Pet Prescription Team brings dogs to OC jail to provide pet therapy for inmates

SANTA ANA, Calif. (KABC) -- There's been an effort to re-imagine the approach to criminal justice for several years now, but how can it be fair and free of bias?

The solution might be in the form of a color-blind, unconditionally loving dog.

The Intake Release Center at the Orange County Jail looks and sounds as you might expect, except for three days a week when the Pet Prescription Team brings Faith - or Stevie - into the facility.

The dogs provide the inmates the calming and therapeutic benefits of a canine's unconditional love.

"It's not a human thing doing it. It's a dog doing it, which is ... you can't put a prescription to that, but you can surely say, 'You need to tap into that,'" said Krystal Emery, the director of the Pet Prescription Team.

The partnership with Pet Prescription is new to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, but Commander Nate Wilson said the results were seen almost immediately.

"It's almost like magic," he said. "You see a complete shift in individuals. The dog has this immediate calming effect, and it's been really amazing to see what they can do."

Kim Gully of Chino Hills, a Pet Prescription volunteer, agrees.

"You see them have that moment of ... they feel like a person," she said. "They are feeling something, joy, that they may not get to feel in the jail while they're here."

The inmates housed at the Intake and Release Center have a variety of mental health issues, and there is help available. The goal of the Pet Prescription program is to get them to accept it.

"Right away, you see changes in their mood and affect, so people who have been very flat or withdrawn are now, all of a sudden, showing emotion and are engaging," explained Correctional Behavioral Health Division Manager Geoffrey Glowalla. "People who would have isolated in their cell otherwise are now coming out and engaging with the therapy animals, and in turn, you see them start to engage in other therapeutic services as well."
The benefits of the Pet Prescription partnership not only helps the inmates, but it helps staff members too.

Deputies tasked with the care of people who are at times dangerous can more safely do the job with an inmate population in good spirits.

"For us, we have to engage with some of these individuals," said Wilson. "There's medication that they have to receive, there's treatment that they have to go through. We can't just neglect them and say, 'Oh well, we can't deal with him. He's too aggressive,' and leave him locked up in a cell. There are times we have to bring them out and engage with them, and if we can bring in an animal that calms that instead of us having to physically pull somebody out that the dog can calm them to a point where we can walk them out ... That's a win all the way around."

Emery said it's all about that one person who can make a difference in a person's life.

"In our organization, it's that one dog that can make a difference with a prisoner," she said. "That matters to us, and I know that it matters to the jail system."