One glaringly ugly fact our nation must acknowledge is that the opioid epidemic is not over. Opioids continue to destroy American lives one addict at a time.
In 2020, some 68,630 Americans died of opioid-involved overdoses — more than triple the number of such deaths 10 years earlier, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Not surprisingly, members of our nation’s incarcerated population are among those likely to have some form of drug dependency disorder, especially because narcotics are easily obtainable in jails and prisons. Having served more than 14 years behind Michigan’s razor-wire fences, I can assure you that narcotics, and especially opiates, are plentiful throughout nearly every one of Michigan’s 30 correctional facilities.
In 2019, Michigan began offering medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to a limited number of individuals, joining Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington and others.
The MAT program is a treatment approach that combines prescribed medication, cognitive behavioral therapy and recovery support. It was implemented at several of Michigan’s 30 correctional facilities through a pilot program, but the number of prisoners who qualified for treatment has been limited.
According to The Detroit News, the pilot program administered Vivitrol shots to 214 people before their release. The Michigan Department of Corrections had said that less than 1% of them returned to prison.
But the number of people helped is a small percentage of the total number of incarcerated people with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), which the department estimates to be 20% of the state’s incarcerated population. As of Dec. 31, 2019, the state had 38,053 people incarcerated, which means that there are roughly 7,700 people in the system who suffer from OUD.
The department tripled its budget for MAT treatment in 2020 to $3 million, but it is still not enough.
Applicants who have submitted requests at the Carson City Correctional Facility where I reside, have been told that admissions to the pilot programs prioritize those on the waiting list in order of the earliest projected release date.
It feels like Michigan prison administrators and their medical staff are being indifferent to prisoners’ serious medical needs.
We are starting to get some help. Late in 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Grand Traverse County jail officials over their denial of Suboxone, a medical treatment for OUD, to a person in their custody.
Now I am asking for your help in getting those programs expanded statewide. Wouldn’t you want your son or daughter to have meaningful access to treatment in your home state?
If your answer is yes, please help advocate for those of us here in the Michigan penal system who long for treatment of our disorders by emailing or calling your legislative representatives and senators.
(Additional reporting by PJP)
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.
Opioid Crisis Is Rampant in Michigan Prisons
