The Mindful Activist – Justine
Justine: It’s a good light.
Matt Ready: It’s pretty good! I mean, it’s pretty extra harsh but… All right. Thank you for being a guest on my webcast.
Justine: You’re welcome.
Matt Ready: Would you like to introduce yourself to the world?
Justine: My name is Justine and I am 29, and I am a social worker and case manager for the chronically homeless and drug-addicted population in Port Townsend.
Matt Ready: Okay! How much time do we have for this interview? You’ve got to get to —
Justine: [No, we have…]
Matt Ready: — work? It’s …
Justine: Oh, we have some time. I’m a little surprised. Well, it depends like on how long it will take us to get back to your place. I think it’ll take me like 10 minutes to get to the court from here.
Matt Ready: Okay. So we could do —
Justine: So yeah! It’s a court day.
Matt Ready: — a 15-minute…
Justine: I’ll be in court today. Fifteen minutes.
Matt Ready: All right. Okay. So yes, you’re going to Drug Court today. What is Drug Court?
Justine: So Drug Court is a therapeutic court program where it kind of encompasses the whole overcrowded prison population, so instead of just sending drug addicts with felonies to prison, we try to rehabilitate them depending on their crime, and so it’s a huge thing in personal responsibility and owning your actions, and going to 12-step meetings, and building kind of a sense of community with a great deal of humility ’cause participants really have to look hard at themselves and why they are addicted and, more often than not, they come from pretty poverty stricken environments. It’s — in the court programs, anyway, rarely is there someone who is wealthier in the court program like that, so I will—when I go—my role in this is to house them because they generally come out of jail, [00:02:15 which they go and do outreach], which I’ll be doing today. I go and pick them up in the jails and put them in a clean and sober shelter that I run and —
Matt Ready: You run the —
Justine: Yeah!
Matt Ready: — clean and sober shelter?
Justine: The clean and sober shelter is mine.
Matt Ready: How many employees or staff does that place have?
Justine: So I have two monitors that stay down at the cabins to kind of make sure that it stays clean and sober and it doesn’t just become a kind of a shitty slummy place. It already has that reputation because it’s a shelter for drug-addicted people, so the goal is to lessen that and they will stay there, you know, it can be up to two years but I try to use it as a shelter, which is like a 90-day kind of turnover but, I mean, due to other kind of economic factors, it will often be like a year-and-a-half to two years that some of them will stay there to try and find housing, ’cause they’re all — some of them are extremely poor, living on very, very low incomes, and have kids, and it creates a barrier as far as getting to work and, well, who’s going to watch their kids and… So it’s a crazy web of case-managerial problem-solving.
Matt Ready: Wow! And so is there enough clean and sober shelter in this area for the population that needs it?
Justine: No. No, but it’s… There’s not enough shelter for people in the area if they need it because when I go and do outreach in the jails I’m just thinking, “I don’t know where I’m going to put all these people,” and it’s kind of in my description to house of them, to figure out how to house people who have chronic recidivist jail records, so…
Matt Ready: So criminal issues —
Justine: Criminal usually like drug-induced [crosstalk]
Matt Ready: And mental health.
Justine: And mental health. Very much so. Rarely is it in this area anyway. Sometimes it’s malicious and awful and you don’t necessarily — there are no resources to rehabilitate that. We luck out with having drug and mental health court but it’s true that Jefferson County Jail is probably the biggest Mental Health Ward, for lack of a better term, than… And then I try to take them and put them in my shelter, and they get you aid by a drug and alcohol facility, the treatment facility, and so then they’re inpatient and outpatient, and it’s a long road of rehabilitation. But it’s gratifying in that you, literally, when people can succeed in it, it’s a… You truly get to watch kind of a neurological rewiring to find out who homeless drug-addicted people really are and how they cope with mental health and having several disorders diagnosed, or maybe just having one and managing it with drugs for many years, and being homeless, it’s a really — it’s a total 180 from who they are when you rehabilitate them to who they become as higher-functioning people.
Matt Ready: Well, so do you enjoy that work?
Justine: It can be exhaustive, it can be really frustrating, it can be difficult in the sense that, if I kind of have like a two-strike policy at the shelter, like you have a hot UA once —
Matt Ready: Hot UA. Aren’t they all hot?
[Laughter]Justine: Well, meth only stays in your system like two or three days, so sometimes you don’t always catch them and —
Matt Ready: Do they have to be completely clean from the UA, like any type of drug at all?
Justine: Unfortunately, that’s what the Mental Health and Drug Court standards are; they have to remain absolutely clean and sober from anything, whether it be marijuana, whether it be meth, heroin, mushrooms, LSD, whatever, they can’t have any of it, alcohol… Those are the stipulations of the court. I mean, they have to — it’s pretty stringent. They have — often times, they are trying to get a felony off of their record, you know? That’s the point of it, so… in the grand scheme, anyway.
Matt Ready: So thanks to you, I did attend a couple of the Mental Health Court —
Justine: You did.
Matt Ready: — and even the Mental Health Court graduation, which I found the whole experience completely inspiring. It just felt like, wow! I did not know the court system could be so rejuvenative.
