Several hundred million dollars are going into new medical facilities for state prison inmates. With budgets being slashed around the state, critics are questioning the state prison building boom, according to ABC7 News.
Early next year the state will open the first mental health facility for prisoners funded through a $7.5 billion bond approved by lawmakers in 2007. “We have a large waiting list currently, and we’re under a Coleman federal court order to relieve that waiting list,” said Stirling Price, Vacaville State Prison Psychiatric Program.
Vacaville state prison is about to open the doors to a new mental health wing. The Vacaville site added 45,000 square feet with 64 beds to the existing prison hospital — price tag: $33.6 million or a half-million dollars per bed.
With a court order in hand, the state is quietly spending a lot of money on prison construction projects to improve the mental health care of inmates. However, critics say this is no time to splurge.
Along with Vacaville, about a dozen other prison facilities are being expanded, including the one in San Luis Obispo, costing $35.7 million, and in Chino, which will cost $33.7 million. Stockton will get a brand new $900-million medical center.
At a time of deep budget cuts to education and social services for the poor, groups like Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) are questioning the use of taxpayer money in this building spree.
“We need the Legislature … to step up and to halt all of the jail expansion projects,” said Emily Harris of CURB. However, lawyers for prisoners have won battle after battle in courts to improve the conditions in prisons. They are so overcrowded, healthcare declined below constitutional standards, and the United States Supreme Court had to step in.
The Prison Law Office’s, Steve Fama, sees the expansion as a victory.
“I don’t think we should have a society in which a person who’s seriously ill [to be] allowed to live in pain because they have a mental health illness that’s not treated.”
The state says while the upfront costs seem like a lot, it will actually save taxpayers money in the long run by having these care facilities available on site.
