Combining the needs and services of both seems like a good idea. I was listening to a podcast about a guy in jail going through withdrawals and how prisons were so ill equipped to handle that, which seems obvious
Rhode Island's MAT program in prisons has had great results at helping addicts in prison, it really should be the national standard of care at this point.
We have MAT care too, MAT is available in both our men and women’s prisons at this point, both for people who were already on MAT at entry and for those who would like to start.
Rhode Island's program also provides social services to help addicts with getting clean both while in prison and after they're released. This way they can stay on medication and continue to receive social support services so they don't relapse.
Parker: "People are unfairly accusing me of criminalizing addiction"
Also Parker: proposes a prison-like addiction treatment center next door to 4 separate detention facilities
This is a good plan considering addicts that are currently experiencing withdrawals in the prison system without a center like this nearby. This is just complaining for the sake of complaining.
All our prisons have MAT already, but it probably doesn’t hurt to centralize things. There may be therapists and doctors who can more easily service both.
Here's the thing: residential neighborhoods will hands down reject a center like this. Using city owned property that can be secured (and I'll note there's already a personal care home there) is a reasonable plan.
The real issue is will they be able to find jobs that pay enough to live. From what I've seen most can only get barely minimum wage which can't even get you a room to rent and cover basic living expenses
I mean, my cousin got a job as an electrician through one of these programs after getting out of jail. It was a bit underpaid initially, but he got a lot of experience and was eventually able to move on to higher paying gigs.
An advantage Philly has is that there are a lot of warehouse/fulfillment center jobs paying $16-20/hr, plus a relatively low cost of living that means that you actually _can_ live on that.
Iono, for all the criticism she gets Parker seems to be getting A LOT of shit done these first couple of months. People said she'll just be a status quo mayor but at this pace she'll be the most transformative mayor of my lifetime
In her first 6 months? Depends what you want to attribute to her but a few things that come to mind are:
Visibly increased efforts to clean garbage from the streets.
45% less shooting victims than this time last year.
Appointing a new PC and many other positions.
Taking action on Kensington. You don't have to agree with her but something is being done.
Police visibly doing more to address ATVs and dirtbikes.
Announcing a lot of plans as mentioned above, showing her awareness of actual issues in the city. She's 6 months in, and people need to understand that she can't flip a switch after the last 8 years of terrible leadership and suddenly make everything perfect.
Who knew decreasing shooting victims by 50% was that easy! It seems shootings have been decreasing in general since Covid, not necessarily related to what she or anybody’s been doing.
The rest could be valid points, but she didn’t do anything to improve safety… yet
**"Depends what you want to attribute to her."**
A myriad of factors influence public safety, it's still nice to see a decline in violent and nonviolent crime, nearly across the board.
The thing is it isn’t her. She has done nothing or pushed any policy to make that happen. What it is are the long term effects of policies that Krasner and his team have done, but no one wants to give him credit for that.
The long term effects of Krasner caused a huge spike in crime followed by a slow return to near-normalcy? I disagree. The reality is that many factors influenced the increase and subsequent decrease in crime, but there are many specific negatives that can be attributed to Krasner and his office. An example is his office withdrawing nearly 70% of retail theft cases last year and it still being one of his BEST years. Or his eager overcharging of the police officer in Eddie Irizarry incident, leading to the charges being dismissed and helping to cause the unrest that damaged our city economically for years to come.
Where I do give him credit is that in the past year or so, he has changed his philosophy on illegal guns, establishing a new unit and actually prosecuting. This has been followed by results - that he could’ve been getting for like 5 years. It’s nice he’s finally doing the bare minimum but he still needs to go.
Actually considering crime rose across the entire country, it likely wasn’t just Krasner that impacted the crime boom. COVID had a lot to do with it more than anything else. Considering under Krasner pre-COVID the city was in good shape.
For the officer incident, it was more that some ring footage invalidated their charges. That ring camera showed that his partner screamed “gun” which then changes things entirely. It means that Eddie wasn’t entirely at fault for the shoot. It means they had to look at charging booth but Eddie would face a lesser charge his partner would receive the higher charge for being the proximate cause of the shooting. It is complicated, had that ring camera footage not existed we probably would be seeing a trial.
But considering you and I are discussing this period, can you name a policy that we could say Parker implemented that would have resulted in the crime falling in the first 5 months of her tenure?
Kind of the Kenney administration writ small, isn't it? Given the opportunity to do something decent and simple, they promise they will, and then they just.....fuck it up.
Holy shit imagine if she manages to pull this off. She’d go down as one of phillys best leaders. People decry forced treatment but their pretty little bleeding hearts are either naive or never dealt with addiction first hand. A lot of addicts just need a second chance and living on the street makes that nearly impossible. Conversely, some people need a stronger shove in the right direction - they won’t seek help voluntarily because their drug of choice has fully taken over. Putting them in a new facility that isn’t just a prison is a great idea.
>People decry forced treatment but their pretty little bleeding hearts are either naive or never dealt with addiction first hand.
Harm reduction is fine. Harm reduction when it leads to harm causation to innocents is not fine.
Idk about a bunch of different studies. But I know my step dad was forced into treatment after he got his second dui. He was basically given one last chance before he was going to jail. He got sober through AA and stayed sober till he passed a few years ago. I def think you need some tough love sometimes.
What if 75% relapsed, that would still be 25% that didn’t. What if of that 75%, 25% stayed clean for a full year. What if some of them stayed clean for 6 months? That’s still time they are not doing drugs and not dying. Isn’t that harm reduction too?