Justine: Yeah!
Matt Ready: So is this a very common type of program to have in the country, do you know?
Justine: It depends on funding. There are mental health and there are definitely Drug Courts. Drug Court is like I think about a 25-year-old program. Mental Health Court is newer, I think. But there are mental health programs, I think Kitsap County has one, I think… I’m not sure Clallam has one. I don’t know if they have Mental Health Court, but it saves [unclear 00:08:28] kind of another really; a great facet about it is that it saves a lot of taxpayer money. So if you do a cost analysis in terms of what it costs to have someone in jail, like a recidivist way, Emergency Services like the ER, interactions with the police, and then you juxtapose that with what treatment costs are and court costs, then it’s a huge difference to keep someone in a rehabilitated like service-wraparound program because it’s not going to be as much in Medicaid funds, the taxpayers pay, it’s just way less expensive. You always need money for case management with it, for, you know, gas cards and things like that because, again, we’re not dealing with anyone in the middle class. It’s pretty much deep poverty that you’re working through. And it’s not always, but that’s more often than not. That’s the case.
Matt Ready: I’m playing with a little camera setup here.
Justine: But you asked if I enjoy the work and if I like the work, and I have a hard time like really thinking — I don’t know what else I would really do. I think I enjoy the challenge of it. I appreciate sitting in a jail interview room and talking to someone. That’s probably my favorite time to talk to people, is when we’re in the jail.
Matt Ready: I bet they’re pretty real. I mean, they’re pretty real when somebody has grabbed you and put you in a prison cell. I’ve been to — I taught meditation in a prison in the Intensive Management Unit, so I was teaching meditation to six guys who were brought in on chains and chained to these metal desks, and I’m like, “Hey! Let’s meditate!”
Justine: Yeah!
Matt Ready: But yeah, you have to, you know — it’s like Mike Tyson says, “Everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the face.” It’s like everyone feels they understand life until they are punched in the face and put in shackles.
Justine: Yeah!
Matt Ready: Then they’re like, “Oh! Look at this!”
[Laughter]Justine: It’s true!
Matt Ready: “Look what’s going on!”
Justine: That’s really true. I mean, so with addict behavior, you know, you’ll have an appointment scheduled and they will just never show up, they will run it on their own and do anything they can to get their fix, right? And so when you catch them after they’ve been caught, it is the best time to sit and talk to someone because it’s a very, I mean — first, rarely do people go and visit them at the jail, have someone to come visit them and sit and just say, “So what are your plans?”
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Justine: If you didn’t have to work so hard, like if everything was easy and you could snap your fingers and have the life you wanted, like, what would that be? And you’d be surprised how often, like, they have — they rarely will have any answer. They’re like, “I’ve never even thought about it,” because you live in survival, and when you live in survival you can’t think about what do you want your life to look like. So I love posing that question. Like, “You don’t have to tell me now but I want to know, eventually.”
Matt Ready: Oh, man! I’d love the idea of someone like you sitting me down, like, “What’s your plan in life? Tell me?” That’s like therapy. I guess that is kind of what you do.
Justine: I do. What do you… if everything was easy, that’s usually how I pose it; if everything was easy and you didn’t have to shuffle your way through all of this grime and muck and suffering, like, what would you do? What would you be doing if you ever had the chance to dream about your own life? I mean, and even if they haven’t, you just kind of plant the seed there. You can’t always, I mean, it’s not always going to grow but you try.
Matt Ready: And so then if they do participate in the Mental Health Court or the Drug Court, and we probably should explain this to the audience that this is not like court where they decide how long you’re going to jail.
Justine: No.
Matt Ready: They put you through a program. You attend this court—you’re not in jail—you’re attending this court on a weekly basis and you come in every week and the judge and this amazing group of people sit in the jury box, but not as jurors, they sit as advocates and experts in the — like you sit in the jury [crosstalk] —
Justine: Service providers and… I do! I sit in jury box.
Matt Ready: Police officers…
Justine: Yeah! And we do! We have sheriffs and police there, which I think is the coolest part, and why it’s such a special thing is that the participants gain a whole… like a brand new respect for law-enforcement, and law-enforcement doesn’t view the Mental Health Court participants in the same they’re just a shitbag, put them in jail kind of way. They sit there weekly and they watch what people go through, and they have to — like the police officers and the sheriff’s officers have to sit there and look at who these people are —
Matt Ready: Hear their stories.
Justine: — and the participants have to do the same thing. They have to really acknowledge what the police have to deal with on a daily basis and, you know, that there is good in what they do; there is a serve and protect; corrupt, though, I mean, that certainly can be but it’s something that they really have to face each other, and often times it’s really great. Some Drug and Mental Health Court participants will invite their arresting officer to the graduation.
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Justine: And it’s the coolest thing ever!
Matt Ready: It must be extraordinary for you to see a person go from you meeting them in jail to going through this program and getting their life together. I can’t — I mean, that’s such a… I’m sure —
Justine: It’s really hard sometimes. It’s really, really, really hard but…
Matt Ready: And not everyone makes it through successfully.
