a lot of times when people are experiencing incarceration, they’ve got gaps. Right? They’ve got issues.”
She made it clear that this does not excuse wrong behavior, but it does mean that there are certain life circumstances that the reentry team consistently encounters.
Often people are required to have a place to live in order to receive probation, so they will say they have somewhere to live when in fact, they do not (or cannot. Example: they were in for assault, and there’s a protection order out on them, so they can’t come home.)
Anna: “We also have situations when people are brought to the jail and they are not. . . uh. . . having their best day. We’ll leave it at that.”
In short, these people either can’t or won’t tell the truth about whether they will have a home to go to when they get out. Another problem: these people who are in jail due to drug and alcohol problems are less likely to have access to programs that will help them stabilize their condition once they get out of jail.
Substance use disorder is by far the biggest problem that these folks deal with—in fact, often what people assume is mental illness is actually behavior associated with drug and alcohol use. They estimate that at least 75% of the people currently incarcerated are there because of substance abuse problems that are bad enough to require treatment.
Anna: “So, we’re booking, how many is it? Six thousand perps a year? Does anybody know of an agency that is treating four thousand people at a time?”
December 2023 to date (In Clark County alone):
- 17 in-custody fentanyl overdoses requiring hospitalization
- 2,619 reporting no health insurance
- 945 people reporting homelessness (The actual number is higher.)
- 3,000 + people with OUD (Opioid Use Disorder)
In the last three months:
- 610 inmates began receiving psychotropic medications
- 181 inmates were diagnosed with chronic medical needs (untreated diabetes, heart conditions, wound care.)
- 315 inmates had other problem areas requiring treatment.
Fun fact: jails can’t bill medicaid. (Anna: “Thank you very much, federal government.”) This means that funding for medical care is a county thing, and you get different levels of care depending on where you are. Clark County has different levels of care than Skamania County, for example.
The reentry folks get at least twenty new requests for aid every day, and the reentry program is twenty-four seven.
Anna showed us a slide with a picture of somebody’s request for help (with the permission of the person who made the request.) The person needed to get:
- Her birth certificate
- Her ID
- Help with paying for birth certificate and ID
- Food stamps
- Narcotics Anonymous meetings
- Help to get a job
- Help to get housing
- Her medications
- A food box
- Addresses for local food banks
- Addresses for clothing closets
- Domestic Violence help
- Outpatient treatment
This request ended with: “I basically need everything. I get out of here in a week.”
Anna reiterated that none of this absolved people of the things they’d done to get them put in jail. But the problem is what will happen when they leave the jail. They’ll be asked to leave behind everything that’s familiar: their living situation, their old friends, and also the drugs they’ve been relying on to get them through difficult things (keeping in mind that being hooked means your brain has learned to function in a way that is dependent on those drugs, and craves them because drugs train it to be dependent.)
Sergeant Schubach said that in 2013, jail administration decided to do some things differently. The sergeant was an officer at the time, and had an opportunity to spend a day with an inmate (Jessica) on her release day. They had a release plan for Jessica, and Sergeant Schubach spent the whole day with her, going from place to place getting all these things squared away. This gave the administration data they could use to form a plan of attack.
Pre-COVID, the jail had a whole different population spread. More people sentenced locally, more minimum security. The teams at that time did their reentry stuff primarily through classes. Post-COVID, they’ve had to reconfigure the spaces and switch to one-on-one appointments.
Sergeant Schubach: “People have to want to succeed. Because if somebody tells you that you have to do things, you’re less likely to succeed.”
Her point was that jail time takes away choices: when to eat, what to eat, when to sleep, every last part of their day is decided by somebody else. So they have to decide for themselves to change, because once they’re out of jail, nobody will be regimenting their lives anymore. This is a message that the reentry team also often has to give family members. Parents will say, “My daughter needs this” or “My son needs that,” but the fact is, people must choose for themselves.
She also said (firmly but apologetically) that although the Clark County reentry program was willing to help Oregon residents somewhat (hygiene kits, bus passes, things like that) the resources are limited enough that the reentry folks have to focus on the needs in Clark County.
Anna jumped in to say that sometimes she gets asked whether the reentry program will keep helping someone who returns to jail. (Quote: “Abso-frickin’-lutely!”) Sometimes people even come back because they’ve gotten their act together and they’ve come in to serve the warrant out for their arrest.
Anna: “I’m happy when people come back to jail. You know why? They’re alive. We get to try again.”
Sergeant Schubach: “Our motto is, ‘You only fail when you give up.’”
Anna: “Or when you’re. . . dead.”
