At Flagler County Jail, Inmates in Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Now Foster Kittens as Part of Their Therapy

Last Updated: 5:33 p.m.

The Flagler County jail is now also a foster home for 14 kittens. 

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office launched the fostering program jointly with the Flagler Humane Society through the jail’s nationally recognized mental health and addiction recovery program for inmates known as Smart (Successful Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Treatment.) The kittens and the inmates have been bonding, developing emotional connections that help with recovery and give the cats the care and attention they need. 

Sheriff Rick Staly had researched the potential for such a fostering program to enhance Smart’s the success–65 percent of participants don’t reoffend–and asked Detention Division Chief Daniel Engert to explore the possibility of running one at the jail. 

“You can read all kinds of studies, and it’s well known, if you can partner the Humane Society with inmates, it tends to calm down the inmates,” the sheriff said, “and quite often they learn life lessons on how to treat people through the animals, whether it’s a kitten or an adult.”

Amy Carotenuto, the director of the Flagler Humane Society, had talked with the Sheriff’s Office about just such a program some four years ago. The idea fizzled back then (it was around Covid). The Sheriff’s Office approached her recently, and about three weeks ago, the first batch of kittens went to jail.

“Kitten fosters is always something we need, because we get a lot of orphans with no mama,” Carotenuto said. “In June we go in just under 300 cats and kittens. This just seemed like a good partnership because we’re always looking for more fosters.”

That batch that went to the jail a few weeks ago just had its first “graduates,” Carotenuto said, as the cats got old enough to be spayed and neutered and brought back to the Society for adoption.

The Humane Society pays for all the food and other costs related to the kittens’ care. “It does add up,” Carotenuto said. “Canned cat food use to be 25 cents a can, now it’s over a buck. It’s not inexpensive, but we’re going to be taking care of them if they’re under our roof or being fostered, either way.” 

The kittens are only in the Smart program pod at the jail, and only among women.

“So those are inmates that are taking our program and are heavily involved in treatment, whether it’s mental health or addiction treatment or other programs we have in the jail,” Staly said. “They clearly want to turn their life around. So it’s not like we have kittens walking aimlessly around the jail. In that one cell block where that program is run, there’s a little kitten cage in there, and they do get to go outside in the recreation yard that’s fully enclosed, when the inmates go out for their recreation. So no chance of escape or anything happening  for the kittens.”

Nevertheless, “they did have to write disciplinary reports on two of the kittens for being climbers in the cell,” the sheriff said. And of course if the kittens escape, they’ll have to be charged as fugitives. 

There’s no competition for the cats in the cell block, so the little things won’t be a point of contention, “and hopefully it’ll encourage inmates who are not in the cell block to want to participate in our Smart program,” the sheriff said. 

Many of the kittens have to be bottle-fed, being that young. They’re not yet ready for adoption. Hence the fostering. They’ll be put up for adoption when they’re old enough. Staly said the jail will be doing some marketing, using artificial intelligence software that makes the kittens look even cuter than they are. 

Less than a week after the kittens were introduced at the jail, Staly made an unannounced visit among the women there. He asked them what they thought of the initiative. “Their personality and their eyes just lit up and in some cases they told me ‘this was the first time I had to be responsible not only for myself but for something else,’” he said.

The jail is working on introducing a similar program, with dogs, on the men’s side of the jail’s Smart program.  Meanwhile male inmates are scheduled to begin assisting the Humane Society with building projects for the animals in need of adoption at the Palm Coast location, according to the Sheriff’s Office. 

“You realize this story is really going to hurt my law and order image,” Staly said. The story is likelier to burnish his image as both a law-and-order sheriff and a progressive willing to implement the number of programs he has since 2017, all of them aimed at improving inmates’ chances of returning to society as better-adjusted civilians. 

“I’m a law and order sheriff, but if I can help them become productive,  to not get rearrested, that’s my preference,” Staly said. 

The Sheriff’s Office announced the program today with a release headlined, “Kittens Are the New Inmates at the ‘Green Roof Inn,’” a headline the sheriff wrote himself, using his preferred moniker for the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility, which has a green roof. But that implied pending or adjudicated criminality on the cats’ part. In fact, and based on a thorough search of the court docket–both Circuit Court, County Court and Kitty Court–no cats are facing criminal charges locally. 

The search did not include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records. So it is unclear whether any of the kitties at the jail are in the country illegally, or whether today’s judicial decision temporarily blocking the president’s executive order to nullify birthright citizenship among the undocumented extends to cats. 

Garfield, known to spend part of his retirement at former Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin’s property, could not be reached for comment.