FLOYD COUNTY — A Floyd County program is expanding efforts in the community to connect those in the criminal justice system to needed resources.
In February, the Floyd County Commissioners committed $846,560 from its opioid settlement allocation to the Floyd County Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council (FC-JRAC), and this summer, the program received $180,150 through Indiana’s State Opioid Match Grant.
Floyd County was one of 28 in the state to receive the matching grant, which comes from the funding that the state received as part of the $26 billion national opioid settlement. In June, the state announced recipients of the $19 million in grants.
Of the grant funding, $75,075 will be used to cover the salary and benefits of a jail transition coordinator, a new position in the Floyd County Jail. The grant will cover the costs of the new position for two years.
“Basically it’s trying to find the services they need,” Floyd County Sheriff Steve Bush said. “So if they leave jail, do they need to go to a treatment facility? Do they need services and help in regard to addiction and mental health programs outside the jail? So these are all the conceptual ideas that we’re looking at.”
Bush, who is also a member of the JRAC board, expects to fill the position within the next week. The matching grant also includes $12,000 for the costs of monthly reporting and data collection in the Floyd County Jail.
Floyd Superior Court 1 Judge Carrie Stiller, the chair of FC-JRAC, said the opioid settlement funds are helping the program offer multiple initiatives to support those going through the criminal justice system.
“From the criminal justice side, our goal is to try to have opportunities at every intercept with the criminal justice system [so] that a defendant has access to treatment for mental health or substance abuse treatment,” Stiller said. “So the intercept is, for example, at the moment of arrest, and from that point forward on right throughout their time in court all the way to post-conviction, then after they’re convicted through probation and beyond.”
Stiller said when she took office in 2021, the county did not have many resources in place to address the drug epidemic. In July 2021, a new law required each county to create a local JRAC.
“So that just happened at the same time that I had taken office as we were discovering we really didn’t have resources here that we needed, and that we needed to kind of revamp our community corrections also at the same time because our community corrections was really not being utilized to the fullest.”
The county combined the FC-JRAC with the Floyd County Community Corrections Board. The advisory board includes representatives from Floyd County’s government and criminal justice system.
The goal is to reduce the recidivism and crime rates in Floyd County, Stiller said. She noted that the Clark-Floyd System of Care provided research related to gaps in the criminal justice system, including a need for preventive treatment.
As a judge, Stiller has seen defendants identify their need for mental health services and substance abuse services.
“They were coming in front of me frequently saying, ‘Please, I just want treatment, I just don’t know how to do it, I don’t know how to get there,'” she said. “And I actually would have defendants tell me, ‘Please don’t let me out of jail until I can get some treatment, because I’m just going back to where I started.'”
Frank Loop, the county’s previous sheriff, worked with Stiller’s court to provide transportation to bring people to treatment as they were getting out of jail, and that has continued as Bush took office.
Bush said the addition of the jail transition coordinator fits in with other programming at the Floyd County Jail through its Changing While Incarcerated team. The jail is offering programs such as life skills, higher education and therapy.
He said a large percentage of inmates are incarcerated due to drug-related issues.
“That leads us to believe that there is room to get some people help, and the programming we’re offering will be able to do just that,” Bush said.
Stiller said since FC-JRAC did not receive a full matching grant from the state, the program had to cut back its original plan for about $2 million worth of initiatives. As the program receives more than $1 million in combined funding, those involved have identified specific priorities.
The top focus is reducing juvenile crime, she said. One of the goals is to work with New Albany-Floyd County Schools to target truancy, which involves connecting families with resources to address these issues before they reach the level of juvenile delinquency.
“What we are seeing is a major increase in juvenile crime in Floyd County — in particular, more violent crime,” Stiller said. “In fact, if you look at the statistics from the same period last year to this year, our juvenile cases— all cases including juvenile delinquency and other types of juvenile cases — are up 31%. Our [overall] criminal cases are up from this same period last year 25%.”
The FC-JRAC board will also consider hiring an additional person in Floyd County Community Corrections to manage substance abuse assessments, Stiller said. The program already has someone in this position, but after starting the assessment initiative in 2021, FC-JRAC has faced a high caseload of referrals.
“Every single person who was charged with basically a non-victim crime [such as] possession of drugs or a syringe, I started ordering them for a substance abuse assessment and Community Corrections, and Community Corrections makes a recommendation for what they need to address their issues,” Stiller said.
“And this assessment is really a key part of the process because in order to try to help their mental health issues, you really have to know what those are and what they need.”
Stiller said she is working with Connie Moon, a Floyd County Council member, to pursue another new initiative. The goal is to use $140,000 per year to provide financial support to community resources that are facing higher demands due to referrals from the FC-JRAC program.
This will make sure that people who are providing needed resources “have what they need to provide them and to continue to provide them,” she said.
“So all of a sudden, if we’ve got people in the schools identifying families that need counseling or they need housing or they need transportation or whatever they need, then we’re going to need to have financial support for those services in the community who provide that,” Stiller said.
Another goal for FC-JRAC’s opioid settlement funding is to provide financial support to the Clark-Floyd System of Care, which provides services such as data collection and connecting service providers to Floyd County’s criminal justice system.
Bush said he is thankful to receive funding to implement these programs in the county’s criminal justice system.
“I think the state’s on board with looking at mental health and addiction programming and how we battle that problem in our communities, and JRAC will be a great resource,” he said. “You have a lot of people who come to the table from all areas of the system in general, so I think that’s really good.”
FC-JRAC will address these initiatives and needs in the community at its upcoming Mental Health and Addiction Summit, which will take place on Sept. 6 at Indiana University Southeast’s Hoosier Room.
Indiana Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch is scheduled to speak at the summit, and a panel will include representatives from Floyd County’s criminal justice system.
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