EYEWITNESS

Woman Sees First-Hand Damage Meth Can Do

Tears fell from Michelle Walters' eyes Monday night as she discussed how
methamphetamine dramatically changed her family.

Walters was addressing the dozen attendees of the Faulkner County Sheriff's
Office's methamphetamine awareness meeting in Vilonia as her husband,
Shannon, sat in the county Detention Center about 18 miles away.

"My husband is one of the fortunate ones," Walters said. "He still has his
family. Many have no one to encourage them to do good, to try to get out"
of jail.

Walters' husband is a state prisoner being held at the Faulkner County
Detention Center as an Act 309 prisoner, meaning he gets to serve out the
remainder of his sentence at the jail in exchange for performing certain
tasks there. He will be eligible for parole in a year.

Walters said her husband spent time at the Arkansas Department of
Correction's Cummins Unit before getting into the Act 309 program. While at
Cummins he saw drugs on a daily basis and even told his wife there were
more people per capita inside the prison on drugs than there are outside.

"He was there just six hours when he had a guy come up to him with cocaine
in one hand and methamphetamine in the other and he said 'which one do you
want.' My husband said 'neither one, that's what got me here.' A Putting
these people in jail doesn't help," Walters said.

Describing her husband as a "good person who fell into a bad situation,"
she said Shannon was busted for making meth just a few weeks after first
trying the highly addictive drug.

"He had only been involved with methamphetamine one month, just one month,"
she said. "His supplier left town and he decided to make it himself. That's
how addictive it is."

After being arrested, she said, no one offered her husband any help in
getting off the drug or any real reason to stop using.

"He was able to post bond and they just said 'bye-bye, we'll see you on
your court date'."

Before his court date of April 6, 1998, her husband had been drug free for
a month. "Then, the weekend before his (Monday) court date he said 'this is
my last chance' A and he used."

This, in part, she said, caused her husband to be handed a stiffer sentence
than some people found guilty of first-degree murder -- 20 years. The judge
ordered a drug test before Shannon was sentenced and he tested "dirty."

Leaving two young children, 2 and 4, behind, as well as his wife, Shannon
went to prison four years ago this week.

Before he became addicted to meth, he was bringing home $400 a week at his
job. The $13,700 the state estimated it costs to house a prisoner in 1999
was more than Walters brought home as a college student and school bus
driver, she said.

"I know there are some people that need to be in jail and nothing is going
to make them stop, but we need some form of counseling accessible to the
ones who have just made a mistake," Walters said. "If my little boy makes a
mistake I'm not going to send him to his room for two years. I'm going to
explain A and try to make him not make that mistake again."

Another expert at the meeting said studies have revealed conventional drug
treatment programs do not work on meth addicts. They need longer, more
intense treatment.

Walters agreed, saying, "The addiction is not going to go away magically,
you have to have the 'want to' as my husband says."

The final statistic Walters gave may have been the most supportive of that
idea.

A national magazine, she said, reported last year that the number of prison
inmates in America has more than tripled in the past 20 years. There are
roughly 2 million people in prison and 60 to 70 percent of those people
tested positive for drugs at the time of their arrest.

If the number of prisoners continues to increase at the rate it has for the
past 20 years, by the year 2053 there will be more people in prison than
out, the Brown University survey she cited revealed.

"We need to do something, but locking them up and throwing away the key is
not the answer," Walters said.