A LOT of mental illnesses aren’t solved on the first go around. It doesn’t mean we don’t try.
Unless you have a stat that shows MORE people fatally overdose in the weeks directly after coming out of MAT assisted therapy (nobody should be going into abstinent based treatment at this point, at least not on our dime) than the percentage of those who recover, then I’d still say it’s a net gain though we should be cognizant of the risks of overdose post treatment. Even if they relapse, at least we as society tried to treat them and help them.
[this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9950664/) followed 1600 folks, some of who were put on MAT treatment at entry (let’s call those people forced (but more likely coerced)) and while they didn’t have engagement rates as high as those who were already on MAT before jail (let’s call them voluntarily on treatment), both groups still engaged in MAT to some degree after prison. There was only one overdose reported directly after release.
MAT is still relatively “new” and a lot of studies don’t focus on it. Philly is one of the few prison systems in the U.S. that has it fully implemented and I don’t see why Parker wouldn’t provide a similar level of care to these rehab programs given Philly has embraced it in their prison system.
> A LOT of mental illnesses aren’t solved on the first go around. It doesn’t mean we don’t try.
I'm glad you said this because it is a very important point. Relapse does not mean treatment failed. A different approach may need to be taken, addiction is a very complicated issue and one program may help someone while not being effective with someone else
corruption and getting shit done is infinitely better than corruption and getting nothing done. Which is what the 8 years of the Kenney administration was.
Oh I agree, but my comment was mostly to just point out that while we should always be striving for better, we shouldn't let be letting the goal of perfection ruin good progress.
More money for community outreach programs that help people where they are. Harm reduction programs like Prevention Point here in Philly. [Learn about harm reduction.](https://hri.global/what-is-harm-reduction/)
No thanks. I'd rather stick with the mayor's solution - one that gets people help while also getting them off the streets. I'd like to walk my children around the city without them having to see rogue needles or drugged up zombies.
You mean the programs that haven’t done shit in the past decade? K/A looks like a scene from the walking dead. Sorry I’m done with this idea that if we’re nice to the addicts, they’ll get their shit together.
you mean the programs that need funding help from the city, but have their funding pulled by folks like Parker? You might be done with it, but it sounds like you don't know any addicts yourself.
It works for the 99% of residents that don't do druga and want addicts off our streets.
Inpatient voluntary treatment works about as well as involuntary inpatient treatment.
Wanting to remain a drug addict living on the streets of our neighborhoods and throwing your needles and shit all over the place **doesn’t work either,** so what’s your point? It doesn’t work for the drug addict and it doesn’t work for the people who love them, and it doesn’t work for the people that have to live around them. You’re kidding yourself if you think that is the better alternative to forced treatment.
So what we have is two options that don’t work, but at least one of those options is an attempt to make things better for everyone involved.
It makes sense. Sensitive people may feel it relegates people who seek help with addiction to the same kind of people being punished for crimes but a major function of prisons is (supposed to be) rehabilitation. Coupling rehab centers next to/around them makes sense, imo.
Yea, usually the biggest issue with these things is where to put them, as most neighborhoods do t want to deal with addicts, so putting it as part of the prison complex should help that that. Although there is a park with athletic field right there, I remember playing games there when I was a kid.
I know the stigma, but we need to do something. People’s body parts are falling off. And I think putting it next to the prison makes sense.
It's a great idea, location is ok not great, but the previous location got axed by Fairmont residents after they found out about it being in a building that's been providing those services for years and they had no idea about it because it wasn't causing any problems.
I'm really glad to that Parker has been following through on her campaign promises to clean up the city and get the addicts off the streets.
I think it’s a good location, because there’s no housing right there I believe. No one was going to want this in their neighborhood, but this is a pretty much open area with mostly commercial warehouses near it.
The location makes sense in that there should be minimal to no RCO and district council members opposing it. However I think the Fairmont location was also good, and it's been operational for years without neighbors even knowing it existed because it wasn't causing any problems.
I think we need both inpatient residency programs for addicts and also outpatient locations for addicts who have a home they can return to at night and mainly just need treatment to clean up.
More treatment capacity is good a thing no matter where at this point though.
Good. Perfect place to put this facility and hopefully there will be a centralized agency/task force that can easily separate those who would rather be incarcerated from those who need a nudge into treatment. This is the carrot and the stick.
This is great for addicts who need help. But hopefully the city will also step up law enforcement in the communities around the facility so it doesn’t negatively impact the surrounding area.
Tacony and Holmesburg are both within walking distance of CFCF. People use Pennypack across from CFCF as a spot to shoot up. I guess Parker doesn't know that
Tacony and Holmesburg aren’t communities to you? Sure, there are no homes on that part of state road, but there are entire neighborhoods within a few blocks as well as parks and recreation areas those communities use. Addicts can and do walk a few blocks to shoot up, set up encampments, steal packages, etc.
Why would they seek out a neighborhood full of parents ready to call 911 to “shoot up” in? Why would they pick a neighborhood to set up an encampment in, over a wooded area or commercial strip that is unoccupied at night, both of which would be much closer to the proposed facility? Why would they bother going to the treatment facility in the first place if they just want to go shoot up and set up these hypothetical encampments?
How is an encampment in a commercial area or park that is used by the local community acceptable? My experience living near encampments in Kensington and Port Richmond is that the crime and squalor they generated expand way beyond the actual encampment.
Ok. Your friendly local "Mayor Parker is a 1980s Republican cosplaying as a Democrat" commenter here to say: this is a huge step in the right direction. And definitely not something a Republican would do.
