Collectively,
the seventeen women had 260 years of drug addiction, an average of 15 years
each, plus long experience in crime, poverty and homelessness. All were on
probation. They had lied to, stolen from and cheated just about everyone around
them for years. But the jubilant crowd of three hundred was giving them a
standing ovation. On this night in 2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the seventeen women
stood proudly before the crowd in beautiful dresses, their hair and nails
elegant, to raucous cheers from family members and even police officers who
previously had arrested and scorned them. This was a graduation ceremony from
Women in Recovery, a diversion program from prison for nonviolent drug
offenders, and these women were now emerging to reenter society as productive
workers, taxpayers, voting citizens and moms. We had come to Tulsa not for a
grim tour of human devastation but to celebrate a triumph and explore a program
that has been astonishingly successful in helping shattered people rebuild
their lives and families.
?
Several
judges who had frequently encountered these women in their courtrooms were in
the front row, applauding wildly. The sheriff was beaming. The district
attorney told us how these women inspired him. Oklahoma's state attorney
general was a graduation speaker and called the women "heroes." That
drew smiles through tears from a group of women more used to being reviled as
"junkies" or "whores."
?
"I
thought we'd be planning a funeral instead," said one audience member
whose younger sister had started using meth at age twelve and was now
graduating at thirty-five.
?
Ken
Levit, who runs the George Kaiser Family Foundation and helped launch Women in
Recovery, told the audience that the program had saved Oklahoma more than $70
million in prison spending. "You and your stories have singlehandedly
transformed the trajectory of criminal justice policy in this state," he
told the women.
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Toward
the end of the ceremony, the audience gave the women graduates another standing
ovation. Then the graduates shouted, "Thank you, judges," and gave a
return standing ovation to the judges. The giddy scene offered a crucial lesson
that the rest of the country hasn't appreciated: there is hope even for people
with addictions whom society has given up on - if they get the right help.
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"It'd
be a horrible injustice for them to be in prison," Judge William J.
Musseman Jr. told us. "It'd be an injustice because the system didn't
recognize that treatment could provide a sufficient wedge in conduct, that
treatment could in fact change the trajectory of their lives."
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Women
in Recovery is just one modest-sized program in a single city, but it can be
replicated. It also underscores the point that with encouragement and the right
resources for many Americans left behind, there is hope. While we worked on
this book, colleagues so often made comments like, "That must be terribly
depressing." Yes, of course there have been grim moments, but we have also
seen uplift and inspiration. We fear that too many Americans believe that
addiction, homelessness and criminality are intractable, that nothing can be
done. Anybody attending the Women in Recovery graduation saw immense joy and
exhilaration, as well as a path to a better future. Those of us who care about
improving outcomes can't just wag our fingers and scold; we also must point out
successes that are possible if we pursue different policies that consistently
deliver opportunity.
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Flashes
of hope burst out in unexpected places, and they give us optimism about what
can be achieved. One of our most thrilling moments in recent years was watching
a homeless eight-year-old boy named Tanitoluwa Adewumi - he goes by Tani-Iug a
trophy almost as big as he was through his homeless shelter in Manhattan. Tani
had arrived in New York City only a bit more than a year earlier, after his
family fled Nigeria because of Boko Haram terror attacks on Christians like themselves.
A pastor helped them get settled in a homeless shelter, and Tani attended the
neighborhood elementary school, PS 116, where 10 percent of the pupils are
homeless. The school had a part-time chess teacher, Shawn Martinez, who was
passionate about the game and came every Thursday to teach Tani's second-grade
class how to play. Tani had ever encountered chess before and joined the school
halfway through the year, but he quickly caught up with his classmates.
Impressed by Tani's start, Coach Martinez encouraged the boy to sign up for the
school's chess club. The club required fees to cover the cost of attending
tournaments, but Tani's mom, Oluwatoyin Adewumi, emailed the head of the chess
program and explained that the family was living in a homeless shelter and
couldn't pay anything. The fees were waived, Tani showed up at chess club
meetings, and everybody could see that he had promise. Nobody had any idea yet
just how much promise.
?
**
?
