By Paul Grondahl
Times Union
COLONIE — Inmates in the Albany County jail who have struggled to overcome heroin addiction will be the first to live in a special, intensive treatment unit.
The program was unveiled at a Friday news conference at the jail.
The inmates will live together in a modular structure in one of the prison’s yards. They have agreed to around-the-clock intervention that includes professional addiction counseling, peer-to-peer sessions and injection of the opiate blocker naltrexone, sold as Vivitrol. In addition, inmates have agreed to be dropped off at a local drug treatment program directly following release from the jail.
The program is called SHARP, or Sheriff’s Heroin Addictions Recovery Program.
The innovative, aggressive approach is Sheriff Craig Apple’s response to a heroin epidemic that has exploded across the Capital Region in the past couple years, overwhelming hospital emergency departments, causing a sharp increase in fatal overdoses and frustrating law enforcement.