LONOKE COUNTY, Ark. – With a pen in hand, a path to a sober life is being mapped out from a Lonoke County Jail cell.

Jimmy McGill works with the Arkansas Drug Director’s Office, and is in charge of the state’s peer recovery program.

“We can identify, have that instant rapport that only you can get through somebody you know has been through there, won’t judge you,” says McGill.

The peer support is grant funded through the Arkansas Drug Director’s Office.

The PACT (Peers Achieving Collaborative Treatment) Project will offer recovery group meetings and one-on-one sessions with inmates addicted to drugs while they serve time in the Lonoke County Jail.

“The peer specialist will help them find housing, prepare for job interviews, do mock job interviews, help them get food stamps, basic life skills,” says McGill.

McGill says the Lonoke County Jail will be the only jail in the State of Arkansas to offer this program.

“We got to change what we’re doing. It’s not working,” says Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley.

Staley says he’s confident the peer services will lower the recidivism rate.

“If you’re willing to step up and do the work that it takes, we can give you some options,” says Staley.

McGill says the program has proven to work in other states that use the program.

For McGill, it took a 360 in life to be here. He’s nearly four years sober, creating life plans for inmates in the Lonoke County Jail, a facility he served time in.

“It was scary walking back through here,” says McGill. “I got clean through incarceration.”

Staley says McGill can do it, which gives him hope other inmates will be able to do it as well.

“If we can change one, we can change more,” says Staley.

The services will also be offered at hospitals, the Exodus Project in Little Rock, which helps fight addiction, and the Randolph County Drug Court.

There’s enough granting money to fund the program for two years.

McGill says when the money runs it, the Drug Director’s Office hopes the program will have shown its effectiveness and local agencies will pick up the cost to keep the program running.