Saying California officials “divorced themselves from reality” when they recently claimed mental health care is up to par in state prisons, a Sacramento judge has ordered an immediate investigation of Salinas Valley State Prison”s psychiatric unit.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled late Thursday that due to the “urgency of the issues at hand,” a federal special master must investigate allegations that mental health staffing levels are dangerously low in the Soledad unit, which is operated by the Department of State Hospitals.
Karlton also ordered the special master to look at the unit”s practice of keeping new patients on “cuff status” — in shackles and isolation — for up to 10 working days before they can take part in regular treatment activities.
In an emailed statement Friday, the state hospitals department said it was “currently evaluating the decision by the court.” It declined further comment.
The order came out of a 23-year-old federal lawsuit citing unconstitutionally poor treatment for the state”s more than 30,000 mentally ill inmates, most of whom will be returning to their communities after serving their prison terms.
A special master was appointed in 1995 ensure the state was complying with judges” orders.
“Judge Karlton saw that this was an emergency and that”s why he ordered the special master to immediately get out to Salinas Valley and see what”s going on,” said Michael Bien, attorney for various inmates.
The judge said the orders were necessary because a four-day hearing last month focusing largely on the Salinas Valley prison uncovered “significant and troubling evidence of severe staffing shortages, apparently redundant custodial policies that delay the start of necessary inpatient care and may in fact cause additional harm to class members transferred for such care, denial of basic necessities including clean underwear, failure to follow established timelines for transfer of patients to inpatient care, and perhaps premature discharges of patients from inpatient care, all of which call into question the adequacy of the inpatient care that is being provided.”
Department of State Hospitals officials told the judge that their agency has never been found by the court to have provided inadequate care to inmate patients — a contention that Karlton said “misses the mark.” He quoted a 2006 court finding that the department was “failing to address specific court-ordered remedies” to improve prisoners” psychiatric care.
He said the evidence showed “a continuing inability of defendants to identify and remedy on their own, without court supervision, critical staffing shortages and other impediments to constitutionally adequate mental health care.”
At the hearing, state hospital officials denied claims the department failed to provide clean underwear, sheets and soap to its patients at Salinas Valley. But documents provided to The Herald show nurses and social workers there have complained that at times only half the sheets and clothing sent from the prison to be laundered at a women”s prison in Chowchilla were returned to Monterey County.
This practice has created extreme shortages of clean clothes and sheets for the unit”s patients, the program staffers said.
The staff members said the laundry is trucked 127 miles from Soledad to Chowchilla under a contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Karlton”s ruling follows months of disturbing revelations about the Soledad prison”s psychiatric unit, including the suicide of a newly arrived patient last year whose treatment was delayed for weeks. According to testimony, the patient had scrawled on his cell wall, “I came here slightly depressed. Now I am severely depressed. This place is hopeless.”
Then in March, patient Desmond Watkins, 36, died of water intoxication due to a mental condition that causes unquenchable thirst, months after he had been treated at a Salinas hospital for the same life-threatening condition, as first reported by The Herald.
“To a great extent what was uncovered in this trial was shocking to the judge but also to the plaintiffs,” Bien said. “We did not know things were as terrible as they turned out to be.”
Once the investigation of the mental health unit at Salinas Valley is conducted, the special master is ordered to follow with oversight of all of the hospital department”s facilities, including a new prison hospital in Stockton that opens this month. More than 200 of Salinas Valley”s 340 patients are expected to be transferred there.
The order also extends to oversight of Atascadero and Coalinga State Hospitals.
The special master has 75 days to produce a report on the Salinas Valley unit”s conditions. Besides looking at staffing and cuff status concerns, Karlton directed the special master to include in his report any other matters that might require “urgent attention by the court.”
Julia Reynolds can be reached at 648-1187 or jreynolds@montereyherald.com.