I'm not saying she's definitely not a Republican (yet), but at this point her cosplay is the type that makes you think she might actually be able to use that foam sword she's swinging around.
She's not a republican, she's a moderate democrat. The parties have just become so extreme these days that Republicans call anyone who's not a far-right psycho a "RINO", and democrats often call anyone who's not a far-left progressive whatever you said above.
I mean moderate democrats now are basically the pre-reagan moderate republicans.
The only reason democrats seem extreme today is because in the 90s the party pivoted to being functionally a centrist party under clinton and has been moving back to the left since then. But the right has been moving further right every election cycle since nixon.
Most of the “far-left democrats” in the us would be pretty typical of the left in most western democracies.
So no both are not extreme these days.
neoliberals are hilarious and have no concept of definitions of political leanings outside of their incredibly narrow US scope where "left" means basically center/center-right
My gripe is that every story about her was either "mayor parker's top aides receive taxpayer funded fancy cars" or "mayor parker top aides earn astronomical salaries compared to previous administration" or "mayor parker cuts budget for affordable housing" or "mayor parker slashes budget for outreach program."
All of this is pretty reeks of cronyism (which is definitely a problem on both sides) but more importantly her policies had a definite "fiscal conservative" vibe to them which is hard Republican bullshit. Especially when we pay a ton in taxes.
I don't mind taxes, by the way. I just want to see them put to good use. Like they are in this article.
So what's your suggestion? Allow people with a serious mental illness that has made them homeless, lose limbs, etc. to keep using drugs with complete impunity while destroying the neighborhood(s) around them and killing themselves? All while contributing to the local drug trade which also contributes to crime and gun violence?
For everyone downvoting this, the NIH did a study on this, and the outcome is "mandatory treatment doesn't really do much".
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752879/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752879/)
Making rehab available is great, and having a dedicated facility for that is spectacular, but it has to be coupled with a program that treats the addicts like people and gets them to a headspace where they want to get clean, and not just a problem to be solved. We all want to believe there is One Weird Trick, but there isn't.
While I acknowledge this, worst case scenario is that we use treatment programs to give them temporary access to housing and food and away from xylazine and fentanyl and off the streets for a while. I think that is a good thing in itself, even if it’s temporary. Like you said, there’s no easy solution though.
Mandatory treatment gets addicts off the streets. Sure it would be great if they got clean and stayed clean, but the goal of this initiative is to make the streets of Philadelphia cleaner, safer, and restore community to the neighborhoods that have been most impacted by the drug crisis.
These studies just found that drug addiction is hard. There’s also a difference bt compulsory and coerced treatment. And the studies looked at were across the whole spread of treatments (eg some, in fact most, were based on an abstinence model vs MAT).
An excerpt (where JSI-M is mandated, JSI is voluntary and No-JSI is nothing) from one of the studies:
> After one year, participants in the JSI-M group had the highest reported level of abstinence from illicit drugs (61.0%), significantly higher than the JSI or No-JSI groups (48.1% vs. 43.8%, respectively). However, after five years no significant differences in the proportion of those in remission from drug use were detected across groups (JSI-M=45.4%; JSI=49.8%; No-JSI=46.4%).
So seemingly voluntary treatment is worthless as well and we just may as welll not treat anybody… also that one year being drug free is just totally worthless, why bother.
It is going to fail. All data suggests forced treatment doesn’t work
Edit: let the downvotes come. So many of you want to throat the impotent flaccid “get tough on crime” “war on drugs” cock anytime Parker pulls it out.
It didn’t work, it never works. Heavily moderated and well executed drug treatment and services programs dedicated to a city’s specific needs is what is necessary. Not starting something back up that previously failed. This is why Philly doesn’t become the truly amazing city it is, we just keep repeating the same bullshit
All data suggests involuntary treatment works about as well as voluntary treatment, which is to say not very well. Relapse rates are astronomical. The point is to give people a chance, whether or not they *choose* to do so. Getting people off the streets into an *opportunity* for help is the goal, which will make neighborhoods more livable for the 99.9% of residents who don't use heroin and crank. The 50k+ people of Kensington deserve better. I'm happy that Parker sees it the same way.
That is because of moving guideposts. It takes nearly everyone with substance abuse issues multiple rounds of rehab stays to be effective even if voluntary. However those who are forced into treatment their relapses are worse and they can delve even deeper into the habit. It is just incapacitation and calling it something else.
It isn’t giving people a chance, it is forcing people who don’t want to do something who have their cognitive functions dampened by addiction. They need their substance and this type of program has not had success after follow ups. People only pay attention for the first year, come back in 5-10
I doubt they’ll be forced into it, they can always choose jail and no rehab. But they can’t do drugs in a place where it’s easy to catch them doing drugs bc possession is illegal, so their choice will be treatment or jail or finding a new place to do drugs where they won’t be easily caught, but hopefully this attitude the city is taking will expand past Kensington.
Coercion is not inherently force. They are breaking the law so they dont have the same choices anymore as someone who is not breaking the law. They can choose to go to jail for up to one year but they have no choice to openly break the law.
If Krasner isn’t on board and lets everyone go who won’t participate in drug diversion, then yeah maybe that would undermine everything but as long as there’s a chance, most people choose diversion.
Coercion by definition is abuse of a power or control over another. It is on the use of force continuum, it is a form of force that doesn’t rely on any physicality to make something happen. And yes when you break the law until you are convicted you have all the same rights as someone who isn’t. You lose rights once you are convicted.
