JAIL STINT OPENS DOOR TO RECOVERY

Drug-Addicted Prostitute Turned Her Life Around Behind Bars

Many years ago I spent several days hanging out with a heroin
addict/prostitute in a notorious neighbourhood of Toronto.

The newspaper I was working for at the time was doing a multi-day
series on various drugs plaguing the city and I was assigned to cover
heroin -- how its increasing potency and decreasing price was leading
to a spike in not just new users, but also overdose deaths.

That's how I came to know Sam, whom I renamed Jackie for the articles.
Like most of the other prostitutes I have interviewed over the years,
Sam was extremely open. As a result, she and her "man" Danny gave me
total access to their lives. Every morning I would climb up the fire
escape of the brick walkup they lived in, crawl through their living
room window and wait for them to wake up to observe their heroin-ruled
existence.

Sam's life was horrific -- a total waste and a terrible worry for me.
When possible from my obscured vantage point, I would write down
licence plate numbers of the cars she would jump into and always felt
an intense sense of relief when she would return to her corner,
something she would do time and again until she raised enough money to
feed her and Danny's $600-a-day heroin habit. Her life, as she said,
was a vicious circle of turning tricks to get a fix and needing a fix
to turn the tricks.

As the eloquent victim-impact statements delivered by family members
of the six women who were murdered and butchered by Abbotsford, B.C.
pig farmer Robert Willie Pickton -- who was sentenced to life in
prison recently with no eligibility for parole for 25 years -- Sam was
so much more than "just a junkie/prostitute." She was a funny, clever,
exceedingly generous and beautiful woman.

We shared many, many laughs, some tears, our life stories and our
dreams. She spoke of "one day" kicking the habit, going back to
school, getting a good job and getting her then five-year-old daughter
back from her brother and sister-in-law who were raising her. I
encouraged her dream but I never really believed it possible.

Any time I was in that neighbourhood I would pop by either Sam's
corner or her apartment. But people like Sam aren't easy to keep in
touch with, since most don't have telephones or very stable addresses,
so when I moved from Toronto to Calgary in 1993 we lost contact.

Some nine years later, however, I got a voicemail that was so
uplifting, I recorded it and have kept the tape ever since.

"I'm doing great," said Sam on the voicemail message. "I just
graduated from college, I've had my daughter for five years, been
clean for six years and I would just love to talk to you ..." I called
her back immediately.

Essentially, after years of being arrested and quickly released time
and again, eventually Sam was arrested and bail was set at a price her
pathetic boyfriend couldn't meet, so Sam ended up being held in jail
until her trial.

Sam said her first days in jail were "hell on earth." She was forced
to go through withdrawal from her years of daily heroin use with
nothing to help her except Gravol.

"I'd never wish that kind of pain on anyone," she said "but I have to
admit jail was a blessing in disguise for me." In fact, Sam was a bit
angry that the system didn't up her bail much earlier so she'd get a
chance to stand outside of the pull of her addiction and the street.

Her story of redemption is instructive in many ways -- including the
importance of making the proper choices, not doing drugs, picking the
right mate, etc. But what lesson does her biography hold for society
on the whole and the government or the justice system in particular?

It seems rather obvious. Many of the seemingly enlightened programs
our society has established to deal with addicts and prostitutes --
which essentially boils down to turning a blind eye to their
destitution and slow suicide -- are really helping to enable
dysfunction and the destruction of lives.

The transformation of Sam's life is an example of how sometimes when
we think we are being kind, we are actually being cruel and when we
think we are being cruel by sending them to jail, we are actually
loving the person by recognizing they are much more than "just a
junkie" or "just a prostitute" and deserve a time to get away from
their destructive life.

In Alberta, a law that came into effect on July 1, 2006, proves the
point. It allows parents to apply for a court order to confine their
dependent child with severe drug abuse issues, for as much as five
days in a protective safe house "for detoxification, assessment and
development of a discharge treatment plan." There is a similar program
for children involved in prostitution.

According to a report released recently by the Alberta Alcohol and
Drug Abuse Commission, entitled: Evaluation of the Services Provided
Under the Protection of Children Abusing Drugs Act, 49 per cent of
youth who were taken into a safe house ended up voluntarily seeking
treatment after being discharged." Fully 58 per cent indicated "an
improvement in their quality of life one month after discharge" and a
whopping 85 per cent said they would recommend the service to friends
or relatives in need.

Virtually every one of those kids went into the program kicking and
screaming. Most ended up grateful for the ability to pull out of the
vicious circle their addictions had become.

Sam is a tax-paying, law-abiding, devoted mother working in an
accounting office. She was never "just" a junkie prostitute to those
who knew her. A stint in jail helped her prove it to society. How many
of those women murdered by Pickton might be alive today if society had
the will to be cruel in order to be kind?

Licia Corbella is the Calgary Herald's Editorial page editor.