Superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections Richard “Rick” Van Wickler leveled a stinging indictment of the current state of the countries corrections facilities with a call for reform at the Peterborough Summer Lyceum Sunday morning.
“This morning, I want to talk to you about why I think American Corrections isn’t,” he said.
His talk Sunday morning was “The American Correctional System – Or Is It?”
“Corrections was originally intended to be a detention facility for criminals with an effort toward rehabilitation, but all branches of the criminal justice system in the United States have experienced a very fast expansion of mission creep … Today corrections is tasked with being a detention center. We’re a mental health institution. We’re a hospital in the community. By federal law, under certain circumstances, we are a school. Sadly, at times, we are even a nursing home. The largest mental health facility in every community across the nation is the local jail.”
Van Wickler said significant reform is needed not only in our criminal justice system but also in how society addresses mental illness and the way it views addiction and addicts. One shouldn’t have to get arrested to get treatment, he said.
“One of the biggest challenges today, in this country, is addiction and the misuse of both illegal and illicit drugs. Drug users or addicts are not necessarily a risk for public safety nor are they a risk for flight,” he said.
He said there are many people incarcerated not for being violent but for merely “altering their consciousness in a way that is unacceptable to the rest of us.”
He said across New Hampshire 32 percent of the inmates in county jails suffer from mental illness and 20 percent of those inmates also suffer from addiction.
When he recently took a look at the Cheshire County jail population of 160 inmates and counted out those who were there for mental illness, drug addiction or drug use he was left with 13 inmates.
Another challenge to the system is that corrections employees are compensated less than other departments and are not properly trained or prepared for the inmates they are charged with. Inmates, Van Wickler said, he instructs his staff to care for above all.
Van Wickler said make no mistake, he is not pro-drug use but said he believes it is time to stop fighting drugs and drug addiction and start trying to understand and treat it.
The Monadnock Lyceum is a series of summer lectures, held every Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church.
This Sunday, Peterborough author Lita Judge is the speaker with her talk “Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein.”
Lyceum talks are available as podcasts on the Monadnock Lyceum website at www.monadnocklyceum.org.