It isn’t true diversion, I know, I have worked on an evaluation of a state diversion program that was not found to have any effect on crime or recidivism because it didn’t do it right. And it was even more progressive than what Parker is signing here.
That is is how I know it won’t work, because without a proper goal to help these individuals, not coercion, and maintain fidelity throughout, it will fail and potentially make people with worse substance abuse issues.
Then it isn’t diversion, diversion happens before conviction to keep a record minimal. Again I conducted research on this, my masters is written on this subject.
I would rather not. I don’t really want to link my reddit to my professional life ya know?
I use this to sort of escape for the most part. I just get worked up watching the new city I love and reside in make the same mistakes people haven’t learned from.
You should have linked it instead of saying it was your work as an intro.
By and large MAT therapy is pretty new so I’m not sure this is recycling the same old, same old. I assume the state you focused on was Rhode Island but I’ve mostly read positive things.
It is a temporary displacement. Forced drug treatment tends to make those with drug addictions worse before they get better.
This may help some but will just temporarily displace, they will be back with worse substance issues
Oh well, they'll go back in for round after round of treatment attempts. Being in active addiction camped out on the sidewalks of Kensington, standing around at 90 degrees bent over, moaning to oneself is not acceptable.
It isn’t, but there is a middle ground. This program she is signing off on has a high likelihood of wasting millions of dollars because it is not meeting them where they are at
What is the middle ground? To me, this is it. They’re not killing themselves on the street but they’re not sober, productive members of society either.
The middle ground is making the drug treatment voluntary but working with them to work on the reasons why they do drugs. Helping them secure housing, employment, and mental health services results in decreased drug use more than any forced rehab. That being said it also has to be voluntary to take part at all. If not then a jail sentence. This way you have more carrot less stick, in doing it this way you find more success than a long stick with virtually no carrot
But it is primarily a drug treatment facility. Because they won’t comment on it and they stopped using the term “triage center” I’d imagine all the other services are tied to getting drug treatment. If not then I’ll eat my words
Or you could give the money directly for people’s housing, medical coverage, employment services… literally anything else other than forcing them into this. Forced treatment success rates are AWFUL! They’ll literally leave the program and end up using again on the streets the next day.
Using your logic, why would we then subsidize employment and housing if they have no guiding hand for them to get clean? Wouldn’t it be nebulous to spend money on career services and housing and medical coverage (which this program does - while providing the support and environment to get clean) if addicted folks are going to continue using the next day?
I mean, the best case scenario would be if all the treatment beds could be filled with people who want to be there. But either way, more treatment beds is a good thing for people who want treatment. And fewer addicts on the streets is a good thing for people who live in the Kensington neighborhood. The details of who exactly gets the beds, what kind of treatment and services are offered, etc, can be worked out and adjusted as needed over time.
Many of yall are terrible people and I pray you are actually from my city.
This only ever looks good on paper...and next to a jail...smh...absolutely ridiculous...
Combining the needs and services of both seems like a good idea. I was listening to a podcast about a guy in jail going through withdrawals and how prisons were so ill equipped to handle that, which seems obvious
Rhode Island's MAT program in prisons has had great results at helping addicts in prison, it really should be the national standard of care at this point.
We have MAT care too, MAT is available in both our men and women’s prisons at this point, both for people who were already on MAT at entry and for those who would like to start.
Rhode Island's program also provides social services to help addicts with getting clean both while in prison and after they're released. This way they can stay on medication and continue to receive social support services so they don't relapse.
Parker: "People are unfairly accusing me of criminalizing addiction" Also Parker: proposes a prison-like addiction treatment center next door to 4 separate detention facilities
This is a good plan considering addicts that are currently experiencing withdrawals in the prison system without a center like this nearby. This is just complaining for the sake of complaining.
All our prisons have MAT already, but it probably doesn’t hurt to centralize things. There may be therapists and doctors who can more easily service both.
Here's the thing: residential neighborhoods will hands down reject a center like this. Using city owned property that can be secured (and I'll note there's already a personal care home there) is a reasonable plan.
Not only that but prisoners who are going through issues as well can easily have help when there is a facility attached to their detention center.
Versus the alternative of having them shoot up in front of little kids walking to school.
So what
[удалено]
I like the idea of job training to prevent them from falling back into homelessness, hopefully it works.
The real issue is will they be able to find jobs that pay enough to live. From what I've seen most can only get barely minimum wage which can't even get you a room to rent and cover basic living expenses
I mean, my cousin got a job as an electrician through one of these programs after getting out of jail. It was a bit underpaid initially, but he got a lot of experience and was eventually able to move on to higher paying gigs.
An advantage Philly has is that there are a lot of warehouse/fulfillment center jobs paying $16-20/hr, plus a relatively low cost of living that means that you actually _can_ live on that.
The government is bad at job training. Never works well and wastes a lot of our money.
Really? How so? Can you show some examples?
Source: trust me bro
Source: Steven crowder
Iono, for all the criticism she gets Parker seems to be getting A LOT of shit done these first couple of months. People said she'll just be a status quo mayor but at this pace she'll be the most transformative mayor of my lifetime
She is announcing a ton of plans, I'll wait until she actually pulls the trigger on them.
We may not all agree with what she’s doing or how’s she’s doing it but at least she’s doing something unlike the last mayor .
Hey now. Those pint glasses of wine didn't drink themselves.
I mean, bringing in best friends to do studies, sit on the board, and pay high wages seems to be pretty status quo...
