For women addicts, jail can replace treatment

The Boston Globe

Tina Wambolt knew she needed help battling her alcoholism. What she didn't need were strip searches and a cell in the Framingham women's prison.

Wambolt, 33, of Ashby, fell through a crack in the Massachusetts legal system, into a gap that routinely sends women with serious alcohol or substance abuse problems to the women's state prison when no beds are available in treatment facilities.

"They treat you awful, you feel physically violated, and it's just hell. I shouldn't have had to do that," Wambolt said. "I'm not a criminal."

Wambolt's ordeal last September was triggered by a Massachusetts law known as "Section 35," a civil statute under which a person can be involuntarily committed for up to 30 days if a judge rules that he or she poses a threat to himself, herself, or others.

Men who are civilly committed in Massachusetts are sent to a treatment facility on the grounds of MCI-Bridgewater that is large enough to house 250 men, and has not resulted in space issues.

However, a chronic shortage of beds for women in the same circumstances means that some civilly committed women are sent to MCI-Framingham, the state's only women's prison.

During 2007, 14 women, including Wambolt, spent time behind bars during their civil commitments for no reason other than lack of space at a treatment center in New Bedford, the only center in Massachusetts dedicated to Section 35 civil commitments for women. Twenty-seven other civilly committed women were sent to MCI-Framingham last year for refusing treatment or other noncompliant behavior, according to the state Department of Public Health.

During the past five years, according to the state Department of Correction, more than 500 civilly committed women spent a few nights to a few weeks at the prison for reasons ranging from a shortage of treatment beds to behavioral issues. A breakdown was not available to determine how many were sent to the prison solely for lack of space.

Jim Kenney, program director at the New Bedford center, said he works closely with court clinicians, who advise judges on civil commitments, and does what he can through training and working with court officials to keep women from spending time in prison rather than at his facility, a gleaming, recently renovated section of an old mill complex off Interstate 195. Before the New Bedford center opened, women committed under Section 35 were sent to smaller facilities even more pressed for space. He pointed to figures showing that since the 84-bed center's opening in 2006, the number of civilly committed women sent to the prison has fallen sharply. From fiscal year 2006 to 2007, that number dropped by more than two-thirds.

But, as Wambolt's mother, Christina DaCruz, put it, "One is too many."

Watching a child's downfall

DaCruz began the civil commitment process when she went to Wambolt's home after her daughter was arrested for drunken driving. When DaCruz arrived, she said, the house reeked and her daughter had been drinking.

"She looked like someone walking in quicksand," DaCruz said. "This is my baby, my beautiful baby. To have seen her go so far down, I'm like, `I can't stand this."'

DaCruz said she had previously persuaded Wambolt to go to a 72-hour hospital detox, but her daughter had started drinking the day she was released. After Wambolt threatened suicide, DaCruz filed a civil commitment petition.

At Wambolt's hearing on Sept. 4 last year, the court clinician who examined her - Wambolt did not recall his name, and civil commitment records are sealed - told DaCruz that her daughter was committable, but would have to stay overnight at MCI-Framingham because there were no beds available in New Bedford.

DaCruz said the clinician told her not to worry, because her daughter would be moved the next day and kept away from the general population of convicts. With those reassurances, DaCruz went ahead with the commitment.

Wambolt recalls little of the hearing. "I remember being in court, but it was kind of a blur," she said. "I was kind of in shock."

Wambolt's husband, Brian, said he called MCI-Framingham every day from Sept. 5, the day after her hearing, until Sept. 8. That day, he said, a prison guard told him that his wife had been moved into the prison's general population.

Diane Wiffin, the state Department of Correction's director of public affairs, wrote in an e-mail that Wambolt was housed and treated in accordance with state law. In the same e-mail, prison Superintendent Lynn Bissonnette wrote that standard practice for women committed under Section 35 is to have them medically detoxed until cleared by a physician. Then they are housed in an area of the prison for women awaiting trial - not among convicted criminals - in a cell alone, or with another woman who has been civilly committed.

