By Marisa Kwiatkowski and Kristine Guerra
The Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS — A court settlement reached this week will transform the way Indiana treats prisoners with serious mental illnesses, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.
Under the agreement, prisoners with serious mental illnesses will receive better access to mental health care and, with few exceptions, will no longer be held in solitary confinement in state correctional facilities. The agreement could affect 5,622 prisoners who have a mental health diagnosis, or about 20.6 percent of the total prison population, according to Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services.
“As a result of this litigation, prisoners with mental illness have more opportunities for treatment than ever before,” Dawn Adams, executive director of the Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services, said in a statement. “This case, once again, underscores the importance of access to care for people with mental illness and highlights the need for reform in our mental health system.”
Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services and the ACLU of Indiana sued the Indiana Department of Correction in 2008 over its treatment of some prisoners with severe mental illnesses. The state had placed those prisoners in isolation with little to no access to treatment, causing them to experience hallucinations, increased paranoia and depression or suicide.
In 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled the DOC had violated the Eight Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. She ordered the parties involved in the lawsuit to work on resolving the situation.
The settlement agreement requires state correctional facilities to have individualized treatment plans created by mental health professionals who are familiar with the prisoner, according to a news release from the ACLU of Indiana. There also must be 10 hours per week of therapeutic programming for each prisoner, time for recreation and showers and additional therapy and out-of-cell time, when appropriate.
The DOC already has largely complied with the terms of the agreement. It opened a new 250-bed treatment unit in the Pendleton Correctional Facility to accommodate mentally ill inmates and has made available special needs units in the Indiana Woman’s Prison, Wabash Valley Correctional Facility and New Castle Psychiatric Facility.
“The Indiana Department of Correction has made extraordinary efforts to address the treatment of severely mentally ill prisoners in its care,” Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, said in a news release. “We fully anticipate this cooperation will continue and that these changes will have a significant positive impact by reducing the severity of mental illness in prisoners who will one day rejoin society.”
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