Inmates Save Fellow Prisoners’ Lives with Naloxone

In a California county jail, a naloxone box is accessible within the facility’s housing unit. Last week, an inmate began to overdose, and a fellow inmate administered two doses of naloxone. Sheriff’s deputies arrived and found that the inmate who was overdosing was still unconscious. They administered eight more doses of the medication, and the inmate was finally revived. He survived the ordeal.

The jail requires all inmates to watch an instructional video that equips them to administer naloxone. Since naloxone began to be supplied for inmate access in June, this was the eighth occasion in which inmates used it to save a fellow inmate’s life. An alarm goes off whenever a box of naloxone is accessed, which alerts jailers that a possible overdose has occurred. More information about this story follows:

• Since June 2020, deputies at the jail have administered naloxone in cases of suspected overdoses more than 500 times.
• The jail also provides access to free naloxone to inmates released from the jail.
• An article about the jail says that, in recent years, the sheriff’s department in that county was heavily criticized for the high number of overdose-related deaths in the facility.
• A recent request that the county is considering is to include jailers in the body scans as a way of reducing inmate access to illicit drugs.

Also see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10 of this ongoing series.

Providing Texas inmates with helpful resources is the purpose of this website, whether the prisoners are or have been detained in a city or county jail in the state. Insinuating that persons or organizations have been involved in misdeeds is never intended on this site.

–Guest Contributor