Prisons filled with untreated addicts

More than 80 percent of Delaware prison inmates are drug addicts, but less than 10 percent receive drug treatment, says Delaware Public Defender Larry Sullivan.

"If you ran an institution, say a high school or a college, and 80 percent of your students had a particular problem, wouldn't that problem be at the top of your list?" Sullivan asks. "The prison system ought to be a school for issues of addiction. I don't see that happening. They ought to be indoctrinating these inmates again and again and again - doing it so well that the inmates can spout the facts about addiction as well as the counselors."

Sullivan has found that serious drug rehabilitation often requires two to three attempts before the patient reaches meaningful sobriety.

"These people don't want to be addicted, but these guys aren't going to pick it up the first, second or third time," he says. "When they come out, they need to recognize that drugs were the reason they were in there."

Neither Stan Taylor, commissioner of the Delaware Department of Correction, nor Beth Welch, the department's spokeswoman, would comment for this story.

Tyhem Nesmith, who served 18 months in Delaware State Prison for theft, says he and other prisoners couldn't get drug treatment - even when they begged.

Nesmith says he told the prosecutor, judge and later his parole officer he needed drug treatment. He filled out four applications for the prison's treatment program, but never got a response, he says.

"I asked for help and they wouldn't give me none at all," he says. "I asked everybody for help."

Nesmith, who now lives at Fourth and Madison streets in Wilmington, is receiving outpatient drug treatment from Brandywine Counseling, services he arranged on his own.

Sufficient drug treatment also is lacking outside prison. Delaware has just 100 beds available for in-patient drug treatment. It's not enough, says Wilmington police Capt. Dwayne Jubb, chief of detectives.

The state has a network of private outpatient facilities, Jack Kemp, director of the Delaware Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, points out. "But there could obviously be more," he says.

"It depends on what we are looking at doing," Kemp adds. "If we want to use community treatment facilities instead of incarceration, it's not enough."

Outpatient care, though more plentiful, isn't the right choice for everyone. If the patient has a good support system of family and friends, outpatient care may work, says Jeremy Zane, director of Brandywine Counseling Inc.'s Outreach program.

"People don't want to go inpatient. They want to stay out, run the streets and try to get clean," Zane says. "But if they live in a neighborhood and walk by the dealers every day, and have never been able to resist temptation before, they won't resist temptation."

West Center City activist Dwight Davis has seen the effects of unchecked drug abuse.

One of the 97 shootings that occurred last year took place just feet from Davis' front door. The victim's home, two doors down, still bears gang graffiti.

"In Wilmington, we have a heroin epidemic," Davis says. "To me, it's more serious than the heroin epidemic that occurred after the Vietnam War."

The heroin now, he says, is more potent and substantially less expensive.

"I believe shootings and murders are committed by the heroin addict. That's the effect. These people are sick. There's nothing to live for. They need treatment, because there's no limit to what they're willing to do," Davis says.

Sullivan says effective mental health treatment also is problematic in the state's prison system, where 75 percent of female inmates and 33 percent of male inmates regularly receive psychotropic drugs to control various mental illnesses.

"When they get out, they receive four of five days worth of pills and no aftercare," Sullivan notes. "And the drugs they get aren't the same drugs available to the general public."

The psychotropic drugs prescribed to inmates are mass produced, inexpensive and 20 years old, he says.

"I'm not saying they should get state-of-the-art drugs because they're nice guys," Sullivan says. "I'm saying they should get state-of-the-art drugs because they're not nice guys, and you want to keep them stable."