The first ever drug treatment prison is about to open in the United States. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced that the facility would be opened in Topeka, Kansas, and would be given approval for funding. The budget of around $6m will be used to convert a facility at Lansing Correctional Facility into a 240-bed minimum-security prison. This will be used to help house inmates who are in prison for alcohol or drug addiction issues. Other funds would be directed to the improvement of the Winfield Correctional Facility for geriatric inmates, too.

Speaking about the changes, Schmidt said: “Funding this groundbreaking drug-treatment facility is a bold step toward meaningful criminal justice reform that can make our communities safer by more effectively working to break the cycle of addiction that is at the root of so much criminal misbehavior,

“This is a smart new effort that is long overdue, and the broad support it has received is encouraging and to be commended.”

Schmidt also suggested he has advocated for such a facility for over a decade, with the first legislation for such a facility brought forward in 2007. However, the 2009 economic crash seen the plans cancelled and it took until 2020 for funding to be picked up in full for the program. Kansas Legislature will be behind the funding for this key project.

How would this facility help?

As noted by Schmidt, just 20% of inmates don’t have some form of substance abuse disorder on their history. This means that there should be a more focused push on justice reforms to focus on treatment and support as opposed to criminalization. He believes that the new prison will help to offer other forms of support for those who need treatment, helping to fill the void between community-based treatments and addicts who have been placed in with the general prison populace without justifiable reason.

Speaking further on the project, Schmidt added: “This specialty facility will add a missing piece to our overall system of corrections. It provides an option for judges and others in the criminal justice system between leaving offenders in the community to receive drug treatment or locking them in with the general population in a regular prison.”

He also noted that bespoke sentencing rules have been put in place to try and target specific inmates who need intense drug treatment while they have been on record for over a decade. However, he said they were used to be used due to lack of facilities – the creation of this facility, then, would help to fill in the void that has harmed the opportunity to help, not hinder, addicts who have made mistakes.

 

Citation

https://www.wibw.com/2021/04/13/kansas-to-open-first-drug-treatment-prison/