Jail Methadone Plan Undergoes Audit

Heroin Treatment Continues for Now

A week after announcing a plan to stop giving methadone to inmates at the county jail, the chief decided he needed more “measurables.”

So officials from the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center have launched an audit into what consequences could come from not offering the synthetic opioid to heroin-addicted inmates. MDC Chief Ramon Rustin said he would sit down with lawyers and doctors in the coming weeks to determine the efficacy of the program and if there are any legal or medical risks associated with the shift.

Until the audit is completed, methadone program inmates will continue to receive their full dosages.

“We came up with a plan to take a look at the whole proposal, what it was designed to accomplish,” Rustin said Tuesday. “Does it reduce recidivism? How did it become a jail program all of a sudden?”

Rustin said he will consider a “step-down” methadone program — where inmates are given slightly smaller amounts of the drug until they’re completely clean — instead of a “maintenance” program, which provides inmates with the same dosage indefinitely.

The audit will also examine whether some inmates, specifically pregnant ones, could be sent elsewhere for treatment rather than to jail, Rustin said.

The investigation is running on borrowed time, however, as MDC’s contract with Recovery Services, the jail’s methadone provider since 2010, ends Dec. 31. Rustin said the purchasing department is trying to figure out a way to continue providing the drug, should that be deemed necessary, without offering a formal contract.

Providing methadone, even temporarily, after the end of the year is just one of the details that still needs to be hammered out as part of the audit, Rustin said.

“It does give us some time to work out the details on some of that,” he said.

MDC’s medical team created a protocol for the new policy, which was supposed to be implemented Nov. 29, outlining a strategy for incorporating methadone program inmates into the general program for those coming off of drugs or alcohol.

The protocol, provided to the Journal, said 25 inmates a week would be admitted into the general detox population. The protocol did not outline a method to determine which of the 87 methadone program inmates now at MDC would be admitted first or how much methadone would be given to those on the waiting list.

Also, the protocol directed that pregnant methadone program inmates not be accepted to MDC but instead be sent to an alcohol and substance abuse program at the University of New Mexico Hospital.

However, Rustin said, diverting those women from MDC would first require the court’s permission.