News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
White County Jail now partnering with mental health specialists to reduce the percentage of inmates who return after release.
Project Director Captain Will Randolph said the White County Re-Entry and Recovery program creates a trauma informed environment. He said this means the licenses therapists and caseworkers will work with inmates to assess and address mental health and substance abuse issues.
“If people can make mistakes, end up in a correctional facility and take care of that mistake and move forward and be better when they come out. That’s what we want to do. We want to leave this county and the individuals that we encounter better than when we found them,” Randolph said.
Randolph said the evidence based program takes into account that substance abuse is prevalent and that abuse has connections to previous trauma.
Randolph said White County’s recidivism rate was approximately 34 percent last year. He said that rate is more than 10 percent less than the national average but the staff is committed to reducing the percentage of inmates who return to the jail.
“If we can lower those averages, then we will be doing our part,” Randolph said. “Especially for our small community here.”
Randolph said there are studies out that show about 86% of incarcerated individuals have some sort of substance use issue. He said many of those issues come from a previous trauma.
“This is at the forefront of what the correctional environment is moving towards,” Randolph said. “We move through different philosophies of corrections, and have ever since the correctional idea has been implemented in our country. And this is our newest attempt to see what works best. Because at the end of the day, that’s our job to reduce recidivism.”
