Revolving door of despair lands more women behind bars
ON OPPOSITE sides of the county jail, a mother and her son chat about school, girls, birthday gifts – and their future together. They aren’t allowed to see each other faceto-face, so the inmate and the fifth-grader connect by video.
“Hi, mommy,” 10-year-old Robby says to Krystle Sweat, clutching a phone in the visiting room as he looks at his mother on a screen, sitting in her cell.
Robby hasn’t hugged or even touched her since Christmas Day 2015, just before Sweat wound up back behind bars. He says that on the day his mom is released, he wants to show her how he can ride no-hands on his bike.
Sweat laughs, but knows their reunion must wait. For years now, she has cycled in and out of jail, been arrested more than two dozen times for robbery, driving violations and other crimes – almost all related to her drug addiction. She’s tried to quit, but nothing has worked. Now she says she’s ready to make the break when she’s paroled again, possibly this summer.
“I’m almost 33,” she says. “I don’t want to continue living like this. I want to be someone my family can count on.”
This lone county jail in a remote corner of Appalachia offers an agonising glimpse into how the tidal wave of opioids and methamphetamines has ravaged the US.
Here and in countless other places, addiction is driving skyrocketing rates of incarcerated women, tearing apart families while squeezing communities that lack money, treatment programmes and permanent solutions to close the revolving door.
More than a decade ago, there were rarely more than 10 women in the Campbell County Jail. Now the population is routinely around 60. Most who end up here have followed a similar path to Sweat: they’re arrested on a drug-related charge and confined to a cell 23 hours a day. Many of their bunkmates also are addicts. They receive no counselling. Then weeks, months or years later, they’re released into the same community where friends – and in some cases, family – are using drugs. Soon they are again, too. And the cycle begins anew.
Sarai Keelean has been jailed about eight times in six years. One Christmas, her mother joined her. Like Keelean, she is addicted.
Keelean is back in for violating probation for possessing meth; she’d been using the drug and also selling it to buy opioids. Locked up now for almost three years, she longs for freedom but is terrified, too. “You’re afraid that you’re going to mess up,” she says.
Blanche Ball, who has used, cooked or sold meth for 15 of her 30 years, has been in jail several times, mostly for short periods until now. She thinks about her four children constantly. “Once you’re like this for so long, you don’t know another way to be.”
Campbell County mayor EL Morton blames the pharmaceutical industry and doctors, and two lawsuits against opioid makers are pending on behalf of the county and its 40000 residents. Pills, though, aren’t the only problem. With 1 295km² of mountains, thick woods, winding back roads and deep hollows, this county on the Kentucky border has been a prime spot, too, for meth. While homegrown labs are on the wane, a powerful strain of the drug from Mexico has found its way here.
Nowadays, as much as 90% of the crime in a five-county district that includes Campbell is connected to drugs, the local prosecutor says. Women are often the culprits, and communities across the nation are seeing similar patterns. Women in jail are the fastest-growing correctional population in America. Opioid abuse has exacerbated the problem.
Rural America lacks resources and readily accessible treatment to help curb the problem, says Jessica Hulsey Nickel, president of the Addiction Policy Forum, a patient advocacy group.
“If someone in recovery has to drive several hours to visit a specialist or receive regular doses of methadone, it’s going to make staying on that path nearly impossible,” she says.