By Paige St. John
Los Angeles Times
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A federal judge Friday ordered California to explain why it has hundreds of empty beds in its psychiatric hospitals but a backlog of mentally ill inmates in prisons waiting for care.
The order by U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller follows a hearing in Sacramento this week in which she chastised the state for “backsliding” in the treatment of mentally ill inmates.
Mueller said she was relying on reports from a court-appointed special master that California again had waiting lists of prisoners needing appropriate psychiatric housing and treatment. At the same time, the Department of State Hospitals, which runs prison psychiatric units, also had more than 250 empty beds at the Atascadero State Hospital in San Luis Obispo County, between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
On Friday she gave the state 30 days to report “whether regular and consistent use of the full complement of 256 beds at Atascadero State Hospital ... is sufficient to permanently eliminate the ongoing waitlist for inpatient mental health care and if not, why not and what alternate plans are in place for waitlisted class members.”
There was no immediate response from the two agencies in charge of inmate treatment -- the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of State Hospitals. State Hospitals Director Pam Ahlin, appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in January, appeared before Mueller on Wednesday and responded to criticism by the court monitor that the new leadership was unfamiliar with what years of court orders required.
“You do have my commitment to make sure that we do take the ... court orders of serving our mentally ill patients seriously. And we have -- I’ve been part of the department for 11 years now, with a small portion of the [state prison] patients under my supervision. So I am familiar with it, and I give you my assurance that all of us take it very seriously,” Ahlin said, according to a court transcript.
Documents filed in the case by lawyers representing inmates show the state hospital system had accepted only two prisoners in the past year, leaving others locked in high-security prison cells.
Michael Bien, the lead attorney representing California’s mentally ill inmates in what is now a 25-year-old class-action lawsuit over their care, alleged the state hospital system is “afraid” of prisoners.
“They have this overreaction to the violence in state hospitals,” Bien said. “It’s not the patients’ fault they are psychotic.”
The psychiatric hospital has struggled with issues of violence. Last year, a patient was strangled to death by another patient in the same dormitory, though the last killing before that occurred in 2008.
The hospital system is a defendant in other litigation, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, accusing it also of failing to admit mentally ill jail inmates who are deemed incompetent to stand trial.