“lull all pain and anger and bring forgetfulness”: The Odyssey of Homer, translated by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 47.
soul was “being rubbed down with silk”: From Druin Burch’s Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It (London: Random House UK, 2010), 16. A worthwhile examination of the morphine molecule’s pull in literature, art, and film offers several other examples: Lecture by Susan L. Mizruchi, “Opioids: The Literary, Experiential Point of View,” Boston Athenaeum, June 13, 2017, available at https://vimeo.com/221754272.
“trying to get rid of the lowlifes”: Author interview, Rosemary Hopkins, Sept. 23, 2016.
“more boxes that have to be checked”: Author interview, Andrew Bassford, April 10, 2017.
An annual $35 billion lie: Michael Corkery, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and David Segal, “Addiction, Inc.: Marketing Wizards and Urine-Testing Millionaires: Inside the Lucrative Business of America’s Opioid Crisis,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 2017.
“we don’t have good data”: Author interview, Dr. John Kelly, Jan. 2, 2018.
“killing people for that myth to be out there”: Author interview, Cheri Hartman, Jan. 16, 2018.
statewide corrections behemoth that returns: Author interview, Anthony West, chief operations officer, Virginia CARES, July 14, 2017.
likens the war on drugs to a system: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010). Alexander’s thesis was further delineated by a 2017 book by scholar John F. Pfaff, in which he argues that the incarceration spike was fueled more by elected local prosecutors, the vast majority of them white men who operate behind a veil of secrecy and aggressively forge plea deals in 95 percent of cases: Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Mass Reform (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
shift in public spending from health and welfare programs: “Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections, U.S. State and Federal Prison Population, 1925–2015,” Sentencing Project: http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf; Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau), 2014, introduction.
one in three black men was destined to end up: Marc Mauer, Sentencing Project, “Addressing Racial Disparities in Incarceration,” Prison Journal, 2011. The Washington Post elucidated those statistics (and found them to be somewhat outdated by 2015) in Glenn Kessler, “The Stale Statistic That One in Three Black Males Will End Up in Jail,” June 16, 2015. In the Washington, D.C., area where Jones hailed from, the statistic was three out of four, according to Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 6–7, citing 2000 corrections data.
recidivism rate of 75 percent: Matthew R. Durose, Alexia D. Cooper, and Howard N. Snyder, “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010,” U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 2014. Among prisoners released in 2005 and tracked for five years: 32 percent had drug-related offenses, and of those, 77 percent reoffended within that five-year period, compared with 57 percent of all offenders released who reoffended, and 75 percent of drug traffickers reoffended: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rprts05p0510.pdf.
statistically less likely to use or to deal: Blacks are far more likely to be arrested for selling or possessing drugs than whites, even though whites use drugs at the same rate, and whites are also more likely to sell drugs: Analysis of National Survey on Drug Use and Health data by Jonathan Rothwell, Brookings Institution, outlined in Christopher Ingraham, “White People Are More Likely to Deal Drugs But Black People Are More Likely to Get Arrested For It,” Washington Post, Sept. 30, 2014.
(Three-quarters of federal drug offenders are black): https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf . State rates: http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics.
“racial stereotyping actually seems to be having”: Author interview, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Jan. 6, 2016.
young whites were dying of overdose: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, “Drug Poisoning Mortality, United States, 1999–2015,” Jan. 19, 2016, and Allan Smith, “There’s a Disturbing Theory About Why America’s Overdose Epidemic Is Primarily Affecting White People,” Business Insider, Jan. 25, 2016.
Winchester was launching the region’s first drug court: Author interviews, Lauren Cummings, July 3 and July 17, 2017.
Winchester was becoming a magnet: Ibid.; Matthew Umstead, “P&G Still Looking for Workers for New W.Va. Plant,” Herald-Mail Media, Dec. 8, 2016; and staff report, “Governor Announces Amazon’s E-Commerce Facility and 1,000 New Jobs in Frederick,” Winchester Star, March 28, 2017.
Sunday services at the downtown mall: Author interview, Pastor Brad Hill, July 14, 2017.
“That’s usually when they commit new crimes”: Author interview with Ronnie Jones’s probation officer, name withheld because she said she wasn’t authorized to speak, June 30, 2016. Of the 5.2 million people across the United States who owed child support in 2010, 662,000 were incarcerated, according to federal data from the Office of Child Support Enforcement.
holdover from a 1996 federal ban: States that still have full bans preventing felons from getting food stamps are Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia, according to Teresa Wiltz, “States Ease Access to Welfare and Food Stamps for Convicted Drug Felons,” PBS NewsHour, Aug. 9, 2016; Yale study: Helen Dodson, “Ban on Food Stamps Leads to Hunger, HIV Risk Among Former Drug Felons,” YaleNews, March 25, 2013.
(Virginia is one of twenty-six states): Eli Hager, “Six States Where Felons Can’t Get Food Stamps,” Marshall Project, Feb. 4, 2016. Six states still have full bans—Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Virginia’s partial-ban restrictions are listed here: https://vacode.org/2016/63.2/II/5/63.2-505.2/.
were given reduced sentences: Author interview, Christine Madeleine Lee, Mark Schroeder’s federal public defender, July 5, 2016. Ann E. Marimow, “One of Scalia’s Final Opinions Will Shorten Some Federal Prison Sentences,” Washington Post, June 24, 2016, referring to Johnson v. United States, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C., June 2015. A 2013 Yale School of Medicine study found that 91 percent of people recently released from prison didn’t have reliable access to food: https://news.yale.edu/2013/03/25/ban-food-stamps-leads-hunger-hiv-risk-among-former-drug-felons.
“designed for you to come back”: Author interview, Mark Schroeder, July 17, 2017.
felon-friendlier cities like Seattle?: People in Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program are 60 percent less likely to commit further crimes, according to an independent review conducted by the University of Washington,