The holiday season may not be so joyful for people behind bars. But one jail in Louisville, Kentucky, has reportedly created an annual tradition to help cheer up the inmates. Every December, the jail holds a contest in which inmates deck out their jail dorms with homemade holiday-themed decorations. And then three prizes are awarded to the teams who do the best job: a chicken dinner, pizza, or hamburgers and chips.
“There’s so much gloom and doom in jail,” said Ken Wright, the substance abuse program coordinator for the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections. “The contest brings some togetherness and some joy.”
The jail holds about 2,000 people, most of them awaiting trial and many unable to afford bail. And many of the inmates are struggling with addiction. Between 50 and 80 people are detoxing in the jail on any given day, most of them coming off heroin. Jefferson County had the state’s highest rate of overdose deaths in 2014.
Ever since a female inmate died during heroin withdrawal three years ago, the jail has developed a program specifically geared towards inmates detoxing from drugs. Now, instead of detoxing in their cells with the other inmates, drug-dependent inmates are placed alongside other people in recovery. Their fellow inmates, along with medical staff, help supervise them as they go through the often painful withdrawal process.
Unfortunately, there is currently a waitlist for the program, which can only hold 90 people at a time. But officials hope to expand the program to accommodate the increasing numbers of people requiring addiction treatment.
Wright said both the holiday decorating tradition, and the addiction program, show how the jail encourages inmates to work together and support each other. “[The holiday contest] brings out a lot of camaraderie,” he said. “To win, you have to work together. And it’s the same with addiction. You can’t recover by yourself.”
Check out a mini-documentary about the prison’s efforts below:
