By Taylor Sisk for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

“Every time I was incarcerated,” Brittany Herrington said, “every single time, I did not want to do drugs when I left. I wanted to get a job, get a home, get my kid back. Every single time. Nothing was gonna stop me. 

“But no one sat me down and said, ‘When you get out, it’s going to be really, really hard. There are steps you have to take to make these things happen.’”

One Tuesday morning not long ago, Herrington sat in a conference room at the Greenup County Detention Center in Eastern Kentucky and recalled her years cycling through the criminal justice system while in the throes of addiction to prescription pain pills. 

Herrington is a Greenup County native. “This was my first home away from home, at 18 years old,” she said, in reference to this very structure. “Right here. Cried the whole three days.” 

“Every time I went to jail, I wanted to get better,” she asserted. “But I had no examples of how to do otherwise.”

Herrington eventually found a model of stability – a woman who had faced similar challenges and overcome them – and today she’s project coordinator for First Day Forward, a program offering support and assistance to people with substance use disorder who are reentering their community after incarceration. 

The program was created through a Rural Communities Opioid Response Program grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration and operates under the Northeast Kentucky Substance Use Response Coalition, a partnership of multiple organizations throughout the region. It’s now in place in seven rural Eastern Kentucky counties: Carter, Clark, Greenup, Mason, Powell, Rowan, and Montgomery.

“Every time I left incarceration,” Herrington said, “I was faced with everything that I had left: same people, same places, same habits, same routines; no new skills. And it got worse really, really quick.” 

“We don’t want that for our people,” she said. First Day Forward offers a stable foundation from which to build.

Been Through It

First Day Forward was born of interviews conducted with people in area jails living with a substance use disorder, asking them what they would need when they got out for a successful reentry to the community and to support their recovery.

The program is for those who have a self-identified substance use disorder; it’s important they acknowledge they have a disorder. Most critical is that “they want to work to change,” Herrington said. “You’ve got to want to put the work in.” 

The lynchpins of the program are its peer support specialists. Randy West is one such. Like Herrington, he’s a Greenup County native. And also like Herrington, he was no stranger to this detention center. 

West estimates he’s been provided accommodations in these jail cells on 18 occasions, the first for a DUI. In his early 20s, he entered a cycle that took him from alcohol to Xanax to prescription opioids to heroin; he was “running the streets” selling drugs. 

“Quite a few years of my life – I can’t remember much of it,” West said. It took a few tries, but he eventually found the treatment he needed. He now mentors those who will benefit from his wisdom.

“One of the first questions I get asked by new participants,” West said, “is if I’ve been through what they’ve been through” – has he slept in those racks, felt the paralysis of despair. “And whenever they know that, they’re so much more comfortable. They’re like, ‘Okay, I can loosen up and talk with this guy.’”

Participation in the program generally begins 60 to 90 days prior to release, with both individual and group meetings. A needs assessment is conducted at the outset; a case plan is then mapped to establish objectives and how to attain them. 

Among the things participants most urgently need is something as fundamental as an ID, a social security card, or a birth certificate. Some 70% of screened inmates identify as needing at least one of those three.

First Day Forward alum Brandon Adams had never had a driver’s license. He now has one, drives a minivan, regained custody of his three daughters, and also has custody of a granddaughter. And he met his fiancé through the program. 

“We’ve been together almost three years,” he said. “We keep each other in line.” 

Cassidy Begeot serves as the First Day Forward peer support specialist for women in Greenup County. “I did two years in three different county jails,” she said, “and the whole time I sat in there I really knew I wanted something different. I would replay all the things I had learned in groups, from social workers, from people that came in and out of my life … and I knew I wanted something different. I just didn’t know how to get it.”

Begeot’s work as a peer support specialist offers “a constant reminder of where I was, where I want to be, where I don’t want to be again,” she said. “And I need that daily.”

Moreover, the job offers full-time employment with benefits.

‘Real Now, Right?’

The day of release from jail, the participant is met by their peer support specialist and the case plan is revisited. 

“Because stuff’s real now, right?” said Herrington. “We planned for this two months ago … but now we’re here. So what are we doing today? What are we doing this week? What are we doing long term? What do we want? We’ve got these needs; we’ve got these wants. It’s here now.” 

Over the next 90 days, as many objectives are met as possible. That period can then be extended as necessary. 

A relapse doesn’t mean mandatory expulsion.

“We give them the opportunity to restart, and help them along the way,” said Carla Terry, First Day Forward project director for three counties. But they must show a willingness to keep working toward their recovery. And some further reassessing, recalibrating of that case plan, may be in order.

“If the medication for diabetes is not working, we’ve got to change the diet, right?” Herrington said. “We’ve got to change the diet and maybe change the medicine.” Likewise with substance use disorder. There are myriad paths to recovery.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle in a successful transition is affordable housing. Like most everywhere else in the country, rural and urban, there’s precious little in this region. Then there’s the issue of background checks and landlords who won’t lease to those with felonies on their record.

First Day Forward peer support specialists help break down some of those barriers, guiding participants toward available resources. And their presence in the community helps counter the stigma around substance use disorder.

