US Judge Finds California in Contempt Over Prison Mental Health Staffing – KFF Health News

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A federal judge has found California’s top prison officials guilty of civil contempt for failing to hire enough mental health professionals to properly treat thousands of inmates with serious mental disorders.

Chief US District Judge Kimberly Mueller ordered the state to pay a $112 million fine on June 25, at a time when the state is trying to shut down a Billion-dollar budget Loss. Penalty has been imposed Accumulated from April 2023Mueller said she is fed up with inadequate staffing in the state’s prison system, despite court orders demanding the state address the issue for years.

“The sanctions imposed here are necessary to sharpen that focus and increase defendants’ sense of urgency to finally achieve a permanent remedy for the chronic mental health deficiencies in the state’s prison system,” Mueller said in his order in the long-running mass lawsuit.

“The harm caused by these high vacancy rates is as evident today as it was thirty years ago, and the harm persists even despite multiple court orders requiring defendants to reduce those rates,” he said.

Mueller ordered the state to pay the fine within 30 days and said it “shall be used only for steps necessary to comply with the court’s staffing orders.” He ordered California to continue paying an additional fine for each month the state continues to violate court orders.

The decision is unwelcome news for Governor Gavin Newsom, who is struggling with a budget deficit that has forced him to cut a number of state programs.

Newsom spokeswoman Diana Crofts-Pelayo said the contempt finding was “deeply flawed, and does not reflect reality.” “Amid a nationwide shortage of mental health clinicians, the administration has undertaken a massive and unprecedented effort to expand care and to recruit and retain mental health care professionals.”

Terri Hardy, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the state would appeal Mueller’s order. Hardy said inmates often have greater access to mental health care in custody than people outside of the facility because of extraordinary steps the state has taken to increase access to mental health care.

Mueller’s contemptuous remarks come at a time when Democrat Newsom has said he would… Improving mental health treatment has been made a priority statewide, partly to tackle California’s seemingly intractable homelessness crisis. His administration has argued that Mueller is setting impossible standards for improving treatment of the roughly 34,000 inmates with serious mental illnesses — more than a third of California’s prison population.

Lawyers representing inmates with mental illness strongly disagree.

“It’s very unfortunate that state officials have allowed this situation to get so bad and to remain so bad for so long,” said Ernest Galvan, one of the lawyers representing the inmates in the long-running lawsuit. “And I hope that this order, which the judge has reserved as a last resort, will focus officials’ attention where it’s needed: bringing lifesaving care into prisons, where it’s urgently needed.”

As part of his temporary contempt ruling in March, Mueller ordered Newsom personally, and with five of his top state officials, to read testimony from jail mental health staff describing the ongoing problem during a trial last fall.

The other five were the directors of the Corrections and Rehabilitation, State Hospital, and Finance departments; the Under Secretary for Health Care Services of the Department of Corrections; and the Deputy Director in charge of the statewide mental health program.

Mueller limited his formal contempt investigation to Corrections Secretary Jeff Macomber and two aides, Under Secretary Diana Touche and Deputy Director Amar Mehta.

“Basically, the overall record reveals that Defendants are pursuing a ‘business as usual’ approach to hiring, recruitment, and retention that does little or nothing to change the bureaucracy within which hiring practices are carried out,” Mueller wrote.

Mueller ordered state officials to calculate each month how much of a fine they would have to pay for each vacant position if the vacancy rate for mental health professionals at the jail exceeds 10%. The fines are calculated based on the maximum annual salary for each job, including some that are close to or exceed $300,000.

The 10% vacancy limit is based on a court order handed down 20 years ago, in 2002, by Mueller’s predecessor in a class action case filed in 1990 over the poor treatment of inmates with mental disorders.

The pending $112 million fine for understaffing is one of three fines imposed by Mueller.

He imposed fines of $1,000 per day in 2017 for delays in sending incarcerated people to state mental health facilities. But that amount, which has now exceeded $4.2 million, was never collected, and Mueller postponed a planned hearing on the fines after inmates’ lawyers said the state was making improvements.

In April 2023, Mueller also began imposing $1,000 daily fines for the state’s failure to implement court-ordered suicide prevention measures. A court-appointed expert said his latest inspection of prisons showed the state Still not fully compliant,

This article was produced by KFF Health NewsWho publishes California HealthlineAn editorially independent service california health care foundation,