Women locked up longer for same crimes
Jessica Carter was in bed with her boyfriend, still high on methamphetamine and painkillers, when members of a Williamson County drug task force broke down the door with guns drawn.
Carter, her boyfriend and boyfriend’s brother were each charged with the same 11 drugrelated felony offenses.
Ten months later, the two men were out of jail working on meeting the terms of their probation.
Carter was still behind bars. One unexpected effect of Tennessee’s opioid epidemic is that women going through Tennessee’s drug courts spend more time in jail than men arrested for the same crimes.
Taxpayers foot the bill for those longer jail stays.
In some cases, women spend six or more months longer in jail than men, waiting for a spot in minimum security residential treatment facilities where addicts convicted of nonviolent felonies are often sent by drug court judges as a condition of probation.
The inequity in jail stays is a result of an opioid crisis ensnaring far more women than drug court judges have seen in the past.
“The demographics have just flipped on me,” said Judge Seth Norman, presiding judge of Davidson County Drug Court. “Five years ago we were never full on the female side. Now the waiting list for women is at least six months. If I opened a 100-bed facility for women tomorrow morning, it would be filled by tomorrow night.”
Norman and other drug court judges across the state have been trying for two years to get funding from the Legislature to open other facilities.
So far, they haven’t succeeded.
That’s left women idling in jail like Carter, who started smoking marijuana then doing heroin and pain pills at a young age after her father was convicted of molesting her.
“I feel a little forgotten,” Carter said.
“Jail is just wasted time. And the longer I am here, the longer it’s going to take me to finally finish probation and finish the program and get back to trying to live a productive life.”
MORE WOMEN ADDICTS, FEWER OPTIONS
In a typical day in the women’s program at the west Nashville minimum security facility known as “DC4,” a crew of about a dozen women wearing shorts and T-shirts heads to a shed to fire up lawnmowers and hedgers to take to the baseball field.
The women work every day, part of a regimented schedule that includes intensive daily group and individual counseling.
On one scorching Tuesday morning, six women ducked into the shade of a baseball dugout to take a water break and talk about how they got there.
Jennifer Swanson, 36, spent six months in the Cumberland County Jail after being arrested on drug charges before being transferred to DC4.
Carey Ann Shelton, 36, was arrested for forging painkiller prescriptions, then waited 15 months behind bars after being approved for the residential program.
The wait for Sandra Millaway, 39, was nine months in the Bradley County jail.
“I don’t mind the time here, because I need to learn how to take care of myself,” said Millaway, who said she has been addicted to methamphetamine and opiates since she was 14.
“But with all that time in jail it means I’m away from my kids that much longer. They really need Mama.”
Millaway’s three children, ages 5, 12 and 14, are living with her mother.
Norman, the Davidson County judge, said the men who go through his court program typically wait no more than three or four months to arrive at the facility.
LONGER JAIL TIME, HIGHER COSTS
Incarceration in Tennessee costs approximately $76 per day, compared to around $56 a day to house, feed and treat people in minimumsecurity alternative programs, Norman said.
Drug courts were set up as an alternative to jail for people arrested for nonviolent felonies related to addiction — such as drug possession or robbery to support a drug habit.
The system aims to provide a structured program with rewards and punishments designed to enforce sobriety and keep people from returning to crime and addiction.
Drug court judges may reduce long criminal sentences to probation with conditions. Judges can require people to attend 12-step meetings and counseling, undergo random drug screens and perform community service.
But for people with entrenched addictions, judges often require residential treatment as a probation condition.
In East and Middle Tennessee, the two main options are DC4, with space for 24 women and 60 men, and a 70-bed facility for men in Morgan County. Once admitted, men and women typically spend between 18 and 24 months at the facilities.
Within months of arriving, residents are expected to find outside work and pay part of the costs of their stay.
Not all the time spent in jail waiting for a treatment spot is a bad thing, said Judge James Martin, who presides over the drug court in Williamson County.
Martin ensures that men and women in his drug court are given jail homework while they wait.
They’re asked to write an autobiography, complete a workbook and attend injail recovery programs while they detoxify from years of drug abuse. He does not keep track of wait times for women versus men.
“If you’ve got a person who is a long-term meth user it takes quite a while to get it out of their system,” he said.
But Martin has joined other Tennessee judges who are asking the Legislature to pay for a womenonly treatment facility in Middle Tennessee and one for men and women in West Tennessee.
The alternatives to prison for hard-core addicts pay off, he said.
“What you see is when we’ve had participants plead in and go to Morgan County or DC4, they come out absolutely different human beings,” he said.