‘Offered Us Grace’

Judges want options, Herrington said. “I think we’ve heard that from almost every county where we sat down and met with judges at the onset of these projects. They’ve said, ‘We want more alternative-sentencing options.’”

When Greenup County Jailer Larry Pancake took office in January 2023, he enthusiastically embraced introducing First Day Forward into his facility. “I think everybody’s broken, including myself, in some way or another,” he said. He’s a strong proponent of rendering a jail term restorative.

Robert Sanders came to work in July as Pancake’s chief deputy after 30 years with the sheriff’s department. He said that on his first day on the job “I knew more inmates than I did employees” – the faces of so many he’d brought to the jail countless times.

Sanders said the jail had been, essentially, “a storage house for trouble; just throw ’em away and forget about it.” He believes First Day Forward has already begun to improve the recidivism rate there. “What they’re doing helps; it works.” 

The recidivism rate for those who’ve successfully completed the program throughout the region is 23.5%, while the general recidivism rate in, for example, Clark County is 53.2%.

For Casey Moore, the program was “the foundation I needed to be loved back to life.” Her addiction started with prescription pain pills; she then transitioned to heroin. She was in and out of jail and living on the streets, no contact with her kids.

She’s now the assistant general manager of a restaurant where she’s proactive in hiring people who’re in treatment, then lending them support. 

“I’ll go pick them up for work,” Moore said. “I’ll take them home from work. I work with them on their schedule so they can go to their meetings. I help them with housing; I connect them with people in the community.” 

After successfully completing the First Day Forward program, Moore still faced charges that had a mandatory sentence of seven years; but there’s a stipulation in the law that if incarcerating someone would be detrimental to the community, the sentence can be probated. 

All parties agreed “that it would do more harm to her community to put this girl in jail,” Herrington said, “because she had done so much work changing her community.”

“I think one thing that, across the board, we all have in common,” Herrington said, “is someone offered us grace in our recovery. Someone offered us grace – and someone provided a model for us to follow.”


Taylor Sisk wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Changes in federal law will permit West Virginia and other states to use Medicaid dollars to pay for health care services for incarcerated youths beginning Jan. 1.

In addition to helping kids get physical and dental health care, the new rules should give them needed resources to address mental and behavioral health challenges stemming from childhood trauma.

Elizabeth Crouch, associate professor of health services policy and management at the University of South Carolina, said mitigating adverse childhood experiences is a growing part of efforts to keep rural children out of the juvenile justice system and detention.

"A fifth of rural children are diagnosed with developmental behavioral mental health disorders," Crouch pointed out. "Rural children are more likely to be diagnosed with developmental behavioral disorders, such as ADHD, than their urban counterparts."

About 45% of West Virginia children experience adverse childhood experiences, a rate five points higher than the national average. The Medicaid coverage for youth in detention includes physical, dental and behavioral health screenings and case management services.

States are also taking into account neurocognitive research showing teen brains do not fully develop until the mid-20s. Crouch noted arrests of young people have dropped by more than 80% since the mid-1990s, as a greater understanding of childhood trauma has increased the number of alternatives to detention. Still, she acknowledged the challenges for rural kids are formidable.

"What we have found is that rural children have been disproportionately living in homes affected by current substance use or mental illness," Crouch explained. "Rural children have experienced much higher rates of opioid use."

Despite declining arrests and detention rates, young people of color are still far more likely than white youth to be held in juvenile facilities, according to The Sentencing Project.

The New York Police Department's new commissioner must address the agency's dwindling public trust as her tenure begins.

Jessica Tisch became the agency's top official after former commissioner Edward Caban resigned amid federal investigations. Past surveys show high trust in the department but a new survey of heavily policed neighborhoods paints a different picture.

Brett Stoudt, associate director of the Public Science Project, said it found people in such neighborhoods want crime handled differently.

"A significant number of these residents do not desire more investments in policing but instead desire approaches to public safety that invest in a broad set of supports and services, and institutions," Stoudt explained. "The kind that more fundamentally address the root causes of violence."

Other findings show people are fearful of their neighborhood's expanded police presence. Along with this, some said they have experienced physical or sexual violence from police officers. Stoudt noted this kind of policing mostly affects minorities in the city. The New York Civil Liberties Union finds Black people are 20% of the city's population, but were 60% of people police stopped in 2023.

Recommendations to fix the issues include increasing transparency for the department, firing officers who abuse their position for power and stopping the spread of misinformation from the agency.

Ileana Méndez-Peñate, program director for the group Communities United for Police Reform, said other recommendations aim to reduce the department's omnipresent role in some areas.

"The other policy recommendation related to that is the real need to invest in the fundamental needs of New Yorkers," Méndez-Peñate emphasized. "I talked about housing and education but also youth programs and services and quality city infrastructure through security. These are some of the top concerns."

There could be challenges to enacting the survey's solutions. One is the charter revisions passed on Election Day, since one of them gives the department more power. She added another challenge is financing, since the millions of dollars the city spends on the police department do not address the root causes of certain issues.


