Despite its status as one of the most heavily methamphetamine-trafficked counties in the state, Miami County lacks an adequate civilian treatment program, officials said, and they have little help it will change soon.
“There are no programs in Miami County for methamphetamine. Period,” Miami County Prosecutor Bruce Embrey said. “Meth is very specialized issue. You don’t treat it exactly the same as you do other addictions. It needs to be long term. You need to be able to keep people away from it.”
In 2013, Miami County had 49 clandestine lab incidents handled by Indiana law enforcement, enough to rank eighth most in the state out of 91 other counties.
Purposeful incarceration program
Many of those addicted to meth in Miami County enter the Indiana Department of Corrections’ purposeful incarceration program due to a lack of other options, as did 33-year-old meth dealer Jeffrey Johnson during a May 22 hearing.
Johnson, last known address 36 E. Jefferson, accepted a plea agreement calling for placement in the purposeful incarceration program. Upon Johnson’s successful completion of the program, the court also agreed to consider a modification of the sentence.
Miami Circuit Judge Tim Spahr noted that Johnson, with no prior criminal record, could qualify for probation or home detention and asked for clarification from Miami County Prosecutor Bruce Embrey and Kristina Lynn, Johnson’s attorney.
“(Johnson) is addicted to methamphetamine,” Embrey said at the May hearing. “He knows he’s addicted, he knows he needs treatment and he has not gotten any. He’s not likely to get any. We don’t have a good methamphetamine treatment program in this community.”
Embrey said Johnson’s “best chance for rehabilitation” and “best opportunity to be a productive citizen” was in prison.
According to the DOC’s website, the purposeful incarceration program began in 2009 in collaboration with Indiana Court Systems.
“The IDOC currently has over 1,700 Therapeutic Community (TC) beds for both male and female offenders,” according to the website and Miami Correctional Facility accounts for 204.
The website states the DOC has two different types of therapeutic communities – a general one “that serves offenders with significant abuse of any substance” and CLIFF (Clean Lifestyle is Freedom Forever), which “provide(s) intensive treatment to offenders who have significant impairment as a result of methamphetamine abuse, though many of those offenders are poly substance abusers.”
The website states each program has a similar structure and core components, “but the CLIFF Units also utilized (a) curriculum specially designed to treat methamphetamine and cocaine addiction.”
Spahr said Johnson’s case “highlights why there is a purposeful incarceration program” but also reveals a deeper issue.
“It greatly troubles me that there’s not a program available to the community,” Spahr said. “(This case) strikes me as a situation where the court would definitely want to consider a modification if that program is successful.”
Spahr said there used to be a program available for meth offenders in Miami County. Probation Officer Troy Proffitt confirmed that such an intensive outpatient program used to be available at Four County Counseling Center. That program had since then been discontinued, with Spahr assuming it had been done due to finances.
Laurie Robertson, head of Four County’s addictions program, did not return calls for comment.
Embrey said he is “not aware of much success with outpatient programs for meth.”
“In-patient programs have an advantage because you can keep people away from it. You know they’re not going home and using,” Embrey said.
“Community-based programs… you’re going back to the same environment in which you’ve used drugs before. For someone like Johnson, who was up to his neck in meth even though it was his first arrest, he admitted continuing use and admitted addiction.”
He said Johnson would “be away from meth unquestionably, for anywhere from six months to a year.”
Miami County Sheriff Tim Miller said the Miami County Jail had a substance abuse class offered to inmates, but that it wasn’t specific to methamphetamine.
He said counselors from Four County travel to the jail for the class.
While the program had a lull in its operation due to a grant funding it running low, it was intended to begin again this month. Miller said about 15 inmates chose to participate.
“We do have participation in hopes that it will improve their lifestyles and prevent them from using illegal substances,” he said. “It’s always positive when you can offer classes to improve their lifestyles.”
Embrey said the key to fixing the problem is mental health and goes through the statehouse.
“I have been a critic of the mental system in Indiana for the 38 years I’ve been involved in criminal justice system,” he said. “We have never made a commitment in Indiana to mental health, and we are now seeing the effects of it.”
He said there were “two parts to the problem.”
“First, the legislature has never considered mental health a priority. Constituents of mental health are not likely to go to Indianapolis and say we need more services,” he said. “Secondly, I don’t know that most citizens really appreciate the difficulty for people who need services to find them and they don’t want to spend more money…. We’re all taxpayers, and it’s expensive, but we have to do something. Crime is really having an impact on us.”
He said the state had “prisons filled with people who have mental health issues that have gone unchecked.”
“I’m not being critical of Four County, because they have to produce enough income to pay salaries and keep the doors open,” he said. “But if you have no income whatsoever, you don’t get onto their sliding scale. And you don’t get services…. It’s the result of the state’s lack of commitment to mental health service.”
He said regional mental health centers “were meant to solve the mental health problems in Indiana,” but “they have not.”
“They are not providing a treatment to those who are addicted to meth, who have no income,” he said. “You can argue that well, they should go get a job. Ten years ago, I could say that with a straight face…. Some of these folks have been unemployed so long they’re unemployable. They need services, they need help.”
State Rep. Bill Friend, R-Macy, said local methamphetamine treatment programs are “important,” but he was “just not sure that it was addressed, or at least efficiently.”
“It’s a very serious issue, especially here in a county like ours – lower income, rural county, like where we reside,” he said. “It seems to be more of a problem there (in those types of counties)”
He said he “would agree that treatment programs would be beneficial,” but that he was “just not sure how we structure one.”
“I guess we have to dive into it and research it,” he said.
Of the prison’s purposeful incarceration program, he said it was a “very acceptable way to address” methamphetamine addiction.
“The bigger question is with establishing a program for someone with a meth addiction – how do we find them and get them into a program?” he said. “Like any other addiction, the individual has got to be ready to improve themselves before the program will work and actually try to help themselves.”
Embrey said he is “afraid of” how things will change when the criminal code changes July 1, “when we being treating drug addictions differently” and sending fewer offenders to prison.
Under that new code, Embrey said it is “possible…but not likely” Johnson wouldn’t have gone to prison “because max sentence would have been a year and a half first time around.”
“They won’t get treatment, and they will reoffend. And the second time around, they will go to prison,” Embrey said. “This whole statutory scheme that we have created now to keep people in the community is going to backfire on us if we don’t get treatment.”
Indiana had set aside $11 million to provide that treatment, Embrey said, which would be distributed through community corrections programs.
Saying that wasn’t “much money for 92 counties,” he added there would be small grants given as a demonstration for the treatment but said Miami County was “not likely to be one of the handfuls to get those.”
Even if the county did get the funds, he said it would “be two or three years before we have treatment programs that we can use that are compatible with the new criminal code.”
Friend said he would “certainly be willing to work with and around people to see if there’s a program we can get going again.”
“We’ll do some investigations and see if we make some progress on it,” Friend said. “I’d like to address it in some way.”
Embrey said although a program coming to the area doesn’t guarantee success, it could help.
“And there will be some people, who with effective treatment, will get out of the cycle,” he said. “If not, we’ll see them back over and over and over again. And they will go to prison because the problem is not even being addressed therapeutically in the early stages and that’s when we can do the most good.”
He said the state “has to make more of a commitment to providing addiction services and mental health services or we’re going to see an increasing crime rate, we’re going to see the same people over and over again.”
“There’s not a whole lot I can do or the courts can do; the mental health system is going to have to deal with it,” he said. “The vicious cycle is just going to continue if we don’t provide treatment. It may continue anyway because treatment’s not always effective, but we have to try.”