Three weeks ago, a jail in Cincinnati, Ohio, launched a “recovery pod” for inmates incarcerated for heroin abuse — and it’s already seeing success.

The Hamilton County Justice Center unrolled the program with the help of Major Charmaine McGuffey, who enlisted the support of local social service agencies, according to cincinnati.com.

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The heroin recovery pod, which is essentially a unit in the jail, currently holds 16 women who have proclaimed they are dedicated to getting clean. “McGuffey said the inmates selected for the small, experimental pilot program volunteered and signed a pledge: ‘I will participate in my own recovery,'” reports cincinnati.com.

The 16 women live separately from the other 1,300 inmates, and participate in a full schedule of addiction recovery programming. They attend job and treatment counseling, learn to manage a criminal record, and take housing education and parenting classes. Local addiction support and charity groups volunteer to help with the women’s education and counseling.

Currently, the program relies entirely on “sweat equity and the generosity of local organizations,” — not taxpayers, reports cincinnati.com. McGuffey and Sheriff Jim Neil applied for funding for the project two years ago to the Hamilton County commissioners, but were denied.

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Now, McGuffey says the lack of funding limits the size of the program. “We will need funding to keep this going,” McGuffey said. “Our goal in this pilot model is to create some evidence-based success so that we can get funding.”

For now, McGuffey says they will try to maintain the program with the funding mechanism in place until they can be approved for funds from the government. “She said that moving forward, the Justice Center will be ‘conservative,’ ‘responsible,’ and ‘transparent’ with taxpayers’ funds,” according to cincinnati.com.