News - 2006
Treatment graduates thank their 'brothers'
Casper, WY, Jan 14, 2006 - Treatment graduates thank their 'brothers'
By BARBARA NORDBY Star-Tribune staff writer
Right away, he noticed the signs. Boys make excuses, men assume responsibility.
They're everywhere at a new Casper drug treatment program, four feet tall on every wall in big green letters.
Face your fears.
At first he didn't read them, and tried to avoid them. Become teachable.
Then he realized, they were kind of like warning signs. What's wrong with feeling good about life?
And 10 months later, they were signs pointing him in the right direction.
Carlos Venegas, 27, graduated Friday from a new therapeutic community drug treatment program. The new Casper Re-Entry Center, west of town, has a contract with the Wyoming Department of Corrections to provide treatment to inmates.
When they graduate, some are free, and others still have part of their sentences to serve. Many move on to residential work-release programs, where they live with other recovering addicts while they work and learn life skills.
Venegas, who lived in Rock Springs before he was arrested, said he was a hateful person.
He and other graduates said other, short-term treatment programs didn't work. The men weren't forced to open up and deal with their emotional and family issues.
"I always felt the only way a person can stay clean is to be locked up," Venegas said.
Now, after more than nine months in the program, he knows that's not the case. The "therapeutic community" of 100 men is about accountability and responsibility.
Corrections officials want to create more of these programs in Wyoming. They'll be tracking the progress of Venegas and other graduates to see how well the program works.
The money for the program came from HB59, legislation from 2002 that boosted the state's substance abuse programs, said Steve Lindly, Corrections Department deputy director, who spoke at the graduation. Previously, there was room for just 28 men in a similar program at the Wyoming State Penitentiary at Rawlins. Now, there are the 100 spots at Casper Re-Entry, and there will be 140 openings at the new prison in Torrington. For women, the "therapeutic community" at Lusk is growing from 16 to 32 inmates.
And Casper Re-Entry is looking to expand for people who aren't prison inmates, but who are referred to the program through drug courts after less serious offenses. The men in the current program have records including vehicular homicide, assault, weapons crimes and drug manufacture and sales, a counselor said.
One goal is to change the men's thinking patterns, from criminal behavior to "pro-social" behavior.
In a therapeutic community, the men think of each other as brothers, address each other with "Mr." and learn to respect each other, understand each other's drug triggers and support each other's recovery.
"If a brother's having a problem, we help him out," Venegas said. "The staff is here for guidance but it's up to us."
The program involves therapy, substance abuse counseling, life skills, physical exercise and education. Two graduates were awarded their GEDs Friday.
The men live in dorm-style rooms with wooden bunk beds, around common rooms with televisions they have to earn the privilege to watch.
"One of our goals is to create a positive environment -- for some of these guys, the first one they've ever been in," said Doc Shutts, a popular counselor who was once himself a member of the treatment program under previous management.
Several graduates talked about how they no longer live by "the code." "When I came to this program I was the code, 100 percent," said Terry Betts, a graduate with long hair and tattoos, in a speech before he got his certificate.
"I believed there was no other way to live but to be a convict. I'm proud of what I've done here. I need to leave the past in the past. The present is today, and the future is ours."
The code, they said, is the way criminals relate to each other. You don't tell on each other. You let people get away with anything, said Anthony Smith, 41, whose parents drove 170 miles from Newcastle for the graduation.
There's a different code in the program. The men learn to police each other. They can publicly praise or correct good and bad behavior.
The worst, Smith said, is when an inmate earns an "encounter," the result of five demerits.
The man has to sit in a chair surrounded by his 99 brothers, and listen to them unleash on him, all about how he screwed up and what his problem is.
Smith said he got an encounter because he was a knucklehead with an attitude. But when it was over, the men shook his hand, hugged him and forgave him.
After the graduation he, too, was headed to the work program in Gillette. When it's over he hopes to work in the methane fields, become a homeowner and be a better father to his stepdaughters.
He didn't think he'd be back, and trusts in his new ability to set boundaries, and avoid negative people.
A man obtains only what he strives for.
The men will leave the signs behind.
Stop moaning.
But, hopefully, not the messages.
Create a good life.
Reach Barbara Nordby at (307) 266-0633 or at [email protected].
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