Most
people who have an addiction need outside resources, though, especially as
adults. Diversion programs have become more popular as many Republicans and
Democrats alike have called for criminal justice reform and a greater response
to drug addiction. There is broad agreement that prison terms are expensive and
often accomplish little other than keeping inmates temporarily out of
circulation and breaking up families, while initiatives like Women in Recovery
have an excellent record of helping people transform their lives. The
three-year recidivism rate for graduates of Women in Recovery is just 4.5
percent, far below prison recidivism rates.
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Women
in Recovery is built around intensive psychosocial counseling, which we
discovered was the secret sauce of successful programs that are sprouting up
around the country. Women in Recovery became our window into how these programs
work. The women spend most of the day on-site and share housing, so they are
surrounded on a daily basis by therapists, counselors and many professionals
whose main objective is for the women to make it to the next phase and then
graduate. They build camaraderie and sometimes use group voting to pass
students to the next level.
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"They
can't pass the curriculum without saying, 'I'm responsible for this. I'm not a
victim,' " said Catherine Claybrook, clinical director at the program. We
remembered that Daniel McDowell at the Baltimore Station was also taught this
principle. That's the paradox: individual offenders need to embrace the
narrative of personal responsibility more fully, while American politics and
society should be more skeptical of it.
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Another
well-validated therapy employed by Women in Recovery teaches women how to make
decisions that keep them out of prison and guides them in developing the moral
compass they didn't acquire while growing up. The counselors help the women
resist temptation and explain why they are better off taking a dreary job at $8
an hour as opposed to accepting $150 for sex or $800 for transporting drugs.
The Women in Recovery program lasts about eighteen months, far longer than most
rehabilitation programs, and the length and intensity are crucial to its
success. If the women fail periodic drug tests, they go back to prison, and
that's a powerful incentive to make the do-over succeed.
?
The
women pay nothing. They are housed and fed, schooled and counseled. The cost
over eighteen months is $28,000 per person, contributed by the George Kaiser
Family Foundation. That may seem expensive, but it's far less than a prison
term would cost. Just as important, it includes children in the programing and
aims to break the intergenerational cycle of drugs and poverty so that those
kids are less likely to be arrested themselves in their teens or twenties.
?
Women
in Recovery is a model of how a program can be humane while at the same time
saving taxpayer money. It offers a proven toolbox to help people who are
struggling, if only we will use it. And it's replicable and scalable. Indeed,
in 2017 Oklahoma's Republican governor made Women in Recovery the centerpiece
of a "Pay for Success" program to allow it to serve more women.
Essentially, the expansion was paid for out of savings from money that would
otherwise have been spent incarcerating the women.
?
****
?
Rebecca
wasn't interested in the abstract policy, though. She just wanted a life raft.
The day of her preliminary hearing, Rebecca heard her name called at four a.m.
from her jail cell. She was taken down the hall to be searched, then shackled
and handcuffed. With other women, she was led to a small van that took them to
a holding cell in the courthouse. Rebecca closed her eyes.
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"Lord,
please give me this opportunity," she prayed. "I'm tired of doing the
same old thing over and over. Please open the door for me to go in this
program."
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When
Rebecca's case was summoned, she saw the district attorney step up. At the
previous hearing, he had terrified her: "They were pissed," she
recalled. "They were like, She has multiple felony accounts. With this
large number of counts, she's a menace to society." Then Rachel Delcour, a
liaison at Women in Recovery who works closely with officials from the local
courts and jails, interviewed Rebecca, who made a point of showing her
determination to work hard and turn her life around. This time when Rebecca's
case was heard, the DA announced, "We've gone over her records, and we've
decided that she is eligible for Women in Recovery and has been accepted."
?
Rebecca
had won the new start she had been dreaming of.
?
"I
think it's God," she said. "My mom was praying, I was praying.
?
Even
my daughter was going down front in church every Sunday."
?
Rebecca
devoted herself to Women in Recovery. She attended all classes, baring her soul
in therapy sessions. She took a deep and emotional look at her past - the
trauma, abuse, neglect and drugs. Therapists helped her assess her past
decision-making and advised how she could avoid bad decisions in the future.
