My comment: Note the use of pepper spray on a grossly psychotic inmate! That borders on torture to me. An IM antipsychotic would be far more humane. I have been in a team of mental health professionals to take down an assaultive patient, without harming that patient, using Management of Assaultive behavior techniques. Are these guards that manage a unit of mentally ill inmates not trained?
U.S. NEWSOctober 4, 2013, 7:17 p.m. ET
Fight Over Inmate Mental Care in California Sharpens
By ZUSHA ELINSON
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—A decadeslong legal battle over mental-health care in California prisons returned to the spotlight this past week, with graphic videos showing confrontations between guards and mentally ill inmates as the latest point of contention.
In the videos, presented for the first time in a civil trial that began in federal court here Tuesday, guards can be seen dousing prisoners with pepper spray. The footage provides evidence of continued unconstitutional treatment of California inmates, according to lawyers seeking an order limiting the use of force and punishment against prisoners with mental issues.
Lawyers for the state counter that the videos are being shown out of context, and that inmate care has improved to the point where court oversight of the prison mental-health program is no longer needed.
The trial is the latest chapter in litigation between prisoners and the state, initiated in 1991, that led to a 2009 ruling by a panel of federal judges to trim the state prison population. California has until Jan. 27 to shed about 8,500 inmates to reach the court-mandated 137.5% capacity. About 26% of state inmates, or more than 34,000, have mental-health issues. The overcrowding has made a solution to the problem of care for mentally ill prisoners all the more difficult.
In the current dispute, lawyers for the inmates want U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton to force prison officials to restrict the use of pepper spray and batons. State officials say such changes aren't needed because the state has a strict policy governing the use of force, including pepper spray.
One of the videos showed guards in white suits and gas masks repeatedly pepper-spraying an inmate through the food slot of his cell as he paced around naked, raving and screaming in between coughing. According to testimony from plaintiffs' expert witnesses who reviewed prison records, the guards were trying to remove the man, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, from a cell in a mental-health unit after he refused medication.
Edward Kaufman, a psychiatrist serving as an expert witness, said the inmate was so psychotic he was smearing feces on himself. "There appears to be no awareness of the mental illness that the individual has," he said.
Patrick McKinney, an attorney for the state of California, said there was no pattern or practice of excessive force. He said the inmates' lawyers were focusing on the force and not the events that led up to it, which in many cases included hours of clinical intervention and cooling-off periods. "In each of the cases, the inmate refused a lawful order to come out of the cell," he said.
The state fought the release of the videos. Judge Karlton ruled they could be shown, but only in the courtroom and with the names of the guards and prisoners stricken from the record.
State prisons spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said the department "is committed to the proper care and treatment of every inmate and has a strict use of force policy."
Write to Zusha Elinson at
zusha.elinson@wsj.com
Cost of Custody
Projected mental-health spending in the California prison system for the current year includes:
$15,728 per inmate
$140 million on inmates admitted to state hospitals
$62 million on medications for inmate mental-health treatment
$519 million overall
— Source: California Department of Corrections
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...064443026.html