The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The other sites are the California Institution for Women in Corona; California Medical Facility in Vacaville; and Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad.

The expansive project, expected to cost $593 million over the next five years, emerged partly in response to a 1995 federal court order to upgrade the level of mental health care services provided to inmates.

At the time, a federal judge chastised the department for "gross systemic deficiencies" that put some of the most vulnerable inmates at an "intolerable risk of harm." A special master was appointed to oversee reforms.

Scott Kernan, the warden at the Folsom prison and acting liaison with the CDCR, said the centers will provide more beds and staff to treat inmates with the most serious mental disorders - a population that is projected to more than double by the time construction is completed in 2011.

"The work is really just now beginning," Kernan said. "This is really the first effort ... to try to get these needed mental health facilities built."

Michael Bien, one of the lead attorneys who represented inmates in the class-action suit, Coleman v. Wilson, that led to the court mandates, applauded the state's initiative but said it should have started sooner.

"We've been fighting for this for about 10 or 15 years," Bien said. "This need has been clear for years and years and years. People are literally dying because they don't have enough beds."

In 1996, about 8 percent of the prison population required the most intense psychiatric treatment, according to Terry Thornton, CDCR spokeswoman. This year, she said, about 20 percent of the state's nearly 170,000 inmates receive such treatment.

These inmates, she said, have serious mental disorders, have marked impairment, or pose a heightened danger to themselves or others. They must be separated from a prison's general population, but there is a shortage of beds available to house them at the appropriate treatment sites.

Thornton said that there are now only 100 beds available at two different prisons - Salinas Valley State Prison and the California Medical Facility.

The project is expected to add space for nearly 700 more beds; 478 of those beds for intermediate and acute care will be at the psychiatric complex to be built at the Folsom prison.

Kernan said the four sites were selected because of the number of inmates there who already need mental health services and the likelihood that those locations could attract mental health professionals.

For example, more than 620 psychiatric staff will be added to the acute care facility slated for Folsom, which will house 350 beds for inmates.

Bien said recruiting qualified professionals has proven problematic in the past.

"There is a very serious need," he said. "Let's do it right, and let's do it as rapidly as we can."

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/story/14237189p-15057977c.html