Slowly, but surely, the Sheridan Correctional Center in Illinois is filling up.  Since it reopened in January, about 300 offenders have settled in there.  Each one has a drug addiction.  And, each one committed a crime because of it.

Groups of about 50 offenders will continue to arrive at Sheridan each week until the medium-security facility reaches its maximum capacity of 1,300 inmates.  When it does, Sheridan will become one of the country's largest state-run prisons dedicated entirely to drug treatment.

"[Governor Rod Blagojevich] has a long record of focusing on crime issues," said Deanne Benos, Assistant Director of Corrections in Illinois.  "One of the issues that concerns him most is the level of recidivism."

At 54 percent, the state's recidivism rate is the highest it has ever been, a cause for alarm for both Blagojevich and the DOC.

"More than one in two of inmates released from prison today will be back in prison within three years at this rate," Benos said.  "From a public safety perspective, that's abominable.  From a budget perspective, that's just not smart."

Recognizing the severity of the issue, the state began to take a hard look at the types of offenses that were repeatedly landing people in its prisons.  Both property and drug offenders had some of the highest individual recidivism rates, according to Benos.

"We see property offense and drug offense as closely related," Benos said.  "From what we understand, a significant percentage of property offenders commit their offenses because of a drug addiction or drug involvement," she added.  "We believe drugs to be the leading cause of crime in our state."

While drugs were identified as the problem, Sheridan, which was shut down by budget cuts in 2002, emerged as the solution.

"We believe you need tough [law] enforcement, but you also need smart prevention," Benos said.  "Sheridan represents an opportunity for us to aggressively seek a balanced solution to reducing drug-related crime in our state."

Building a Community to Foster Change

As a requirement, every offender sentenced to Sheridan must have a drug dependency, which is necessary to build a therapeutic community--where every person is striving towards the same goal: to beat an addiction.

"The entire facility is dedicated to chemical dependency treatment," said Warden Mike Rothwell.  Because most states designate only certain portions of prisons to drug treatment, not whole facilities, Sheridan is unique, he said.

And, what's even more unusual for a correctional center is that every employee at Sheridan is an involved member of the therapeutic community there.

"All staff at the facility, from food service personnel to security to treatment staff, are cross-trained as to how to deal with this population.  They're all part of this therapeutic community," Benos said.  "Everyone has to be on the same page and partnering towards the same goal for this to work."

According to Rothwell, Sheridan's staff, which will soon include over 500 employees, is on-board with the mission of rehabilitating drug-addicted offenders to steer them away from recidivating.

"Staff here are trained.  [They] support the mission," Rothwell said.  "Staff here are genuinely interested in working with the offenders to effect change."

For offenders at Sheridan, the first step towards changing their lives involves taking responsibility for their actions.

"It's a multi-faceted program that teaches them accountability," said Benos.  "[The offenders] are taught how to be responsible citizens and [are] given every possible opportunity to develop skills to make an honest living when they're released."

A Three-Prong Approach

While all offenders at Sheridan learn how to make better decisions that will, hopefully, keep them from reoffending, they are doing so in three separate groups, which have been established based on the length of their sentence.

"We decided to take on the challenge of addressing three different sets of populations," Benos said, noting that offenders must have between six and 24 months left to serve on their sentences in order to be admitted to Sheridan.

Offenders with six to eight months to serve are placed in one therapeutic community, while those with nine to 12 months to serve are place in another.  Inmates who remain at Sheridan beyond a year, are placed in a continuity of care therapeutic community, which prepares them for release by giving them vocational training.

"It is sort of unique that a facility would have a three-pronged approach," said Rothwell. 

Acording to Benos, dividing the offenders into groups will enable providers at Sheridan to specialize the offenders' treatment.  For example, those individuals who will be at Sheridan for less than a year will be required to spend some time at a residential treatment center in the community after release.  And, for offenders who spend more than a year there, the focus of the treatment will shift heavily to after-care.

Chip Coldren, President of the John Howard Association, a prison reform organization, believes that placing offenders into these different groups is an asset of the program. 

"There are different modalities within Sheridan," said Coldren, who was one of the many experts who served on Sheridan Center's planning team.  "It's not one-size-fits-all [treatment]."

With over a thousand inmates at Sheridan, customized treatment seems tough to provide, but Benos maintains that, by treating them in small groups, the challenge can be met.

"That's why we have very individualized, smaller counseling sessions," Benos said.  "They're going to have their own small groups that they're working with regularly," she added.  "We've gone to great lengths to provide individual attention to these people."

Keeping Treatment Going in the Community

That attention and support will continue for those offenders in the community, too.

"There's a strong community transition and community treatment component to this," said Coldren.

Before inmates are released from Sheridan, the services they need in the community are identified and they are connected to them.

"Every offender will have an [after]care plan they participate in," Rothwell said.  "[And], all offenders will have a complete discharge summary that [details] what they accomplished and what treatment they participated in while they were in the facility."

Sheridan as a National Model

With the help of a strong reentry plan, the DOC and the governor hope that offenders released from Sheridan will stay clean and crime-free.  But, they also have another goal; in addition to lowering the state's recidivism rate, they hope that the Sheridan center will become a national model for other dedicated drug prisons.

"In order for this to be a national model, we have to earn it," said Benos.  "[And], we are going to work day and night to earn it."

Convincing other correctional systems that therapeutic communities are the way to go might be tough, Coldren said, especially since they require all employees, including security staff, to take on a treatment provider role, too.

"Usually, there's much more of a wall between [treatment and custody people]," Coldren said.   "[Creating a facility like Sheridan] requires a substantial change in the orientation of the correctional administration to support this and implement it strongly."

While Illinois has made that leap towards therapeutic communities to treat its drug offenders, it remains to be seen if other states will follow and create large, dedicated drug prisons of their own.

"That is a hard culture change to pull off in any correctional administration," Coldren said.  "People will probably wait to see what happens with Sheridan."

Resources:

To contact the Illinois DOC, call (217) 522-2666

To contact the Sheridan Correctional Center, call (815) 496-2181

To learn more about the John Howard Association, go to www.johnhowardassociation.org