That made little difference to Wambolt. "It's like you see on TV. It's prison," she said.

Wambolt is 5 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs 110 pounds, with a pixie haircut and a nose piercing, and her mother and her husband worried for her safety. Wambolt said her cell was next to a woman accused of killing her baby. She added that two other women who were sent to MCI-Framingham for civil commitments spent time in solitary confinement.

"I was threatened to be beaten up," Wambolt recalled. "I was tired and you're stuck there and you swear you just become one of them."

MCI-Framingham's substance abuse program is available only to convicted criminals, so Wambolt and other women waiting to go to treatment centers found themselves in limbo. They received medicine to help them detox, but were ineligible for counseling or other addiction treatments that are available at the New Bedford center. Bissonnette wrote in the e-mail that civilly committed women are ineligible for the prison's treatment program so the prison can "transition them to a community setting as soon as possible."

Five days after the commitment hearing, DaCruz visited her daughter in prison.

"Of course I start crying," DaCruz said. "You have to fill out a paper about why you're there and the guard at the window read the paper and said, `You know, it happens all the time. People send their family in for committals and they just get lost."'

Wambolt finally reached the New Bedford treatment center on Sept. 10 - six days after her commitment hearing. DaCruz, who said she believes the transfer happened because of her frantic phone calls, said she was told by an official with the state Department of Public Health, which oversees the New Bedford center, that the center had not been aware of her daughter's existence until the phone calls.

Once she arrived at the New Bedford center, Wambolt said, she saw eight empty beds. Wambolt added that she had to spend more time in intensive detox because of the drugs given to her for medical detox at the prison.

Wambolt is not alone. A woman identified in state Department of Public Health documents as Debra P. entered MCI-Framingham as a civil commitment from the Cambridge District Court on July 18 last year. According to Department of Public Health records, she was sent to prison because there were no open beds in New Bedford. She spent 15 days at MCI-Framingham before being transferred to the center.

Trina P. did not even see the New Bedford facility. When she was committed on Sept. 27 last year, she, too, was sent to MCI-Framingham because of a lack of bed space. Department of Public Health records show she was released from the prison nearly a month later, on Oct. 24, when her commitment expired, having received none of the benefits offered at the New Bedford center.

Legislators hoping to stop civilly committed women from spending time in prison have fought a fruitless battle. Since at least 1989, Massachusetts lawmakers have proposed eliminating MCI-Framingham as a civil commitment option, which would require that women like Wambolt who face no criminal charges are sent to a treatment center. Other bills have sought to extend the time women spend in a treatment center under Section 35. But each year, these bills have failed to win passage and women like Wambolt end up behind bars.

"They haven't committed a crime," said Representative Kay Khan, a Newton Democrat who is the House sponsor of the bill. "Why should they be in a prison?"

Khan, who worked as a clinical psychiatric nurse specialist, said she hopes that the Patrick administration will support the bill and that the departments of Correction and Public Health will provide funding for added beds.

"People need to understand that these people come back out into our community and it really is a public safety issue," she said.

A kinder treatment

Wambolt said she was treated successfully at New Bedford. She said that other than her intensive detox, "It was heaven."

"Nobody strip-searched me, nobody's out there screaming at you, nobody's going to beat you up," she said. "Nobody's mean to you. They really do try to help."

At the center, intensive detox can last from three to seven days. The women sleep in barracks-style rooms with three other patients. There is no furniture except for four bolted-down twin beds. After detox, the women are moved to a Structured Outpatient Addiction Program. For the remainder of the 30-day treatment, they attend seven meetings daily, including lectures on after-care options, Kenney said.

Wambolt added that she is recovering, seeing addiction counselors, and working through an after-care program. Still, her mother bears guilt, and Wambolt bears resentment. As she put it, she was treated like a criminal rather than a woman suffering from a disease.

"I don't even know how the hell we got through that," she said.

Kelsey Abbruzzese, Brittany Peats, and Jordan Zappala are graduate journalism students at Boston University. They researched and wrote this story under the supervision of BU professors Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff, former members of the Globe Spotlight Team.