My good friends at The Philadelphia Inquirer have, as we have previously noted, been giving OpEd and other space to those criticizing Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ harder line on the open-air drug markets and junkies sleeping on the streets in Kensington.

Well, here they go again!

Drug deaths and overdoses plague Philly jails, raising concerns about plans to step up Kensington arrests

Since 2018, 25 people have died drug-related deaths in Philly jails, where drugs are widely accessible. As the city plans to arrest more drug users in Kensington, that has compounded safety concerns.

by Samantha Melamed and Aubrey Whelan | Sunday, July 7, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

Donna McDonough used to pray that her daughter, Kelly Ann Crawford, would be arrested.

Crawford had bipolar disorder and was addicted to fentanyl and Xanax. She’d tried drug treatment several times, McDonough said. But she always ended up back in Kensington, where she was unhoused and broke but somehow regularly found a way to feed the stray cats. Her mother said that nothing — not her daughter’s deep love for her two children, not her dreams of a second career as a veterinary tech — had been enough to help Crawford find her way out.

I’ll omit several paragraphs here telling us just what you expected: rather than the traditional way of beginning stories with the 5Ws+H — who, what, when, where, why, and how — the Inky’s new journalism is to begin news articles with single, frequently heart wrenching, incidents, so the reader has probably already guessed that no, Miss Crawford didn’t get clean in jail, but died.

On Dec. 14 (2023), Crawford was pronounced dead — one of at least 25 people who have died in the Philadelphia jails since 2018 of accidents related to drug intoxication, an Inquirer review of medical examiner’s data and court records has found.

Some of the deaths were from overdoses; other people were going through withdrawal when they died, according to court filings.

In addition to the 25, one woman took her own life while in withdrawal in the jail, according to a 2022 lawsuit. And at least three more people died in Philadelphia police holding cells, including a man who died by suicide while in withdrawal.

Reporters Samantha Melamed and Aubrey Whelan did a fairly good job of delving through the public records, and it’s a sad litany of the typical Philadelphia government: too few jail employees to do things right. After all, who wants to be a prison guard?

As Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has laid out plans for cleaning up Kensington’s open-air drug markets, police leaders have made clear that arresting people who use drugs is part of that plan.

“Many of these individuals are going to get locked up for low-level offenses,” Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel told City Council at a May 6 budget hearing. . . . .

The recent history of drug-related deaths within the jails — and recent internal reports obtained by The Inquirer showing that prisoners are regularly being hospitalized for overdoses — raise questions about whether the direly understaffed facilities can safely house an influx of medically fragile prisoners.

That prisoners are able to get drugs while behind bars shows the ineptitude of the prison management, and that’s part of the article’s purpose. But it also raises the uncomfortable question that only an [insert slang term for the anus here,/i>] like me would ask: why do we care if junkies die in jail?

Seriously, why do we care? We like the idea that some of the junkies could get clean and sober and conquer their addictions, and become productive members of society, but that is frequently a pipe dream. AddictionHelp.com reported:

While some addicts may require several attempts at treatment, the data proves that treatment does work when the addict is committed to their recovery. According to SAMHSA, 68% of people who complete drug and alcohol detox programs report their treatment to be successful.

Did you notice the caveat? “(W)hen the addict is committed to their recovery”. Ashley Treatment reports:

In fact, 85 percent of individuals relapse within a year of treatment, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Moreover, two-thirds of individuals return to drug use within weeks of beginning addiction treatment.

The oh-so-well-meaning activists want to “reduce harm”, but, as Olivia Reingold reported, no matter how well-meaning they are, Kensington residents say that they are causing far more harm than they are reducing. Putting the junkies in jail reduces harm to the neighborhood, by getting them off the streets, and if they manage to keep using drugs while behind bars, they’re just going to go back to the streets when they get out.

So, how is society worse off if a few of the junkies?

The story told us that Miss Crawford “was unhoused and broke but somehow regularly found a way to feed the stray cats,” and apparently found enough money to keep paying for her fix. How did she do that? Dis she have a welfare check coming in? Was her mother sending her cash? Or was she like most of the addicts, engaging in prostitution or petty — and perhaps not-so-petty — theft?

While we haven’t been told about Miss Crawford specifically, we know that, generally speaking, the junkies laying in the streets are doing more harm to the community than just taking up sidewalk space. They steal, they burgle, they turn tricks, and they leave all sorts of trash around, including human waste and discarded drug needles. They attract the drug dealers eager to sell product to potential new customers, frequently school-aged kids.

There comes a time when we have to consider what’s best for the community more than trying to be so very kind and sympathetic to those people who have trashed their own lives.