AI-assisted summary

Faith-based sober living houses are emerging in southern Missouri to address a scarcity of accredited recovery services.

These unaccredited facilities operate outside of state regulatory structures, raising concerns about oversight and effectiveness.

Local judges and prosecutors see value in these houses but desire more standardization and communication to ensure accountability.

Jerry Chiasson had been living under a bridge in Gainesville, fighting larceny charges and trying to get clean.

Biking from Springfield to Mountain Home, Arkansas, where he’d planned to stay with a friend, Chiasson, 52, was pulled over and arrested on a warrant for a stolen car — charges that were eventually dropped.

While fighting the charges, Chiasson said, he got into a cycle of “using,

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