More users every day
By Corey Taule • ctaule@postregister.com
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• In Idaho, the female prison population is growing faster than the male population. The biggest reason is drug use — mainly meth.
• The Idaho Department of Correction estimates that nearly 80 percent of its 784 female prisoners need intensive substance abuse treatment.
• As of last month, 311 women were incarcerated at the Pocatello women’s prison, which has the capacity for 279. Of the 311, 63 were receiving intensive substance abuse treatment.
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POCATELLO — Eleven women sit in a circle inside the Pocatello women’s prison. This is a relapse-prevention class. These women are isolated from the rest of the prison population. They are here to get better because most will soon be released.
Most of them are here because of a meth addiction.
Christina Knight of Nampa had a good job with Micron before she started using meth. Then her husband left, and she lost her job. Her downward spiral culminated in a drug-related prison sentence. Meth changed Knight from a tax-paying citizen to an inmate occupying a $42-a-day bed in prison.
Michelle Guzman of Ontario, Ore., started using meth at 21. She got busted and assigned to drug court. It didn’t work. She showed up high. Rock bottom hit when her boyfriend died in a car wreck.
“I didn’t grieve for him,” Guzman said. “I stayed in my addiction.”
Valerie Webb of Coeur d’Alene started using meth at 19. At 24, she was using daily. Then she got clean for four years and earned a master’s degree in social work. While working in a hospital, Webb was assaulted by a patient. Her doctor prescribed painkillers, and that led her to forgery, grand theft and burglary.
“That addiction will make you a monster,” she said.
Webb will be getting out soon. She plans to return home and “find someone who will hire a felon with four convictions.”
Meth’s appeal to women follows some similar patterns.
Longtime addict Teresa Charboneau of Idaho Falls began using 20-plus years ago because the drug gave her energy to work several jobs and care for her children.
“I thought it was great,” she said. “I kept going and going and going.”
Inmate Cindy Longhurst of Boise felt the same pull.
“It gave me everything I needed,” she said. “It gave me self-esteem. It gave me courage. It gave me energy. I felt like I ruled the world.”
Charboneau has seen many women begin using because it helps them lose weight. That’s one reason inmate Melanie Shaw of Twin Falls got hooked.
Cristina Mallow, a recovering addict who attends drug court in Idaho Falls, said her aunt introduced her to the drug. Meth made her feel as though she was made of steel.
“It was about the rush,” she said.
For many of the women in the prison, however, meth appealed to them for very personal reasons. In fact, when each of the women in the circle finished telling their stories, drug and alcohol rehabilitation specialist Noelle Ballard noticed a definite trend: Many of these women began using to gain acceptance with boyfriends or husbands.
Dionne Abeyla of Idaho Falls said her husband introduced her to meth.
“I wanted to fit in with him and his friends,” she said.
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Meth spares nobody. The rich get addicted. So do the poor. College-educated and uneducated stick the same kinds of needles in the same veins. This noxious mixture of chemicals coats the lungs of both the powerful and powerless. Men and women. Young and old. Every race. Every religion.
Meth does not discriminate.
“It takes your soul,” Charboneau said. “The most important thing in the world is to get the dope. It’s dirty.”
But although nobody is immune, meth has become especially appealing to women.
In Idaho, the female prison population is growing faster than the male population.
The overcrowding combined with a shortage of treatment forces the prison to warehouse prisoners instead of helping them get better, Warden Brian Underwood said.
The department estimates 98 percent of the state’s inmates will eventually be released.
“You end up just filling beds,” Underwood said. “We’re bed-driven, not program-driven.”
And that leads to the vicious circle 7th District Judge Brent Moss deals with every day.
Someone gets in trouble and either serves time or goes on probation. They are addicted to meth, and that means they’ll likely violate their parole at some point. Parole and probation officers, Moss said, have high caseloads and so by the time they can deal with the problem, there’s little option but to send the offender back to prison.
And the odds of getting the intensive treatment needed there are not good.
“Putting drug users in prison, all you do is postpone the inevitable,” Moss said. “The circle goes around and around and around.”
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For the women who get hooked, the stories invariably end the same way.
“I sacrificed my family,” said inmate Franny McIntyre of Boise. “I lost my conscience. It demoralized me.”
Shaw lost her teeth and now wears dentures. Stephanie Johnson of Nampa lost custody of her three children.
And that’s one thing all these women can agree on: Although the high can be wonderful, getting off the drug can be devastating.
Mallow was sick for four days when she stopped using. She still has cravings and said she probably wouldn’t make it if not for the structure provided by drug court and a volunteer organization, A Refuge Ministries, where she has lived for several months.
“When you crash, you crash,” Charboneau said. “All you want to do is sleep. It drains you of everything.”
Government reporter Corey Taule can be reached at 542-6754.
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