Is successful addiction treatment doomed?
Developing correctional programs that actually correct behavior is no small feat. Reality House, a 145-bed correctional adult male residential substance abuse treatment facility in operation since 1980, successfully returns more than 87 percent of its residents back to society. It prepares them to resume productive lives by providing them with a job, marketable job skills, substance abuse treatment, and improved interpersonal and social skills.
Reality House has been recognized as a model for the nation that uses highly effective behavioral approaches, well-trained and experienced professional staff members, a supportive environment and much more. It is unconscionable that this and other programs like it are being terminated by the Florida Department of Corrections. Despite the current state of emergency due to the opioid crisis, the Department of Corrections has chosen to terminate substance abuse treatment contracts statewide to make those dollars available for a medical vendor to provide court-ordered basic inmate health services statewide.
That doesn’t include substance abuse treatment.
(READ: Cutback in state funds sends Stewart-Marchman scrambling.)
Termination of the contracts will result in total elimination of Reality House for the foreseeable future, because it took decades to build and will not spontaneously reappear. Once staff is dismissed, they must seek alternative employment. The underfunding of the corrections budget was short-sighted of the Florida Legislature, and cutting these services is short-sighted of Corrections. These programs work, and without them these men will most likely commit more crimes and go back to prison (and this law enforcement, judicial, and corrections path is much more costly than helping people to become sober, gainfully employed, law abiding citizens).
Please contact your Florida legislators and Gov. Rick Scott to support continued funding for substance abuse treatment in corrections. Simply declaring a state of emergency is not enough — state agencies must adopt and continue policies and programs which prevent and treat addiction, and the Florida Legislature must adequately fund substance abuse treatment.
Rhonda Harvey, Daytona Beach
Harvey is chief operating officer of Stewart Marchman Act Behavioral Healthcare.
Blind acceptance
It is both depressing and frightening that so many of my fellow Americans readily believe whatever comes out of the mouth of our president.
When a president of the United States is known to present falsehoods at the drop of a hat, and when so many of these falsehoods are so obviously there to serve and protect himself, how is it that he can have any backing left? Do his supporters, those who demonstrate a willingness to accept whatever they are told, lack the ability to think through what President Trump says, how untrue so much of it is? Or is it that they either benefit from his presence (congressional Republicans) or are too proud to admit that they made a mistake?
More troubling is that the president might actually believe what he says. That would make him irrational, even dangerous. It would encourage him to imagine he can justify any action simply by assuming himself correct in what he wishes to do. Or condemn even more of our cherished institutions to create a diversion from topics he would rather the people not think too much about.
Already he declares the news media and law enforcement agencies "corrupt" because they attack him and his destructive ego in ways he cannot accept.
Where does such blind acceptance lead us? If our leader in the White House says democracy itself is corrupt, will his supporters start waving signs advocating the Russian form of government Trump seems to prefer?
Noel J. Munson, Ponce Inlet