Risk infection or violate probation? Residents face dilemma at Fort Worth rehab center
Until last week, Brittney Cardenas was one of about 150 residents at Fort Worth’s Cenikor complex, an addiction rehabilitation center that treats its residents through what it calls work therapy. It’s in a low-slung brick building in an industrialized area just south of John Peter Smith Hospital. The residents, many of whom are ordered by the court system to stay there, live in dorms that house about 30 people in bunk beds. They eat community meals in a cafeteria and pile into vans to attend jobs throughout Dallas-Fort Worth.
As soon as Cardenas started hearing reports about the spread of coronavirus in the news last month, she became concerned about the living situation: What if a resident contracted COVID-19? They could infect other residents and potentially carry the disease to other workers at their job sites. Because most Cenikor residents work in warehouse settings their jobs are considered essential.
Cardenas said that although Cenikor took people’s temperatures at the door and set up a hand sanitizing station, it did nothing to keep residents apart from each other, either at the facility or in the vans on the way to work. When Cardenas described Cenikor’s lack of response to her attorney, Raymond Sanders, he said she needed to leave immediately, even though she risked violating the terms of her probation. Cardenas’s mother, Dawn Traylor, picked her up from Cenikor on March 27 and brought her home to Mexia. Traylor said that while she waited a group of residents were getting into a van and another line of people were standing at the door. “Realistically you cannot socially distance yourself when living with 150 people,” she said.
As the coronavirus continues to decimate the United States, national concern has risen for people on parole or probation who are ordered to work for outside employers and return to massive living communities that lead to potentially unsafe conditions. Kevin Ring, president of Families for Justice Reform, wrote a letter March 26 to the attorney general and Bureau of Prisons asking for the release of prisoners at re-entry facilities. “People are confined in tight quarters and don’t have the resources to comply with CDC guidance addressing their hygiene or freedom to practice social distancing,” he wrote. “Individuals in home confinement would be far better equipped to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and they would be a far lower risk to the BOP or the public’s health care system.”
In addition to Cenikor, Dallas-Fort Worth has other large group facilities that house people on parole and probation, including ABODE Place, which has 75 beds in six dorm-style rooms in Dallas, and the Fort Worth Transitional Center, a halfway house that has 200 beds in 48 rooms. Texas contracts with at least 15 halfway houses and drug treatment centers with capacities of greater than 100, according to the criminal justice department.
“As a general matter confined spaces like these — and this includes jails and prisons too — are potential incubators for the virus especially given how densely packed those spaces are,” said Peter Steffensen, a staff attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “People who live in those conditions in my mind should not be forced to choose between the possibility of re-incarceration on one hand, where they leave the facility without permission, and serious illness or death on the other if they stayed and were exposed to the virus.”
Profit over safety
Cardenas had been at Cenikor for about 10 months. She was assigned by a judge in Limestone County as part of a 10-year probation sentence for felony drug possession.
She is one of nearly 500,000 people on probation or parole in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (about 150,000 are incarcerated in prisons). Some 3,500 parolees are based in halfway houses, like the Fort Worth Transitional Center, or intermediate sanction facilities, like drug rehabilitation centers. They are run by operators that contract with the state. Desel, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman, said these facilities must follow the same COVID-19 guidelines set by the department for the prison system, including heightened cleaning, disinfecting and personal hygiene regulations recommended by the CDC for correctional institutions. The parole clients are still allowed to go to work if they have essential jobs.
Data on the number of people on probation ordered to inpatient rehabilitation sites was not available from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, but judges often assign defendants to private centers approved by the state in lieu of state jail or prison. Michael Hancock, a former administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor who has researched rehabilitation facilities, said judges see them as a way to keep nonviolent offenders out of the prison system. He said judges in Texas have had “a fairly benign view” of Cenikor.
Cenikor, based in the Houston area, is one of the most prominent Texas companies in the private sector for indigent and criminal justice clients. Founded in 1967, it has four long-term residential facilities in Texas that serve hundreds of people (it also has a facility in Louisiana). The company, a nonprofit, took in $21 million in revenue in 2017. It was honored by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 for its work in his war on drugs.
