Harford County has launched a program for prison inmates with drug problems and mental illness that experts say is the first of its kind in the state and among the first nationwide.
The program will provide free drug treatment, counseling, medical and mental health care and transportation to treatment centers, officials said. Counselors also will help former prisoners sign up for related state and federal services.
"It's innovative, and it's grounded in common sense," said Dr. Robert P. Schwartz, an expert on drug addiction and treatment.
"You bring people to the services they need. It's not very complicated, but it's not been done," said Schwartz, medical director at Friends Research Institute, a Baltimore organization that studies mental health and addiction, and a fellow at the Open Society Institute in Baltimore.
The approach is designed to tackle a problem that has frustrated public officials for decades: the large percentage of former inmates who repeatedly end up in prison for reasons related to addiction or mental illness. Experts say that up to half of all inmates fall into this group.
"There is a huge revolving door of people who have substance abuse problems and mental illness and end up getting arrested multiple times," said Dr. Yngvild Olsen, medical director of the Harford County Health Department and the primary architect of the program. "There has to be a way that we can intervene to stop that."
This program will provide an important component: free transportation from the Harford County Detention Center to the treatment center when inmates are released. That is crucial, Olsen said, because inmates often have no way to get to treatment even if they want to sign up. By enrolling them as soon as they are released, she hopes to help them avoid old routines that lead to drug use and crime.
"It's a captive audience, no pun intended," Olsen said.
In Harford County and elsewhere, programs assist inmates with drug problems. But many experts say such programs do little good because the lessons learned inside prison walls tend not to stick in the outside world.
Several Maryland counties, including Wicomico and Montgomery, offer programs, including drug treatment, for former inmates. But the Harford program, as yet unnamed, breaks ground by linking the various pieces into a comprehensive whole. The program offers not only drug treatment, but transportation, medical care, mental health treatment and help in applying for other services.