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By Christopher Blackwell and Loretta Pierre for The Appeal.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Mississippi News Connection reporting for The Appeal-Public News Service Collaboration

About a year ago, a close friend, Garrett Felber, told me about a project close to his heart—the campaign to Free the Mississippi Five (MS5). 

The MS5 are the last remaining women in Mississippi sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after ten years before the state virtually abolished parole in 1995. Although they are, ostensibly, parole-eligible, the state has routinely denied their release without reasonable justification. They each have been imprisoned for more than 30 years.

The five have each taken responsibility for the harm they caused and spent decades pursuing growth and repair. Felber sent me interviews he conducted with each person about their lives and the repeated, arbitrary denials by the Mississippi Parole Board. One of the group, Loretta Pierre, has been denied parole 14 times, more than any other woman in the state’s history. 

The more I learned, the more I wanted to help. So I am sharing the words of Loretta Pierre, who tells us her story and introduces us to the other four women with whom she has spent nearly four decades in prison. —Chris Blackwell 

My name is Loretta Pierre. In 1985, when I was 20 years old and five months pregnant, I shot a woman during an argument. I immediately called 911 for help. But tragically, she did not survive. 

When the police arrived, I was arrested for aggravated assault and eventually charged with murder. Once my court proceedings began, I had five mistrials before I was convicted at my sixth trial. In 1989, I was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after ten years. 

I have now been in prison for 36 years and denied parole 14 times. I hold the record in the state of Mississippi for the number of times a woman has been denied. 

Before my conviction, I had never spent a single day in jail. The son I was pregnant with then is now 38 years old, and he has three daughters of his own. I have never met them. My Mama, my strongest supporter, died in September 2017, brokenhearted that I was never released in her lifetime. My sister, who was 10 years old when I was arrested, is now 49. And my brother, who was 24, is now 63. My siblings still support me, but with each parole denial, our hope of reuniting becomes more elusive. Nevertheless, we communicate daily and refuse to let this unreasonable punishment break us. 

I have completed more than 50 classes, courses, and programs in prison. Yet, when I last met with the parole board in January 2022, my file was completely empty and looked as if I had wasted decades doing nothing. There was no record of the job I held for more than 23 years; none of the letters of support that professors, friends, and family had sent in; or the document promising me a job when I came home. What was available for the board was my disciplinary record—the rule violations levied against me for filing grievances against the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) during my captivity. 

It has been a never-ending cycle that I’ve had to endure, day after day, year after year. I was not sentenced to life without parole or death by incarceration. Nor were the four other women from MS5 I want to introduce you to.

Evelyn Smith, 82, aka Mama E, has been incarcerated for 32 years for murder. She is an amazing cook, always makes extra for her friends, and has a remedy for anyone who is sick. Mama E’s last parole hearing in January 2022 lasted three minutes. They told her to come back in five years. I delivered the board’s decision to her in the privacy of her room. We shared our pain together, aware that she may not have another five years left to live but her faith in God is strong and she still holds hope she will one day be released.

Lisa Crevitt, 59, was just 20 years old when she succumbed to drug-induced psychotic delusions and dropped her child from a bridge. She has held the same job during her nearly 40 years in prison and has never received a single rule violation report. Lisa’s ex-husband and the deceased child’s father is now a judge in Warren County, Mississippi. Many believe that his political influence has kept Lisa imprisoned. Her first parole date was in 1995. The board has denied her nine times. 

Anita Krecic, 65, has been incarcerated since 1987, after her then-boyfriend shot and killed a Mississippi Highway Patrolman. Anita’s co-defendant, who shot the trooper, was executed in 2002. While incarcerated, she has consistently worked a job, earned over 100 college credits, and maintained an exemplary behavior record. She displays strong values, morals, and ethics in her daily life and is currently enrolled in seminary school. But in the lead-up to each of her parole hearings, signs opposing her release are typically posted throughout the county where she was convicted. In 2022, she was denied by the board and told to return in 2030. 

Linda Ross, 62, has been incarcerated since 1989 for killing a man who attacked her. She has maintained a job throughout her incarceration and is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree. She is very generous and loves to cook for friends. Linda loves to share stories with those incarcerated with her. 

Each time we are denied parole, the board cites the “serious nature” of our crimes. None of us can change what we did—only who we have become since. I have completed every program MDOC has made available to me. That this doesn’t seem to matter makes me think that those with authority see no value in the department’s rehabilitation courses. These programs feel like a sham, nothing more than a way for crooked authorities to generate funding while putting on a show for the public. 

Change will not happen unless the public pressures those who oppress us without oversight. Without transparency and accountability, we five—and many like us across the country—will be forced to die behind these towering walls—not to provide safety for our communities, but for retribution and punishment. 

For this to change, we need your help! Our website includes our clemency petitions, ways to support us, and addresses to contact us—please share on social media so others can learn about our plight. Relationships and correspondence can be life-saving forms of support. For too long the parole board in Mississippi has been able to act as judge, jury, and executioner. We must build our collective strength to combat this repressive system. It is far past time for us to get a chance to return to our communities. 


Christopher Blackwell and Loretta Pierre wrote this article for The Appeal.


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