The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The state will set up residential programs for 405 prisoners with serious mental illness, which are in addition to 310 beds the state made available after litigation began in 2002. Inmates in a 100-bed residential unit, part of the 405 total, will get four hours of out-of-cell programming, in addition to an hour of recreation.

"It's going to make a tremendous difference. Currently, there are people with serious mental illness who are very, very ill in SHU (special housing units), receiving little treatment, and many of those people are discharged directly from those solitary confinement cells to the street," said Cliff Zucker, executive director of Disability Advocates Inc., which brought the lawsuit against the state.

"And, obviously that's not good for the mentally ill individuals, nor is it good for the safety of the general population. So it's in everybody's interest to have good mental-health treatment in the prison system," he said.

Former inmates who spent time in the "box," families, prisoners' rights groups and lawmakers said Tuesday that the settlement and about $54 million included in this year's budget for mentally ill inmates will make conditions better but more improvements are needed.

Keeping people with psychiatric disabilities in isolation units amounts to torture and often exacerbates their illness, they said. They cited cases in which inmates have taken their own lives under those conditions.

Senate Corrections Committee Chairman Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, Seneca County, said he would move legislation to ban solitary confinement for people with serious mental illness out of his committee next week. Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, is the sponsor in his house. Lawmakers passed the bill last year but former Gov. George Pataki vetoed it.

"We want the prisons in this state to be safer and more humane. That is our bottom line," Nozzolio said.

The legislation calls for giving correction officers training on how to work with severely mentally ill inmates and requires outside oversight of how those prisoners are treated.

"The winds of the budgetary climate change daily so that what may be policy today could be changed tomorrow. If you have in place a statute, that makes it ironclad, at least ... it will be much more permanent," Nozzolio said.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and lawmakers set aside more than $50 million for construction of special housing this year and about $2 million more each to hire staff in the Office of Mental Health staff and Department of Correctional Services. Funds for new Office of Mental Health staffing will grow to $9 million when construction is completed.

"Through a considerable investment of state resources in the budget this year, the Spitzer administration has committed to providing significant improvements to the services and housing available for mentally ill inmates," said Christine Pritchard, a Spitzer spokeswoman.
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