“Hey Aunt Lori. They are releasing me now. I’m going to walk to your house. I love you.”
That was the message my 25-year-old nephew left me from Orleans Parish Prison in the morning while I was brushing my teeth. I called out to my partner, who was just rising from bed: “Well, I guess that Jonathan is coming home.” He was as shocked as I was.
I became the legal guardian of Jonathan after he overdosed for the first time at the age of 15. He has spent his life battling drug addiction, specifically opioids. After losing both parents to overdoses, he was shuffled through treatment centers and incarceration. Jonathan has become a casualty of the war on drugs.
I have always tried to support him, knowing his addiction is ultimately rooted in trauma. Over the years, I have witnessed the repeated failures of our mental health care and criminal justice systems as they struggle to eradicate addiction with antiquated and unsuccessful protocols. His life has become a tragically predictable revolving door.
We live in New Orleans, which currently has one of the top coronavirus fatality rates per capita. My nephew, like many people who have struggled with addiction, has an underlying respiratory illness. While I am grateful he was released from incarceration, I am struggling with what to do now.
There has been an outbreak of coronavirus within the Louisiana carceral system. More than likely, Jonathan has been exposed. According to his social worker, he is one of over 1,500 individuals who have been released from incarceration in Louisiana since mid-March, many of them with no support system in place.
When my nephew was 18, legally an adult, he left my care. I had struggled with his addiction, and finding him unconscious and blue from another overdose was