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Kenton County began shuttling inmates from 104 directly to the LLC to avoid the perilous bus trip. The day before I met Webb-Edgington, eleven people from the jail arrived. LLC staff fed them, then got busy finding them beds in sober-living houses. They fitted a couple for eyeglasses. One man was wearing only shorts; outside, the temperature was 21 degrees. LLC staff dug him up a pair of pants. Kenton County jailer Terry Carl hired a social worker to sign inmates up for Medicaid. They often asked her for dental care, too. Ravaged teeth were as public a sign of street addiction as visible tattoos. Improved smiles, on the other hand, helped their confidence; then they dressed better and they got their hair cut, too. Some of them got tattoos removed by Jo Martin, who in the winter of 2019, three years after being turned away, moved her lasers into an office at the LLC. Jason Merrick imagined now what he called “recovery-ready communities”—towns geared to helping addicts recover. “This is what rehabilitation looks like,” Merrick told me. “It’s a full continuum of care, not just punishment.
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Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)