On a recent episode of the podcast “Criminal,” a 71-year-old woman named Sandie Alger spoke of her life of crime. Alger, who first started stealing checkbooks (and identities) as a teenager, found herself in and out of California jails and prisons for over three decades before she quit the criminal life altogether in the late 1980s. Throughout, she was addicted to drugs, mainly heroin.
On a recent episode of the podcast “Criminal,” a 71-year-old woman named Sandie Alger spoke of her life of crime. Alger, who first started stealing checkbooks (and identities) as a teenager, found herself in and out of California jails and prisons for over three decades before she quit the criminal life altogether in the late 1980s. Throughout, she was addicted to drugs, mainly heroin.
Today, more than two decades after she entered rehab herself, Alger is the director of the women’s program at the Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers, an intensive, long-term drug treatment program in Durham, N.C. Many of the young women she works with have cycled in and out of jail because of their addictions, just as Alger did.
She knows much about the old criminal justice system of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, having seen it from the inside. But she also has hands-on experience with the sometimes-destructive ways in which today’s criminal justice system handles people with drug addictions.
We asked her how the system – and the people in it – have changed over time.
[For more of this story, written by Eli Hager, go to https://www.themarshallproject...-is-better-than-jail]
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