jail

“The homeless are just like you and me.” That’s a politically correct assertion that doesn’t quite recognize the reality on the ground, such as the link between self-destructive behavior — most notably, substance abuse — and living on the street with no place to call home. California is home to 12% of America’s population, but 30% of the number “experiencing homelessness” and half the population of unsheltered homeless. Why? A new study on homelessness, the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness by UC San Francisco, lays out how a set of painful events can bring adults to the sad moment when they lose a roof over their heads. They lose low-paying jobs and then apartments; they bunk in spare Read More ›

“I’ve seen both pills and powder coming through,” Dennis Folk tells me. Folk is sounding the alarm that fentanyl is increasingly making its way into the King County jail and inmates are overdosing at a staggering rate. He is the president of the King County Corrections Guild, representing men and women who are trying to stop the flow of this lethal drug into the facility. “It was heroine years ago, now it’s fentanyl,” he tells me. Seattle Fire and medics respond to each overdose and administer Narcan. KYI Radio’s Ari Hoffman and I have been looking into this concerning trend. We’ve been told that there have been at least eight fentanyl overdoses in the jail since the end of May. Read More ›