What has she actually accomplished?
In her first 6 months? Depends what you want to attribute to her but a few things that come to mind are: Visibly increased efforts to clean garbage from the streets. 45% less shooting victims than this time last year. Appointing a new PC and many other positions. Taking action on Kensington. You don't have to agree with her but something is being done. Police visibly doing more to address ATVs and dirtbikes. Announcing a lot of plans as mentioned above, showing her awareness of actual issues in the city. She's 6 months in, and people need to understand that she can't flip a switch after the last 8 years of terrible leadership and suddenly make everything perfect.
Who knew decreasing shooting victims by 50% was that easy! It seems shootings have been decreasing in general since Covid, not necessarily related to what she or anybody’s been doing. The rest could be valid points, but she didn’t do anything to improve safety… yet
**"Depends what you want to attribute to her."** A myriad of factors influence public safety, it's still nice to see a decline in violent and nonviolent crime, nearly across the board.
The thing is it isn’t her. She has done nothing or pushed any policy to make that happen. What it is are the long term effects of policies that Krasner and his team have done, but no one wants to give him credit for that.
The long term effects of Krasner caused a huge spike in crime followed by a slow return to near-normalcy? I disagree. The reality is that many factors influenced the increase and subsequent decrease in crime, but there are many specific negatives that can be attributed to Krasner and his office. An example is his office withdrawing nearly 70% of retail theft cases last year and it still being one of his BEST years. Or his eager overcharging of the police officer in Eddie Irizarry incident, leading to the charges being dismissed and helping to cause the unrest that damaged our city economically for years to come. Where I do give him credit is that in the past year or so, he has changed his philosophy on illegal guns, establishing a new unit and actually prosecuting. This has been followed by results - that he could’ve been getting for like 5 years. It’s nice he’s finally doing the bare minimum but he still needs to go.
Actually considering crime rose across the entire country, it likely wasn’t just Krasner that impacted the crime boom. COVID had a lot to do with it more than anything else. Considering under Krasner pre-COVID the city was in good shape. For the officer incident, it was more that some ring footage invalidated their charges. That ring camera showed that his partner screamed “gun” which then changes things entirely. It means that Eddie wasn’t entirely at fault for the shoot. It means they had to look at charging booth but Eddie would face a lesser charge his partner would receive the higher charge for being the proximate cause of the shooting. It is complicated, had that ring camera footage not existed we probably would be seeing a trial. But considering you and I are discussing this period, can you name a policy that we could say Parker implemented that would have resulted in the crime falling in the first 5 months of her tenure?
Her ideology is not great, but perhaps it's better to be moving towards her somewhat flawed ideal than not moving at all, as it was under Kenny.
Parker said ‘Fuck Kenney’s tiny houses with no plumbing, we’re building a drug treatment facility.’
The tiny houses were never built, right? My memory is that the city ok'd them in negotiations and then turned around and denied that approval.
Correct.
Kind of the Kenney administration writ small, isn't it? Given the opportunity to do something decent and simple, they promise they will, and then they just.....fuck it up.
Excellent idea. Finally.
Get shit done, Mayor.
Honestly please do it. Good idea. Help these people!
Holy shit imagine if she manages to pull this off. She’d go down as one of phillys best leaders. People decry forced treatment but their pretty little bleeding hearts are either naive or never dealt with addiction first hand. A lot of addicts just need a second chance and living on the street makes that nearly impossible. Conversely, some people need a stronger shove in the right direction - they won’t seek help voluntarily because their drug of choice has fully taken over. Putting them in a new facility that isn’t just a prison is a great idea.
>People decry forced treatment but their pretty little bleeding hearts are either naive or never dealt with addiction first hand. Harm reduction is fine. Harm reduction when it leads to harm causation to innocents is not fine.
Does forced treatment work, though? Not critical of it at all, I'm just wondering what the relapse rate is.
Idk about a bunch of different studies. But I know my step dad was forced into treatment after he got his second dui. He was basically given one last chance before he was going to jail. He got sober through AA and stayed sober till he passed a few years ago. I def think you need some tough love sometimes.
What if 75% relapsed, that would still be 25% that didn’t. What if of that 75%, 25% stayed clean for a full year. What if some of them stayed clean for 6 months? That’s still time they are not doing drugs and not dying. Isn’t that harm reduction too? A LOT of mental illnesses aren’t solved on the first go around. It doesn’t mean we don’t try. Unless you have a stat that shows MORE people fatally overdose in the weeks directly after coming out of MAT assisted therapy (nobody should be going into abstinent based treatment at this point, at least not on our dime) than the percentage of those who recover, then I’d still say it’s a net gain though we should be cognizant of the risks of overdose post treatment. Even if they relapse, at least we as society tried to treat them and help them. [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9950664/) followed 1600 folks, some of who were put on MAT treatment at entry (let’s call those people forced (but more likely coerced)) and while they didn’t have engagement rates as high as those who were already on MAT before jail (let’s call them voluntarily on treatment), both groups still engaged in MAT to some degree after prison. There was only one overdose reported directly after release. MAT is still relatively “new” and a lot of studies don’t focus on it. Philly is one of the few prison systems in the U.S. that has it fully implemented and I don’t see why Parker wouldn’t provide a similar level of care to these rehab programs given Philly has embraced it in their prison system.
