Almost 20 years have passed since the federal takeover of California’s prison medical system, and federal takeovers continued March 19, as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s contempt ruling that initiated a takeover of the mental health delivery system of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The ruling in Coleman v. Newsom upheld the June 25, 2024 ruling issued by Chief United States District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, which addressed persistent understaffing of mental health professionals at CDCR facilities. The ruling also involved a process nominating an outside professional to run the prisons’ mental health program as a court-appointed receiver, and resolved a dispute about fines totaling over $110 million imposed against the CDCR.
“This class has been waiting for nearly three decades for the state to meet its constitutional obligations when it comes to the delivery of mental health care,” wrote Judge Mueller in her scathing ruling available on Lexis-Nexis.
The judge’s opinion showed a column graph with the title “Population of Mentally Ill Inmates” that put the system-wide number of incarcerated persons with mental health issues at 34,079, which represented roughly a third of the entire population as of March 24, 2024.
A second column graph showed “Mental Health Staff Vacancy Rates” of 29%, which the judge said represented the unfilled authorized mental health staff positions for April 2024. According to San Quentin News calculations, the number amounted to 664 jobs of 2,254 authorized positions and 1,590 filled positions.
The court named a former head of the federal Bureau of Prisons as receiver of CDCR mental healthcare, wrote Don Thompson of the Associated Press. Judge Mueller identified Colette Peters, Oregon’s first female corrections director, as the nominated receiver. The article noted Peters has a reputation as a reformer. The AP added, “Appointing a receiver is a rare step taken when federal judges feel they have exhausted other options.”
According to the 9th circuit’s ruling on LexisNexis, “The court affirmed the district court’s contempt order and rejection of the State’s defenses but vacated the fines to the extent they exceeded the State’s monthly salary savings and remanded for additional findings and analysis on the calculation of fines.”
Americans with serious mental health conditions once found themselves cared for — or warehoused — at psychiatric asylums, wrote Sarah Stillman in her related article “Starved in Jail” in the April 21 issue of The New Yorker. LEXIS 6589
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act emptied institutions across the country with a vision of a system of outpatient care. Funding for Kennedy’s law never materialized and many of the ejected patients ended up on the streets, or in jails or prisons. The influx soon overwhelmed carceral institutions. Mental health care staffing could scarcely keep up.
The AP article predicted that the problem would soon worsen. Lawyers representing the interests of incarcerated persons in Coleman v. Newsom stated, “The November passage of a ballot measure increasing criminal penalties for some drug and theft crimes is likely to increase the prison population and worsen staffing shortages.”