Recent evidence has shown that offering medication treatment to addicts in prison can reduce state overdose deaths overall. Rhode Island — which has had one of the worst per-capita rates of overdose deaths — in 2016 began the first and still only program in the nation to screen all inmates for opioid use and provide medications for addiction treatment such as buprenorphine. Overdose deaths among people leaving prison dropped 61 percent, contributing to an overall 12 percent reduction in the state’s overdose deaths, according to a Brown University study.