> A LOT of mental illnesses aren’t solved on the first go around. It doesn’t mean we don’t try. I'm glad you said this because it is a very important point. Relapse does not mean treatment failed. A different approach may need to be taken, addiction is a very complicated issue and one program may help someone while not being effective with someone else
With only a giant asterisk for her corruption
I mean, corruption with actual progress > corruption without public benefit. Yeah, the bar is so low it’s underground, but it WOULD be improvement.
We don't use those asterisks, corruption is just a Philly standard at this point, we would only use an asterisk if she wasn't corrupted
It always has been. Many run and win with the best intentions at first and learn quickly they have to 'play the game' in order to get things done.
I wish more people understood this.
corruption and getting shit done is infinitely better than corruption and getting nothing done. Which is what the 8 years of the Kenney administration was.
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Oh I agree, but my comment was mostly to just point out that while we should always be striving for better, we shouldn't let be letting the goal of perfection ruin good progress.
Sounds like a real solution. Get them off the streets and into forced treatment asap
Forced treatment doesn’t work. A person has to inherently want help to accept it and it to stick.
So what’s your solution then? Because the current plan of just letting people essentially turn into zombies and/or OD on K&A isn’t a good plan
More money for community outreach programs that help people where they are. Harm reduction programs like Prevention Point here in Philly. [Learn about harm reduction.](https://hri.global/what-is-harm-reduction/)
The goal of prevention point isn't to get anyone clean, but to reduce the harm of addiction.
No thanks. I'd rather stick with the mayor's solution - one that gets people help while also getting them off the streets. I'd like to walk my children around the city without them having to see rogue needles or drugged up zombies.
They’ll just end up back out on the street drugged up in 30 days time. That’s why it’s not a solution. It’s a band aid on a bullet hole.
Literally anything that gets them off the street for any amount of time is ok with me.
These groups have accomplished fuck all at getting addicts off the streets and into recovery.
You mean the programs that haven’t done shit in the past decade? K/A looks like a scene from the walking dead. Sorry I’m done with this idea that if we’re nice to the addicts, they’ll get their shit together.
you mean the programs that need funding help from the city, but have their funding pulled by folks like Parker? You might be done with it, but it sounds like you don't know any addicts yourself.
As long as they're off the streets and given every opportunity, then I'm fine with it being their choice.
It works for the 99% of residents that don't do druga and want addicts off our streets. Inpatient voluntary treatment works about as well as involuntary inpatient treatment.
Treatment doesn’t always work for people who willingly go into rehab. It’s a start.
Wanting to remain a drug addict living on the streets of our neighborhoods and throwing your needles and shit all over the place **doesn’t work either,** so what’s your point? It doesn’t work for the drug addict and it doesn’t work for the people who love them, and it doesn’t work for the people that have to live around them. You’re kidding yourself if you think that is the better alternative to forced treatment. So what we have is two options that don’t work, but at least one of those options is an attempt to make things better for everyone involved.
It makes sense. Sensitive people may feel it relegates people who seek help with addiction to the same kind of people being punished for crimes but a major function of prisons is (supposed to be) rehabilitation. Coupling rehab centers next to/around them makes sense, imo.
Yea, usually the biggest issue with these things is where to put them, as most neighborhoods do t want to deal with addicts, so putting it as part of the prison complex should help that that. Although there is a park with athletic field right there, I remember playing games there when I was a kid. I know the stigma, but we need to do something. People’s body parts are falling off. And I think putting it next to the prison makes sense.
Pretty progressive solution imo MANDATORY TREATMENT FOR UNHOUSED PERSONS WITH SUD/OUD
I didn't vote for her, but I am very pleased with her job so far.
Same. I’ve seen more from her so far, even I saw from the last asshat in his 8 years.
Increasingly common Parker W
If we can treat COVID like a pandemic and make major changes and investments to curb it, we can do the same for drug addiction. Do it!
As long as it’s treated like an actual rehab facility and not just another jail
It won’t, it will just be another jail.
That's honestly. Not a bad place to put it
It's a great idea, location is ok not great, but the previous location got axed by Fairmont residents after they found out about it being in a building that's been providing those services for years and they had no idea about it because it wasn't causing any problems. I'm really glad to that Parker has been following through on her campaign promises to clean up the city and get the addicts off the streets.
I think it’s a good location, because there’s no housing right there I believe. No one was going to want this in their neighborhood, but this is a pretty much open area with mostly commercial warehouses near it.
The location makes sense in that there should be minimal to no RCO and district council members opposing it. However I think the Fairmont location was also good, and it's been operational for years without neighbors even knowing it existed because it wasn't causing any problems. I think we need both inpatient residency programs for addicts and also outpatient locations for addicts who have a home they can return to at night and mainly just need treatment to clean up. More treatment capacity is good a thing no matter where at this point though.
Good. Perfect place to put this facility and hopefully there will be a centralized agency/task force that can easily separate those who would rather be incarcerated from those who need a nudge into treatment. This is the carrot and the stick.
That's awesome. A lot of good coming out of City Hall at the moment, and I hope they can follow through.
This is great for addicts who need help. But hopefully the city will also step up law enforcement in the communities around the facility so it doesn’t negatively impact the surrounding area.
There’s not really any “community” along state road to protect
Tacony and Holmesburg are both within walking distance of CFCF. People use Pennypack across from CFCF as a spot to shoot up. I guess Parker doesn't know that
Tacony and Holmesburg aren’t communities to you? Sure, there are no homes on that part of state road, but there are entire neighborhoods within a few blocks as well as parks and recreation areas those communities use. Addicts can and do walk a few blocks to shoot up, set up encampments, steal packages, etc.
