Editor’s note: This commentary is by LeeAnna Fomkin, of Burlington, who is a graduate student at UVM pursuing a master’s degree in social work.
I appreciated the article “Prison Policy Seen as Short-Circuiting Addiction Recovery.” In Vermont prisons, people who are incarcerated lose access to Medicated Assisted Treatment (MAT) for opioid addictions. As a pilot program, those who are incarcerated at two Vermont prisons have access to MAT for 90 days (60 days longer than typical). The article cited a report which recommended extending access to treatment to 180 days or a year.
I would like to ask, why limit the time that treatment can be accessed at all? Why can’t those who are incarcerated have access to this treatment for the full extent of the time they are behind bars? Why can’t we use incarceration as an opportunity to introduce individuals to this method of treatment and other methods of treatment?
Prison is a significant point of intervention that we do not take advantage of. An individual who enters prison has likely been in a cycle of negative behavior, which has now escalated to the level of incarceration. The cycle needs to be interrupted, and we are foolish to believe that incarceration alone will do that. If we want safe communities and neighborhoods, we need to ensure that people are leaving prison better able to lead productive lives and contribute to their communities in a positive way. We need to teach skills, coping strategies, and healthy ways of handling stress and managing anger. We need to address substance use, and provide access to education.
Each individual who is incarcerated should be held accountable for his or her actions, but not held so tightly that he or she cannot change.
Each individual who is incarcerated should be held accountable for his or her actions, but not held so tightly that he or she cannot change. We cannot assume to know the limit to which any person can change and grow. People who are incarcerated do not exist solely as inmates. They are human beings, with complex experiences of emotions, and senses of self; they have families, and ideas about what the future can hold. We have constructed a system and vision of what an “inmate” is which erases those human qualities from people who have committed crimes.
As a society we are blind to the collective role we play in leading people to edge of what we deem as “acceptable” behavior and pushing them over. Once they are on the other side, locked up, and out of sight it is too easy to trick ourselves into believing that the problem is solved. What if we expanded our definition of the “problem” beyond the specific individual committing the specific crime, and looked at it from a larger social context? What conditions exist that are leading our neighbors and members of our communities to commit offenses?
I am not advocating to absolve any incarcerated individual of his crimes. I am not advocating for a society that does not hold individuals accountable for harm caused to people and communities. I am advocating for a system that recognizes the humanity in each person, and operates in a way that allows those who are incarcerated to grow that humanity within themselves and re-enter our communities able to contribute in a positive way.
