It's 7 a.m. in the library of the Franklin County Jail, and nurse Jennifer Maillet is preparing addiction medications for eight men.

She mixes methadone with water and crushes buprenorphine. She puts the medication in each man's mouth as correctional officers stand watch. Every five minutes, Maillet checks each mouth with a flashlight. After three checks the men are taken to a washroom to rinse their mouths, eat a Saltine cracker, rinse again, and wash their hands.

Methadone and Suboxone (the brand name for buprenorphine) ease opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Forty-four of the estimated 200 people incarcerated at the Frankin County facility receive addiction medications on this day.

That includes 30-year-old Rafael Ramirez. Until he was incarcerated, he had never taken addiction medication before.

"I've been to jail about four other times and I would go cold turkey," he says. "I would be in a cell throwing up, not sleeping, not eating for four or five days. When I came in I was sick for two days, but I started Suboxone and I'm fine. It's like I didn't even take heroin."

Each person coming in to the jail is screened for drug use and withdrawal symptoms. They're asked if they've been prescribed medication and if they want it. About half say they're addicted to heroin.

Correction officer Lee Terrell says providing medications has helped the jail.

"I think it's working," he says. "I think violence in the facility has gone down. We used to get a lot through the mail; there used to be a lot of contraband. That has come to minimal, if anything."

Many correction officials have refused to provide all three addiction medications that are available. Officials have been more open to providing naltrexone, which goes by the brand name Vivitrol and typically is given right before someone is released to block the effects of opioids. The other two medications, buprenorphine or methadone, are opioids, and many correction officials say those medications are too easily diverted for illicit use.

But Ramirez says that's not true.

"The process we do here, it's almost impossible," he says. "There's no way. I mean if you attempt it you're just dumb."

Three years ago the Franklin County Jail, in Greenfield, became the first in the state to offer buprenorphine, largely because of Sheriff Christopher Donelan.

"We don't judge and we don't punish; the judge punishes," Donelan says. "Our job is to treat people with dignity and respect and to keep people safe and to do our best to make them better because no one is serving a life sentence here, so they're all coming back to our communities."