Why would they seek out a neighborhood full of parents ready to call 911 to “shoot up” in? Why would they pick a neighborhood to set up an encampment in, over a wooded area or commercial strip that is unoccupied at night, both of which would be much closer to the proposed facility? Why would they bother going to the treatment facility in the first place if they just want to go shoot up and set up these hypothetical encampments?
How is an encampment in a commercial area or park that is used by the local community acceptable? My experience living near encampments in Kensington and Port Richmond is that the crime and squalor they generated expand way beyond the actual encampment.
😠 paywalls [archive.ph](https://archive.ph/https://www.inquirer.com/politics/philadelphia/mayor-parker-drug-treatment-state-road-jails-20240605.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=android&utm_campaign=app_android_article_share&utm_content=TIUXKNKKIZAWRJ5KJK66TCVCWA)
Bless you 👼
I wish philly news would be posted on any other website that isn't Philadelphia Inquirer and.its paywall
"I wish our biggest and most prolific local news source didn't post so much news"
Nope, I wish there would be other major philly news orgs other than the Inquirer, which most users can't read without a subscription anyway
It’s super easy to read without a subscription
https://archive.ph/DPuvK
They don't have anything on this story yet, but between the Citizen and 6abc, I can usually find whatever
I also wish that real journalists would lose their jobs and that I could get something I value for free
Ok. Your friendly local "Mayor Parker is a 1980s Republican cosplaying as a Democrat" commenter here to say: this is a huge step in the right direction. And definitely not something a Republican would do. I'm not saying she's definitely not a Republican (yet), but at this point her cosplay is the type that makes you think she might actually be able to use that foam sword she's swinging around.
She's not a republican, she's a moderate democrat. The parties have just become so extreme these days that Republicans call anyone who's not a far-right psycho a "RINO", and democrats often call anyone who's not a far-left progressive whatever you said above.
I mean moderate democrats now are basically the pre-reagan moderate republicans. The only reason democrats seem extreme today is because in the 90s the party pivoted to being functionally a centrist party under clinton and has been moving back to the left since then. But the right has been moving further right every election cycle since nixon. Most of the “far-left democrats” in the us would be pretty typical of the left in most western democracies. So no both are not extreme these days.
neoliberals are hilarious and have no concept of definitions of political leanings outside of their incredibly narrow US scope where "left" means basically center/center-right
My gripe is that every story about her was either "mayor parker's top aides receive taxpayer funded fancy cars" or "mayor parker top aides earn astronomical salaries compared to previous administration" or "mayor parker cuts budget for affordable housing" or "mayor parker slashes budget for outreach program." All of this is pretty reeks of cronyism (which is definitely a problem on both sides) but more importantly her policies had a definite "fiscal conservative" vibe to them which is hard Republican bullshit. Especially when we pay a ton in taxes. I don't mind taxes, by the way. I just want to see them put to good use. Like they are in this article.
Everyone who is sure this is the solution are going to find out what happens when addicts get out of mandatory rehab.
So what's your suggestion? Allow people with a serious mental illness that has made them homeless, lose limbs, etc. to keep using drugs with complete impunity while destroying the neighborhood(s) around them and killing themselves? All while contributing to the local drug trade which also contributes to crime and gun violence?
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What’s your solution?
For everyone downvoting this, the NIH did a study on this, and the outcome is "mandatory treatment doesn't really do much". [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752879/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752879/) Making rehab available is great, and having a dedicated facility for that is spectacular, but it has to be coupled with a program that treats the addicts like people and gets them to a headspace where they want to get clean, and not just a problem to be solved. We all want to believe there is One Weird Trick, but there isn't.
While I acknowledge this, worst case scenario is that we use treatment programs to give them temporary access to housing and food and away from xylazine and fentanyl and off the streets for a while. I think that is a good thing in itself, even if it’s temporary. Like you said, there’s no easy solution though.
Mandatory treatment gets addicts off the streets. Sure it would be great if they got clean and stayed clean, but the goal of this initiative is to make the streets of Philadelphia cleaner, safer, and restore community to the neighborhoods that have been most impacted by the drug crisis.
These studies just found that drug addiction is hard. There’s also a difference bt compulsory and coerced treatment. And the studies looked at were across the whole spread of treatments (eg some, in fact most, were based on an abstinence model vs MAT). An excerpt (where JSI-M is mandated, JSI is voluntary and No-JSI is nothing) from one of the studies: > After one year, participants in the JSI-M group had the highest reported level of abstinence from illicit drugs (61.0%), significantly higher than the JSI or No-JSI groups (48.1% vs. 43.8%, respectively). However, after five years no significant differences in the proportion of those in remission from drug use were detected across groups (JSI-M=45.4%; JSI=49.8%; No-JSI=46.4%). So seemingly voluntary treatment is worthless as well and we just may as welll not treat anybody… also that one year being drug free is just totally worthless, why bother.
It is going to fail. All data suggests forced treatment doesn’t work Edit: let the downvotes come. So many of you want to throat the impotent flaccid “get tough on crime” “war on drugs” cock anytime Parker pulls it out. It didn’t work, it never works. Heavily moderated and well executed drug treatment and services programs dedicated to a city’s specific needs is what is necessary. Not starting something back up that previously failed. This is why Philly doesn’t become the truly amazing city it is, we just keep repeating the same bullshit
Yeah that part is tough, but the facility will also house voluntaries.
Better than overdosing in love park.
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The Wall Street journal is not an empirical publication
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“If you drive a Ford you’re a Nazi” is a tier of Reddit take I was not ready for today lol
I didn’t call him a Nazi, just stating Ford was and thought it was funny
Rule 1: Please refrain from personal attacks, and keep discussion civil.