She apologized for the dark humor immediately afterward (an apology which I felt was totally unnecessary) but explained that the fentanyl problem is so overwhelmingly huge that not a week went by in which they did not hear that someone they worked with for weeks—or even years—was dead.
The reentry folks are managing a clinical opioid disorder program with a local community group called the Vancouver Comprehensive Treatment Group. They are able to prescribe methadone.
Anna: “The best treatment method when you are trying to cure patients who have been using lots and lots of opioids for a long, long time? Is methadone.”
There are a couple of other, similar medications available that are used to treat opioid disorders. But any of these three could be prescribed by a doctor to a patient, and it is very important that the patients are given the medication their doctor intends them to take (and that they will take.)
The Justice Center is in the process of licensing to become a methadone distribution site. They just got a grant for that, as well as a grant for expansion.
Anna: “We anticipate we are meeting about ten percent of the need for opioid treatment. Yep. It stinks. We know. There is not enough room and not enough officers for everyone to be treated safely.”
The reentry folks are triaging people who have no access to health care. (Anna: “We get people in all the time with these problems and we say, ‘Who’s helping you?’ and they say, ‘Well, no one.’”) It should be added that these people also say things like, “I didn’t make my appointments,” and “my counselor was a big jerk so I left.” (Did they actually use the world “jerk”? I’m thinking not.) These people also say that they’re currently living in a tent. Which doesn’t surprise anyone working at the downtown library.
Inmates aren’t able to access treatment programs without an intake process, which for a long while meant that people couldn’t get treatment. But another grant recently made it possible for the reentry folks to handle the intake interview. They only have one full time person able to do that, but they are hoping to hire more in the future.
There are now peer support advocates (backgrounds checked and vetted) who are also able to come in and provide assistance. These are folks with personal experience with addiction and homelessness, and often also with incarceration, who can come alongside inmates to encourage them. In fact, they can pick inmates up at the time of release and take them directly to places that will help meet their immediate needs.
The reentry folks also recently got funding to work with a homelessness advocacy group, and they are working with other groups on the issue of employment readiness. Many folks are still in treatment and aren’t ready for that yet, but the goal is to get people to the place where they can work.
The reentry folks also have a partnership with a group that pulls up a list of release dates and meets those people at their cells, asking if they need assistance when they get out of jail. And they are working on a plan to more widely distribute Naloxone. The Clark County Jail has a Naloxone vending machine (I have seen it). There’s no charge, you just press a button and the Naloxone is yours. The jail is one of four sites in Clark County that makes Naloxone available free of charge. They’ve moved over 300 Naloxone kits in less than a month. (They also provide Naloxone free at time of release to anyone who asks for it.)
Tangentia: “How long does Naloxone stay shelf stable?”
Anna thinks it’s about two years, but she isn’t certain that’s accurate.
Things that are currently grant-funded:
- Gaps in Medicaid
- MOUD/MOUD expansion (Medications for Opioid Use Disorder)
- Peer support specialists
- Small group meetings (interesting fact: apparently having men and women together in small groups helps them learn from one another. The mixed groups have better results.)
- Substance Use Disorder assessments
- Employment readiness programs
- Naloxone distribution and vending machines
- Housing assessments
- Supplies for inmates being released
- Specialized housing
- Homeless outreach
- Help to relieve financial issues like child support payments
- Food packs, hygiene packs and tents
- Bus passes
The idea is to provide enough emergency support at release that even if it’s nine at night, the person will have what they need to make it through to tomorrow morning.
The Justice Center has started hosting a giant meeting with community partners periodically so these county agencies sit down in the same room together to discuss what various programs are available.
Future Goals:
- Medicaid billing live in 2025! Yes, it is coming at last! (They are still working on the process, however.)
- Small group meetings for inmates
- Reentry Support Circles
- More staffing (both uniform and civilian)
- Additional SUD (Substance Use Disorder) treatment options
Sergeant Schubach: “Just this year, they have now passed a law that says the Department of Corrections and the Department of Licensing will work together and come up with a way to make their system work for the jails.”
At last, a system will be in place so that people can get IDs when they get out, which will give them access to all these other services.
Anna: “They are having discussions about these services in the plans for the remodel. There will absolutely be a place to submit public opinion. Please remember that you are members of the public. Please show up and share your thoughts.”
I went up to talk to Anna afterward. Because if she is looking for a big room to host big meetings, and if she doesn’t care that the projectors require intercessory prayer to work, the Vancouver Library does have a room that she could use.
I also begged her to do her presentation at Vancouver Library as a public event. She stared at me. “You mean people actually care about this stuff?”
Yes, Anna. They do.
Next up: Jail cops!