?
"We
really studied the pathways that bring women into the criminal justice
system," said Mimi Tarrasch, an energetic, passionate social worker who
developed and runs Women in Recovery. "First thing on that pathway is
family dysfunction." Tarrasch said that when women have been traumatized,
abused, pimped by a mom or dad, then a rehab program for just one, two or three
months isn't going to be enough to overcome a long-term addiction. Yet most
rehab programs last only three months, if that long. In contrast, the default
prison sentence for a repeat felony conviction is measured in years. Shedding
an old way of life takes time.
?
Rebecca
learned how to set goals, and then how to meet them. It's a basic discipline
that these programs - like the military - inculcate in their people. She and
her classmates received coaching on decision-making and taking responsibility,
budgeting and conflict resolution, nutrition, relapse prevention, resume
writing, plus help getting GEDs, housing and jobs.
?
After
Rebecca completed the program, she searched for employment through Women in
Recovery's network of business partners who are willing to hire the program's
graduates. Rebecca took a job at an air-conditioning company, handling billing
and customer service, and on the side she enrolled in classes to learn the
technical side of heating, ventilation and cooling. If customers become annoyed
with her, she applies lessons about calming and anger management from Women in
Recovery. Anyone looking at Rebecca's rap sheet might have come to the
conclusion she was a hopeless recidivist, while anyone now working with her on
an air-conditioning issue would encounter a happy, well-adjusted employee and
solid citizen.
?
For
the first time, Rebecca, at the age of thirty-seven, is not on any government
assistance, but she does struggle to pay the bills, including mortgage and
student loan payments as well as installments on $20,000 in debt built up in
the local courts. It is not lost on Rebecca that some of her new work
colleagues have saved for the past twenty years in the company's 40r(k) and
earned profit sharing, while she is just getting started. "Because I chose
to go a different way," she said, "I'm just now starting in the last
four years to rebuild my life and to prepare for the future. It's really
challenging."
?
***
?
One
of the impediments to scaling up programs like Women in Recovery is that this
intensive treatment is expensive, at least compared to traditional one-month
programs, which are much less effective. Another impediment is the perception
that drug treatment is a Sisyphean task that usually fails, and that even after
enormous investments of time and money, most people will relapse. Yes, relapses
are often part of recovery. But remember that astonishing recidivism rate for
Women in Recovery: only 4.5 percent of those completing the program reoffend
within three years. That's a stunning success and a sign of what is possible.
It's true that this is partly because of self-selection and because the threat
of prison hangs over anyone who fails a urine test, and not every program would
be able to replicate it. But it underscores that with intensive long-term
programs we could turn around the lives of countless people struggling with
addiction, along with the lives of their children, and that far too many aren't
getting the help that could be transformative.
?
Moreover,
while the expense is real, the corollary of success is that it brings huge cost
savings. Treatment is expensive, but so are crime, incarceration and foster
care. One study found that if offenders in state prisons received needed drug
treatment, the country would enjoy $36 billion in savings and benefits.
?
If
quality treatment programs can be significantly expanded and replicated in many
more cities and counties, these initiatives offer a way for America to move
away from mass incarceration, while helping drug offenders get treatment,
counseling and jobs. Judge Musseman told us that the majority of his cases were
drug related. And when women with children are jailed, the kids' lives are
often ruined, too, sending them on a terrible life journey. "We're all
about the two-generation model," said Tarrasch.
?
While
Rebecca Hale was lucky to be in Tulsa to take advantage of Women in Recovery,
vast numbers of drug users remain locked in cells because there is no such
program available in their areas. We need Women in Recovery, and Men in
Recovery, programs all across the country, creating hope where devastation has
prevailed. But let's also acknowledge that charitable local solutions are not
enough. More important, we need scalable, institutional macro-solutions - with
initiatives like job training and job placement - to get earnings growing again.
?
The
impact of Women in Recovery's two-generation model can be seen in Rebecca's
children. Chloe, seventeen, with a round face, blue-gray eyes and brown hair,
is a junior in high school, and while she still has the same homework and
boyfriend troubles as her girlfriends, she has issues that most teenage girls
don't have. Not only is her mom on probation, but the man she calls Dad is in
prison three hours away. He is serving a five-year sentence for drugs and for
adult kidnapping with a baseball bat, she told us rather matter-of-factly. As
for her real father, she doesn't have contact with him now.