But because of Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporting by the news website Reveal in 2018 and 2019 — and a flurry of lawsuits that followed — Cenikor has recently faced questions over the legality of its operations. Rather than go through a robust counseling program, its residents work full-time jobs, and often overtime, for outside employers. The entirety of their wages are directly funneled from the employers back to Cenikor ostensibly to pay for housing, food, transportation and other services.
Cardenas liked her counselor at Cenikor but felt the company was focused on profits over rehabilitation. She was working at CKS Packaging in Dallas for about 50 hours a week, with even her overtime earnings going to the Cenikor, she said. Her feeling that Cenikor prioritized money multiplied when coronavirus became a concern.
Cardenas said she asked staff why they were being sent away to work, with 10 to 15 people in a van, and then back into the crowded living situation in the dorms. “They didn’t even mention social distancing when I was there,” she said.
Two employees at CKS Packaging, who are not residents at Cenikor, tested positive for coronavirus, she said (CKS Packaging did not respond to a request for comment). But Cenikor did not order any of its residents who work at CKS Packaging to isolate or quarantine, Cardenas said.
The warehouse-related jobs held by many Cenikor residents are considered essential under Tarrant County’s and the state’s orders. But Cardenas’s mother, Traylor, is concerned that Cenikor’s insistence on sending people to work and then to stay in the dorms goes against the spirit of the regulations and could lead to infection.
“The only (good) option they had was to lock them down and they didn’t do it. And they should’ve done it three weeks ago,” she said. “Each one of those people, all of their paycheck goes to Cenikor and they make $14 to $15 an hour. Multiply that times 100 and 50 hours a week, there’s a lot of money. And they don’t want to give up the money. That’s what this comes down to.”
Doug Smith, policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, said many higher quality rehabilitation centers have banned visitors, limited movement of residents and reduced the occupancy of bedrooms to prevent potential coronavirus spread. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lacks oversight of private entities like Cenikor, according to Desel.
Amy Granberry, a spokeswoman for Cenikor, said via email Cenikor had reduced the number of people per work van but declined to answer when it made that decision. Cenikor has limited guests to the Fort Worth facility but not banned them, and it has also instituted more cleaning, she said. Granberry declined to answer whether Cenikor would consider letting residents stay away from work or if they would be punished for choosing to skip work. “We are closely monitoring guidance from local, state and federal authorities and following those directives appropriately, along with all other relevant statutes,” she said. “We are focused on the needs and care of our clients at this time. Once the pandemic is resolved we will be available for an interview.”
An imbalance of power
Cenikor, unlike the halfway houses under control of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, does not require clients to stay. But residents who decide to skip work or leave, like Cardenas, could face repercussions. Cenikor corresponds with the court system and can report behavior it considers troubling. “If Cenikor is unhappy with how you have performed, they can hold that out there and you have to go back to the court,” said Zachary Flowerree, an attorney involved in collective action litigation against Cenikor.
Given that imbalance of power, Steffensen, of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said Texas officials need to set specific guidelines to better protect residents of rehabilitation and reentry centers during the coronavirus crisis.
There’s also a fine line between ensuring the well-being of the residents but not forcing private rehabilitation centers to make decisions that threaten their business. That is what happened to Cenikor in Louisiana. Last week, operations at its longterm facility in Baton Rouge were suspended, in part because Louisiana’s coronavirus regulations drove employers that contracted with Cenikor to sever ties. The closure of the facility forced dozens of residents to find new places to live.
Smith, of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, said Texas would not be in a situation where court-ordered and indigent clients dealt with the conditions like those described at Cenikor if the state provided more funding and better oversight. “It doesn’t have to be the Betty Ford clinic to provide evidence-based treatment,” he said. “You simply provide quality treatments with professionals and deal away with this absurd model where you put people into slave labor and call it an accountability model.”
Absent any coronavirus-related decisions by the state or federal government to move people on probation and parole to home confinement, Cardenas has to wait and hope a Limestone County judge will be sympathetic to her situation. Her attorney’s motion to modify the terms of her probation was pending as of Friday. Cardenas said she’s worried about the possibility of legal trouble but still in a better place since leaving Cenikor. “I’m much more relaxed and happier,” she said. “And I feel safe here.”
Nichole Manna contributed reporting to this story.
This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