Justine: Nope. And so I try and I think certain, I mean, programs are kind of moving in more of a harm-reduction path but, at the same time, harm reduction is the trickiest balance because you don’t want it to say like, “You can do whatever the fuck you want and walk all over me,” ’cause you just keep allowing this person to, you know, behave in a destructive manner, but you don’t just immediately punish them for everything. Like, rarely, if I have someone who is living in my cabins and they get picked up ’cause they’ve been using, and they get put in jail and when I go visit them, I’m not going to sit there and lay on a whole bunch of lecture. I’m just going to say, “So what are you doing? What happened? Just tell me what happened?” And I guess that’s the most important question in social work, is what happened, like on a grand scale, holistically, what happened? Not what the fuck is wrong with you. [Laughs] It’s more like, “What the fuck happened to you, and all of a sudden for you to [shot up] a bunch of heroin when you had all this clean time. So what happened?”
Matt Ready: This is great.
Justine: [Laughs].
Matt Ready: This is great ’cause you and I have been talking about you hosting future episodes of this podcast, and we’re going to do it publicly. We’re going to do it actually in public areas where we are going to invite people to talk with us, and you basically can bring this therapy to the world. You can say to humanity, “What happened? Is this what you want?” [Laughs].
Justine: Right! Well, what happened? is a powerful. It allows you to examine environmental factors. It allows you to examine the idea that this behavior doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s something, like the phrase what fires together, wires together. So what fires is the action that you follow through with, and what wires together is your neurological pathway that says, “This is something…” It creates an experience so, I mean, even as a little baby, you’re learning to walk. What fires together, being the walking, and your brain, and your body working together is what fires together; and then that wires together. So wires in your brain and you do it.
And so, for addicts, you have to take that wiring; their what fires together wires together neurological wiring after years of drug use or, not even quite years necessarily ’cause you get some young kids, but you have to kind of take that and then rewire it, rewire that neurological fire to appropriate behavior, to self-aware behavior, to I feel like I’m about to go up on a manic swing and do a bunch of meth so to kind of manage it, how do I come back to a more medium place rather than going up on this manic high and being crazy destructive and doing a bunch of drugs to kind of cope with it and medicate it? Like, I mean, ’cause my God! Bipolar, and meth, and heroin, or any kind of schizoaffective disorder, anything with fixed delusion is not [laughs] — that’s a — drugs and any kind of serious mental disorder like that are the recipe for disaster. And so you take it and you try to help people become aware of their behaviors, and teach them to manage it and say, “I’m feeling this way. How do I manage it? Do I reach out to someone? Do I go schedule a therapy appointment? Do I call the crisis line? Do I see if someone, anyone, is available that I know I can talk to?” Other than just turning to kind of addictive behavior and using drugs, which… that’s not helpful ’cause then they have to explain to the court why they were using drugs or what they did.
So that’s kind of how Mental Health Court works, is that we — a team of us get together and we staff participants and then we are all on the same page as service providers. And then, after that’s done, all of the participants come in, and they go up in front of the judge and explain, like, talk about how their week’s been, how they’re feeling… Judge Landes is amazing. She’s a former social worker and I didn’t know that but it was really cool so it kind of — it gives a lot of context to her, why she is really good at what she does. And so, yeah, they come up and explain to the judge what your week’s been like, how they’re feeling, what they’ve been dealing with, they have to do homework assignments in which they have to get pretty introspective and they read it to the court. It’s a big deal because myself, as someone who’s someone who’s pretty like tightly-wound in terms of my own privacy, like, you have to bury your soul and like spill all your shit out on the table and be like, “Yup! That’s what it looks like!” And it’s not always fun but it’s — I mean, it tries to foster an environment of not [real] lack of judgment, interestingly enough, in a courtroom, like a lack of judgment from peers and service providers, but it’s a pretty special thing.
Matt Ready: Cool.
Justine: And then with Drug Court, the defense attorneys, and the treatment providers staff them, and I just go in and listen every Thursday and talk with them afterwards and see what do they need, like, check in, how’s everything going.
Matt Ready: Cool!
Justine: Please, don’t end up in jail next week because I’m going to go and see you and ask you, “What happened?” [Laughs]. There’s catharsis in answering what happened.
Matt Ready: Thank you for doing that work. I have a feeling it’s a program that could be used everywhere and your type of support.
Justine: It’s pretty special. It’s a lot of fun, like, it’s very satisfying to see people graduate in the end and be who they really are, you know, what their potential is more, rather than just being recidivist drug-addicted messes.
Matt Ready: All right! So we will — I’m sure we’ll talk more about such things at a later date. How do you feel about potentially hosting a show?
Justine: It will be fun. I will look forward to that.
Matt Ready: Yeah?
Justine: That will be great. Yeah!
Matt Ready: Okay. Well, I think we’ll wrap up. This is your first little interview, a little glimpse into what you do and your perspective.
Justine: Yup!
Matt Ready: All right!
Justine: Very much so.
Matt Ready: All right. Until next time.
Justine: Until next time. Thank you, Matthew.
Matt Ready: Thank you.
