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"Things are very bad," said Renee Redman, the ACLU chapter's legal director. "Something is wrong."

Redman said too many inmates - about two-thirds of the 1,400 women imprisoned at York - are taking psychotropic medication, which alters brain chemistry.

The ACLU cited court-ordered monitoring reports that have been mandated twice a year since the 1980s as the sources of its debate about whether to reopen the class-action lawsuit. Redman would not comment further on potential legal action.

A court has ordered the reports sealed to protect prisoners' privacy, and Redman would not release the documents. She called them "damning."

The state Department of Correction denied any institutional negligence or wrongdoing in response to the ACLU's allegations involving York, located in the Niantic section of East Lyme.

Brian Garnett, a spokesman for the Correction Department, said the ACLU's allegations were "very broad" and lacked details. He said the department would investigate the allegations, if given the information.

"This is a crime," Garnett wrote to The Day regarding sexual abuse, "and if we have so much as a rumor, we will investigate it and refer it to the state police. We take matters such as these extremely seriously. We strive to ensure our facilities are safe, secure and orderly."

Redman said a court-appointed panel of experts who visited York in January wrote the most recent monitoring report. The state has hired different experts during the past 20 years to perform regular on-site inspections to see that the prison is adhering to a settlement agreement from the landmark West v. Manson lawsuit.

Court documents say care at the prison was poor when the ACLU sued top officials at York, the Correction Department and the state Department of Children and Youth Services, now the Department of Children and Families.

At the time, no therapy was offered. Mothers rarely got to see their children while in prison. Male prison guards allegedly peered into showers. And inmates said they had to urinate into soda bottles because they could not get to bathrooms.

Three settlement agreements that arose from West v. Manson transformed inmate care within five years after the lawsuit was filed. A court appointed three panels of experts to review prison conditions regularly for an indefinite period to make sure York was abiding by the agreements.

One of those panels still exists today: three experts who report to a judge twice a year on mental health care at the prison.

The ACLU National Prison Project has overseen cases involving York and several other prisons, said David Fathi, senior staff counsel for the project.

"Prisoners are overwhelmingly people from impoverished and deprived backgrounds," he said. "So, compared to the general population, their health is much poorer and their medical needs are much greater, and their tendency to be addicted to substances much higher.

"Really, the goal is to have prisons that don't require court oversight to run in a constitutional manner," Fathi said.

Although the nation's prisons have seen a large increase in population during the past 20 years, Fathi said, the spike at women's prisons has been more dramatic. He said a higher proportion of inmates at women's prisons have been victims of physical or sexual abuse than those in men's prisons, and their mental health and medical problems are often more complicated.

The ACLU last interviewed inmates at York in the summer of 2005 and was told that beatings, attempted suicides and deaths occurred because prison staff did not immediately respond when prisoners called for help, The Day reported.

Inmates also talked openly about sexual abuse between inmates and by staff, said Annette Lamoreaux, former legal director for the ACLU, who now works for the NAACP in Houston. Redman said Lamoreaux is not a spokeswoman for the ACLU.

The Correction Department, in response to Lamoreaux's allegations, said employees will respond to an inmate emergency call over the intercom. Garnett said employees are trained in life-saving procedures, and they tour housing units every 30 minutes.

The agency also noted that it has received national recognition for its substance abuse program and mental health unit.

The department said it welcomes outside review.

"If deficiencies are noted, the department has a long record of commitment to rectifying those issues in concert with its contracted health provider," the agency said in a press release.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-apprison0402.artapr02,0,5599460.story?coll=hc-headlines-local
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