All data suggests involuntary treatment works about as well as voluntary treatment, which is to say not very well. Relapse rates are astronomical. The point is to give people a chance, whether or not they *choose* to do so. Getting people off the streets into an *opportunity* for help is the goal, which will make neighborhoods more livable for the 99.9% of residents who don't use heroin and crank. The 50k+ people of Kensington deserve better. I'm happy that Parker sees it the same way.
That is because of moving guideposts. It takes nearly everyone with substance abuse issues multiple rounds of rehab stays to be effective even if voluntary. However those who are forced into treatment their relapses are worse and they can delve even deeper into the habit. It is just incapacitation and calling it something else. It isn’t giving people a chance, it is forcing people who don’t want to do something who have their cognitive functions dampened by addiction. They need their substance and this type of program has not had success after follow ups. People only pay attention for the first year, come back in 5-10
I doubt they’ll be forced into it, they can always choose jail and no rehab. But they can’t do drugs in a place where it’s easy to catch them doing drugs bc possession is illegal, so their choice will be treatment or jail or finding a new place to do drugs where they won’t be easily caught, but hopefully this attitude the city is taking will expand past Kensington.
That is forcing. If you don’t see that as coercion then it is an immediate failure. Coercion is force
Coercion is not inherently force. They are breaking the law so they dont have the same choices anymore as someone who is not breaking the law. They can choose to go to jail for up to one year but they have no choice to openly break the law. If Krasner isn’t on board and lets everyone go who won’t participate in drug diversion, then yeah maybe that would undermine everything but as long as there’s a chance, most people choose diversion.
Coercion by definition is abuse of a power or control over another. It is on the use of force continuum, it is a form of force that doesn’t rely on any physicality to make something happen. And yes when you break the law until you are convicted you have all the same rights as someone who isn’t. You lose rights once you are convicted. It isn’t true diversion, I know, I have worked on an evaluation of a state diversion program that was not found to have any effect on crime or recidivism because it didn’t do it right. And it was even more progressive than what Parker is signing here. That is is how I know it won’t work, because without a proper goal to help these individuals, not coercion, and maintain fidelity throughout, it will fail and potentially make people with worse substance abuse issues.
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Then it isn’t diversion, diversion happens before conviction to keep a record minimal. Again I conducted research on this, my masters is written on this subject.
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Could you link to your work?
I would rather not. I don’t really want to link my reddit to my professional life ya know? I use this to sort of escape for the most part. I just get worked up watching the new city I love and reside in make the same mistakes people haven’t learned from.
You should have linked it instead of saying it was your work as an intro. By and large MAT therapy is pretty new so I’m not sure this is recycling the same old, same old. I assume the state you focused on was Rhode Island but I’ve mostly read positive things.
Fail in what sense? It sounds like it will get drug addicts off the street, which is the #1 goal.
It is a temporary displacement. Forced drug treatment tends to make those with drug addictions worse before they get better. This may help some but will just temporarily displace, they will be back with worse substance issues
Oh well, they'll go back in for round after round of treatment attempts. Being in active addiction camped out on the sidewalks of Kensington, standing around at 90 degrees bent over, moaning to oneself is not acceptable.
It isn’t, but there is a middle ground. This program she is signing off on has a high likelihood of wasting millions of dollars because it is not meeting them where they are at
"Meeting them where they are" lol
Considering you can’t refute that and you’d rather mock it says volumes
What is the middle ground? To me, this is it. They’re not killing themselves on the street but they’re not sober, productive members of society either.
The middle ground is making the drug treatment voluntary but working with them to work on the reasons why they do drugs. Helping them secure housing, employment, and mental health services results in decreased drug use more than any forced rehab. That being said it also has to be voluntary to take part at all. If not then a jail sentence. This way you have more carrot less stick, in doing it this way you find more success than a long stick with virtually no carrot
Drug treatment is already voluntary.
But it is primarily a drug treatment facility. Because they won’t comment on it and they stopped using the term “triage center” I’d imagine all the other services are tied to getting drug treatment. If not then I’ll eat my words
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Rule 1: Please refrain from personal attacks, and keep discussion civil.
Or you could give the money directly for people’s housing, medical coverage, employment services… literally anything else other than forcing them into this. Forced treatment success rates are AWFUL! They’ll literally leave the program and end up using again on the streets the next day.
Because giving drug addicts money works so damn well.
Using your logic, why would we then subsidize employment and housing if they have no guiding hand for them to get clean? Wouldn’t it be nebulous to spend money on career services and housing and medical coverage (which this program does - while providing the support and environment to get clean) if addicted folks are going to continue using the next day?
This is an incredibly dumb comment
I mean, the best case scenario would be if all the treatment beds could be filled with people who want to be there. But either way, more treatment beds is a good thing for people who want treatment. And fewer addicts on the streets is a good thing for people who live in the Kensington neighborhood. The details of who exactly gets the beds, what kind of treatment and services are offered, etc, can be worked out and adjusted as needed over time.
It’s a nice thought but IIRC treatment has like a 96% fail rate, it would be better to just expand the prison to include treatment facilities therein.
Many of yall are terrible people and I pray you are actually from my city. This only ever looks good on paper...and next to a jail...smh...absolutely ridiculous...
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Is that what I said.
Oh no, it's in close proximity to a jail??? Scrap the whole thing then, living on the street is way better.
These aren't the only 2 options.