Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill talks to the media outside the Kosciusko County Jail about the JCAP program on Wednesday, Aug. 22.

WARSAW — The state’s top prosecutor took the podium outside Kosciusko County’s jail Wednesday morning, Aug. 22, to officially announce the launch of a program designed to tackle substance abuse issues suffered by many of the nation’s inmates.

Curtis Hill, Indiana Attorney General, joined Kosciusko County Sheriff Rocky Goshert, Kosciusko County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Hampton and Matthew Graham, the director of Bowen Center’s Warsaw outpatient office at a press conference to announce the implementation of JCAP, or Jail Chemical Addiction Program.

“The best correctional models are those that not only penalize offenders for their crimes, but help improve their character by addressing social, emotional, spiritual, educational and family issues through targeted services,” said Hill.

Hill said JCAP, a 90-day in-jail program, “is one model that puts this truth into practice. We want to spread this model across the state. To this end, we are pleased to help facilitate a grant of $87,800 for the purpose of starting a JCAP program here in Kosciusko County.”

Goshert had been discussing the program for many months to county officials and said law enforcement was beginning to look for ways to help stave off growing numbers of citizens who were ending up behind bars.

State Attorney General Curtis Hill

“As our jail population was growing, we were looking at what we were going to do,” Goshert said. “We figured out that law enforcement could no longer arrest its way out of this problem.”

Goshert said at this week’s county council budget meeting that the jail is currently holding 371 inmates. “We decided we needed to look at what programs were out there,” he said.

Hampton referred to JCAP as “a new way to address the devastation of drug and alcohol abuse and on the lives of individuals, children, families and our community.”

For Hill, the program is designed to target the largest jail population demographics.

“The simple fact is that jails house a large number of addicts,” Hill said.

“By some estimates, the proportion of the incarcerated population with substance abuse issues hovers around 80 percent. Targeting inmate populations therefore represents one of the best methods of reaching drug users most in need of services.”

Hill said terms like prison reform have been historically referred to as evidence of society becoming soft on crime. He added that his goal was to dispel this preconceived notion and to break the cycle of drug abuse while the intended audience is, for lack of a better word, captive.

“For criminal offenders with addiction problems, incarceration can be a godsend, if it helps to put them on the road to recovery,” he said. “That’s what JCAP is all about.”

Hill entertained questions from the media during the Wednesday press conference.

“The bottom line is this,” he said. “If we can change hearts, we can change lives. This is all the kind of thing that Hoosiers should be able to rally around. There are no down sides to the opportunity in Kosciusko County to participate in the JCAP program and change the hearts and lives of addicts.”

The program is growing in popularity around the state and got its start in Boone and Dearborn counties, which began pilot programs of the new initiative.