Last month, U.S. Representative Jackie Walorski visited the Starke County Justice Center’s Therapeutic Community program. On Tuesday, it was her Democratic Party challenger’s turn.
Lynn Coleman is a former South Bend police officer who’s now running for Walorski’s District 2 seat. During his visit, Coleman met with six participants of the Therapeutic Community Center pilot program. He said that after 23 years in law enforcement, criminal justice is a very important issue to him and he’s excited to see alternatives to traditional incarceration. “I’ve often said that we spend too much time and money incarcerating people for low-level offenses, nonviolent offenses, where we could maybe try to redirect some of those resources to another way,” he said. “And I see this as a program to do that kind of stuff, so it’s reassuring and helpful to me.”
The Therapeutic Community offers inmates addicted to drugs a chance to get treatment in a non-prison environment. Coleman told the program’s participants he’s seen the effect drugs have on families and communities. “We lose an awful lot of people, a lot of good people, every day to drug addition, and so government cannot just bury their head in the sand and say that it’s a crime and we want to lock everybody up that’s involved in it,” Coleman said. “That’s not going to solve the problem for us because, even if we lock you up for five years for whatever, at the end of the five years, you’ve got to be released and back on the street.”
He said Starke County’s pilot program can serve as an example for everywhere else. “What I’m prepared to offer is to have the criminal justice systems look at programs like this, to make it available for a lot more than 38 people,” Coleman said. “But even outside of that, what we have to do is that we have to begin to try to deal with communities before people get involved at this level.” That includes incorporating discussions of drug addiction into school curriculum, so children have a clear understanding of the personal and financial costs that come with it.
During his visit to the Starke County Justice Center Tuesday, Coleman also got a brief tour of the jail’s inmate garden, which now includes chickens. Sheriff Bill Dulin and Jail Warden Phil Cherry say the inmates enjoy having the chance to get outside and work in the garden. The produce is incorporated into inmates’ meals.
