How Addiction is Looking Up in the Portage County Jail

Addiction feels like holding the key to your own prison cell and never being able to use it, according to Nicole Brantner. Portage County Jail is trying to help their female inmates unlock their own prison cell.

 

According to the Record-Courier, the jail has just opened a new recovery system to help female inmates detox from drugs while incarcerated. The new “Recovery Pods” is designed to help the women on the road to recovery, according to Sheriff David Doak. 

 

 

“[The Recovery Pods] is a pilot program to see if we really can assist them on the road to recovery while they’re in jail,” Sheriff David Doak said. 

 

The women meet with counselors who help them on the road to becoming sober. The goal is to provide the women with sober living options, potential work opportunities and support so they do not end up in jail again. 

 

Addiction numbers in the state of Ohio have been increasing over the last five years, according to  Lakeview Health. Ohio remains one of the top five states with high numbers of substance-addicted residents. 

 

 

“We saw a pretty huge spike in recidivism in the female inmate population that never went down,” Sheriff Doak said. Recidivism is the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend and go back to jail.

 

The Recovery Pods are part of a recovery initiative led by Hope Village Recovery Center. The pods are funded by commissary funds from within the jail. 

 

“When you go through detox at Portage County Jail, they just kind of let you lay there,” Brantner said. “It was absolutely miserable.”

 

Brantner was a heroin addict from 2007 until 2012 when she detoxed for the last time in Mahoning County Jail. She was in and out of the Portage County Jail and Mahoning County Jail during her time as an addict.

 

“There were classes offered to [addicts] to help us try to get through it, but they were horrible back then,” Brantner said. “One lady tried to relate her quitting smoking to our addiction.” 

 

Brantner, who now works at Arrow Passage, a recovery center for addicts in Massillon, Ohio, was one of the addicts who struggled with addiction outside of jail. 

 

“I had to be locked up or else I wouldn’t have gotten clean,” she said. “When I did get clean I realized that nothing was as bad, in recovery, as my best day was when I was using drugs.” 

 

Brantner thinks incarcerated treatment is what will be most successful idea thus far. As long as the inmates are provided options for sober living options after they get out of jail, Brantner said the program “gives them a living chance.” 

 

“There is a certain amount of people this may have no effect on,” Sheriff Doak said. “Even if they want to, some addicts can’t get past it.” 

 

The Recovery Pods have been in the planning process for over a year and a half, according to Sheriff Doak. Portage County Jail inmates have a new option for work while incarcerated at Paris Healthcare Linens in Ravenna, Ohio. According to Sheriff Doak the inmates will remain on the payroll after they are released.

 

“Anything we can do to help them we want to do,” Sheriff Doak said. 

 

Sheriff Doak has been in law enforcement since 1969 and has been a sheriff in Portage County since 2008. 

 

In 2019, Sheriff Doak requested 16 more employees so the jail was being staffed appropriately. According to the sheriff, overcrowding and understaffing of the jail has been an issue for many years. 

 

“I think a lot of the jails in this area are understaffed and overcrowded,” Brantner said. 

 

According to Sheriff Doak, overcrowding is often a result of people committing crimes that the courts deem “make them a menace for society.”

 

 “For addicts, they seem to relapse 3 or 4 times and we expect to see them a few times before they get involved with recovery,” he said. 

 

Sheriff Doak believes there are consequences to every action. 

 

“There are consequences, but [addicts] aren’t bad people,” the sheriff said.