Dauphin County Prison, May 1, 2015
Unidentified prisoners can be seen through a glass-block window during a tour of the Dauphin County Prison with Warden Dominick L. DeRose, May 1, 2015. Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com
(Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com)
Pennsylvania, according to legal experts, might have the dubious honor of having some of the longest delays to transfer mentally ill inmates to state hospital beds in the nation.
In the 1980s in Pennsylvania, according to corrections' officials, it took less than a week to send an inmate to a state hospital from most county prisons. Today, due to a shortage of state hospital beds and a surge of mentally ill people in the criminal justice system, it's an average of 126 days - raising a slew of legal and human rights issues.
A mentally ill inmate in a county prison is sent to a state psychiatric hospital when the courts believe that inmate needs to be evaluated for competency to stand trial or to be "restored to competency." A seriously mentally ill inmate can also be committed if the county prison can prove that the person is a threat to themselves or others.
Pennsylvania has two state hospitals to perform those functions, called "forensic services": Torrance State Hospital near Pittsburgh and Norristown State Hospital near Philadelphia. But for reasons that aren't entirely clear, delays to get prison inmates into the latter facility are more than five times longer than the former.
According to state records acquired by PennLive through a right-to-know request, inmates waited an average of 51 days for beds at Torrance, which handles county prison inmates from western Pa, over the past six months.
In Norristown State Hospital, which handles inmates from Philadelphia and eastern Pa., wait times were an average of 297 days.
A report sent to PennLive by the Department of Human Services offers some clues to the reason for that discrepancy. The report says that wait times for beds at Norristown are particularly long because 36 people currently in the facility are unable to be transferred back to where they came from.
"Our data analysis identified 36 individuals who completed both evaluation and restoration services and were deemed competent to stand trial but remained in the Norristown Forensic Center for extended periods of time awaiting return to the referring jurisdiction," the report said. "These cases consumed over 12,000 bed days so far during the current fiscal year. This is the equivalent of 30 forensic beds that could not be used to meet the restoration service needs of other individuals from the waiting list."
In follow-up questions, PennLive asked Kait Gillis, the department's press secretary, where those inmates had been committed from and why they couldn't be transferred back to their "referring jurisdiction."
In an emailed response, Gillis said that the referring jurisdictions were four counties "but primarily Philadelphia."
"There is no universal reason why each waited so long," she wrote. "It would be case specific and we would not always have record from the courts/county as to why."
Gregory Smith, former chief executive of Harrisburg State Hospital during its closure, said that while he didn't have direct knowledge of the current situation because he no longer worked for the state, he knew that Norristown State Hospital had historically struggled to keep up with the number of seriously mentally ill people coming from the Philadelphia prison system.
In addition, he said that historically the facility had frequently struggled to transfer individuals from its forensic beds (secure units intended for people facing criminal charges) to its civil beds (units that are intended for people committed from the community).
"What I hear and what I saw in Philadelphia was that the judges there would frequently retain control of a person beyond their criminal commitment," he said. "In other words, if the person was found not guilty for whatever reason and Norristown wanted to move them out of a forensic bed to a civil bed, the judge would often have a lot of control over that and say, 'No, I want that person in a forensic bed.' "
Why would a judge want a person in a forensic bed rather than a civil bed? Smith said that was less clear.
"Maybe in their world it's a form of punishment," he said. "Maybe they feel that, 'I can't get them in prison, at least I'm going to keep them in a secure facility.' "
In a brief phone interview, Sheila Woods-Skipper, President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, said she couldn't comment on wait times for forensic beds at Norristown State Hospital.
Speaking in general terms, however, she said was concerned about the care received by mentally ill inmates.
"We all need to work together as a team to insure that mentally ill inmates are receiving the appropriate care so they can be restored to competency," she said.
Graphics by Nick Malawskey