By Craig Jarvis
The News & Observer
RALEIGH — State prison and probation officials, who are grasping for more humane ways to deal with mentally ill offenders, say they need to hire hundreds of more specialized workers.
That’s what the N.C. Department of Public Safety told the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice and Public Safety on Thursday. Commissioner David Guice said the department is asking the governor to include in his budget proposal next year $28.4 million to hire 448 people and install an electronic medical records system.
Most of those positions - 308 - would increase the behavioral health staff at prisons across the state. Another 64 positions would allow Central Prison to use 72 beds that it currently doesn’t have enough staff to support, due to past budget cuts. An additional 76 probation officers specializing in mental health is also on the wish list.
“We have to find a way to address those things differently than we have in the past,” Guice said. “It’s not easy, but it’s something that we can do.”
The state’s prison system has been working for years to separate and treat those with severe mental health issues as well as those with lesser disorders. Nearly three years ago, a five-story mental health unit was opened at Raleigh’s Central Prison, and correctional officers have been trained to defuse confrontations with those prisoners.
Currently, 12 percent of the state’s nearly 38,000 prisoners receive some form of mental health treatment, which is up from 9.8 percent in 2007, even though there are fewer prisoners now. The increase in prisoners needing mental health attention comes as the state has been plagued in recent years by several highly publicized deaths, and a federal lawsuit by eight prisoners alleging abuse by officers in solitary confinement at Central Prison.
Following the death in March of Michael Kerr, a mentally ill inmate at Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville who died of thirst after spending days lying unresponsive in his cell, nine employees were fired, two were demoted and two resigned. In October, prison officials announced a number of reforms in response.
Prisons and jails across the country have been forced to confront the problem, as there are fewer mental health treatment facilities outside of prison.
Prisoner mental health advocate Elizabeth Forbes of Charlotte on Thursday gave legislators a list of common complaints from relatives: prisoners with mental illness receive medicine inconsistently, are more likely to break rules and be punished, do not have adequate therapy or monitoring, and are not properly screened when they arrive.
“We get it,” Forbes said. “We don’t blame the department. This is a horrible situation we’re in. Placing this burden on the prison system is unfair to the mentally ill prisoners, to the people who work inside our prison systems and our taxpayers.”