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"We
talked on the phone," Chloe said. "And then apparently he got drunk
and said that I wasn't his daughter and that my mom was a whore, and that he
wants nothing to do with me and that I should just go and kill myself."
?
The
kids have undergone their own counseling, for their traumas make them
vulnerable to substance abuse and health problems later in life. Once, when
Chloe and Nate were home, an angry boyfriend started beating their mom. The
boyfriend cut Rebecca's throat and face badly. Another time, he took a hammer
and shattered her arm and hand and threatened to smash her head. Whenever
violence flared, Chloe and Nate would rush to their bedroom, crawl out the
window, run down the street to their grandmother's house and summon help.
?
"I
already knew he was a bad guy," said Chloe. "He told me that he would
take my mom from us if I said anything."
?
Asked
about drugs, Chloe is firm. "Not for me," she said, and she has stuck
with this so far. When her best friend of six years started using drugs at age
fourteen, Chloe severed the tie. "She already has a kid," she told
us.
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Chloe
works as a cashier at a Carl's Jr. hamburger restaurant, honing her
customer-service skills with people angry about the food for one reason or
another. She has had customers throw drinks at her, spit on her, curse her, but
she tries to remain patient. "You have to try and calm them down,"
she said. "Be like, We'll get it out as fast as we possibly can. We're
doing the best we can."
?
Chloe
says she wasn't bullied or stigmatized at school about her parents being in
prison, partly because she and Nate didn't tell people. "We'd make stuff
up," she said. "Like, I live with Grandma because Mom is out of
state. I said we had a perfect life." Chloe also wants to focus on
improving her grades. She had a 3.89 GPA in ninth grade, but it slipped when
she was breaking up with her boyfriend. Both she and Nate are enrolled in
Oklahoma's Promise, a state program that allows them to attend state college
with free tuition as long as they keep their grade point average above 2.5.
Chloe wants to volunteer at the local animal shelter, and for her birthday she
got a pet potbellied pig named Dexter that stayed in her bedroom until she
realized how much work a pig is. Dexter was then dispatched to her cousin's
farm.
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For
a career, Chloe aspires to do something with art. And although she quips that
lunch is her favorite class, she is deeply engaged in high school. She is
joining the school's theater club and told us that she had recently read The
Secret Life of Bees, and also a play that she described as "the classic
with those characters, Brutus and Caesar."
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"Et
tu, Brute?" piped up Nate, an avid reader.
?
A
sturdy high-school sophomore and football player, Nate is a playful jokester,
poking and tickling his sister frequently. One vestige of childhood trauma may
be his fear of loud noises. When he was young and arguments and beatings were
exploding around the home, Chloe would run to the bedroom and cover Nate's ears
with her hands or a pillow and sing him to sleep.
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Nate
is particularly enthusiastic about school, both academics and activities. He
has tried multiple sports - tennis, soccer, track, wrestling and football - and
he is also committed to doing well in school to get into a good college. He
says he plans to apply to Stanford University or Yale University, and is also
thinking about the navy or air force. After living for years on a tightrope,
Nate and Chloe seem safer and happier now. Nate acknowledges that he's
"spoiled" by his mom and his sister. And Chloe said, "I like my
life now; it's really good."
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So
a story that began with drugs, sexual abuse and homelessness has been
transformed into a tale of resilience and the coming together of a family - because
Rebecca happened to be a woman in Tulsa, where Women in Recovery offers this
lifesaving intervention. Almost anywhere else, Rebecca acknowledges, she would
be in prison and the family would be a mess, but she focuses on the triumph of
what has happened here. "We still struggle," she said. "But the
cycle stops with us. It's not going past me."
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Nate
agrees. "I'm very confident we will break it," he said. His sister
nodded and added, "We'll break it, keep going on with life like nothing
happened!"
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Nicholas Kristoff "Tightrope:
Americans Reaching for Hope" (2020)
