ERIE COUNTY — At 28 years old, Brad Downing became addicted to Vicodin after surviving a motorcycle crash.
"I developed an addiction which then in turn destroyed everything in my path, my family and beliefs that my parents taught me," said Downing.
Twenty-four years later, Downing is the program director of the Erie County Jail life recovery program, working to connect the incarcerated with outpatient programs.
"We try to give them a treatment plan, assessment, and come up with a collaboration of who can help out," said Downing.
He uses his struggle with addiction to help inmates who suffer from substance abuse.
"I think it breaks that trust barrier down, and it gives me some sort of credibility with them. We've had people graduate drug court or complete outpatient treatment at Bayshore and are one to two to five years sober and doing well," said Downing.
Jail Administrator Sidney Timko says his efforts have already made an impact inside and outside of the jail.
"When I first started working here, the amount of use of force incidents that we had were extremely high. We would have one once a day where someone was getting placed into a restraint chair, but ever since Brad came in they look forward to communicating and talking with Brad," said Timko.
Downing says around 80-90% of their inmates suffer from substance abuse and often become re-offenders, and in order to get ahead of the problem, they needed to expand their resources within the jail.
Erie County was one of eight county jails to receive a grant from the Ohio Attorney General's Office that will provide addiction treatment. The jail will continue to partner with Bayshore Counseling to host public presentations and classes and expand its resources inside the jail.
"That gets the ball rolling when you can identify substance issues or mental health issues and to make a connection with the inmates so that when they leave, they want to come to outpatient treatment," said Bayshore Counseling Executive Director Henrietta Whalen.
Downing says their goal is to reduce crime and recidivism.
"We want to stop the same people from coming in time after time because everyone gets tired of that," said Downing.
