Advocates Say Continuing Treatment For Short-Term Inmates Cuts Recidivism

With critics long holding that methadone is nothing more than a legal replacement for an illegal heroin addiction, few prisoners nationwide have received the bitter medicine in jail unless they were pregnant and at risk of losing an unborn child to withdrawal.

But that is changing. Lehigh County Prison has agreed to join Northampton and Berks county prisons in taking the next controversial step: continuing methadone treatment for short-term inmates who had been taking the medicine before incarceration.

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