| Drug Counselors To Lose Jobs at Dallas County Jail |
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| by Tom McGregor | Tue, Jun 30, 2009, 04:44 PM |
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Sheriff Lupe Valdez’s decision to slash these programs had stunned numerous members of this law enforcement community, according to a confidential source with privileged information of the sheriff’s department. Currently, six licensed drug counselors work for the sheriff’s department, even though the Dallas County Jail houses about 6,000 individuals with a significant majority of them showing signs of substance abuse problems. The substance abuse programs had already faced severe understaffing difficulties, due to the size of the jail population and the length of the treatment program, which lasts for 90 days for regular inmates and 180 days for pregnant women. Those patients failing to abide by the rules of the program must be sent to a Texas state prison to serve the remainder of their sentences in accordance with the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) regulations. State requirements insist that each licensed counselor treats a maximum of 15 patients during a 90 or 180 day time period. At most, 190 drug-addicted inmates can be treated at one time, since 6 counselors are employed there. Many of the inmate patients had been mandated by a judge’s court order to attend drug counseling sessions, but 40 percent of the inmates voluntarily had chosen to enter the recovery program. As of Thursday, June 25, 2009, about one hundred inmates were placed on a waiting list to be treated for their substance-abuse problems, but it will be improbable for them to receive much-needed counseling on behalf of the sheriff’s department inside the jail. In an exclusive interview with the Dallas Blog, Raul Reyna, the temporary public information officer for the sheriff’s department, did admit that the drug treatment programs for inmates inside the jail will be eliminated after August 31, 2009 and five counselors must seek employment elsewhere. Yet, inmates can still attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He noted that drug treatment will be offered to persons living outside jail facilities after they are released. Sheriff Valdez’s decision to terminate the licensed substance abuse programs will not place her at risk of failing state jail standard inspections, yet again, since the state only requires county jails to sponsor A.A. and N.A. meetings to help drug-addicted inmates. In the meantime, Sheriff Lupe Valdez attended a White House reception hosted by President Barack Obama on Monday afternoon to celebrate Gay Pride Month and the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. To read about the Dallas County “Jail Chemical Dependency Treatment Program,” link here: To read about Sheriff Valdez celebrating Gay Pride Month, link here: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Comments (4)
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written by Richard , July 01, 2009 What a sad situation! Drug addicted pregnant women do not need to be on the streets... they have an addiction to drugs. They do not care that they are pregnant and harming their child and need to be in jail, not some outside facility where they can still get their "fix". Just think of the long term penalty we as taxpayers are going to have to pay for the drug addicted child she is carrying. My tax dollars at work... what a joke.
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written by Counselor , July 01, 2009 I just read an article by Kevin Krause that stated the counselors were cut to save the Intellegence unit. Well somebody is lying... if what Kevin Krause wrote is accurate then the counselors were lied to. We were told that the Chiefs were "shocked" at the revelation that the program was going to be cut .Yet according to the Krause article it was the chiefs who lobbied to do away with us to keep the intellegence unit. Therefore why would they be shocked? We were told probation was going to lease jail space in another county to do their treatment... nothing about the intellegence unit. Again, who is lying? Why are they lying? Your sources appear to be much more accurate then DMN..
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written by Austin , July 01, 2009 The sacrifices we make just to cling to the mantra of "lowest tax rate in Texas".
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written by Jonathan Green , July 03, 2009 What the hell does this comment have to do with the article: In the meantime, Sheriff Lupe Valdez attended a White House reception hosted by President Barack Obama on Monday afternoon to celebrate Gay Pride Month and the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Dam man, you really were working the article but you killed it the substance of the message with the aforementioned comment. So sad a journalist you are. Write comment
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Licensed drug counselors employed by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department remain shell-shocked after attending a mandatory meeting last Thursday at 2:45 p.m., when Jim Strickland informed them that all drug treatment programs inside the Dallas County Jail facilities would be eliminated after August 31, 2009.
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