A federal judge outlined a plan for California to regain control over its prison health care system after nearly a decade of federal oversight.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson handed down the seven-page order after a court-appointed overseer reported that conditions have improved substantially since Henderson appointed a receiver to run California’s prison health care in 2006.
Henderson’s order is “a well thought-out, elegant transition plan,” said Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office and one of the attorneys who sued over poor prison health care.
Each of the state’s 34 prisons must pass an inspection before they can be returned to state control, Henderson said.
The inspections, performed by the inspector general of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, are under way and are expected to take more than a year, The Associated Press reported.
California “has spent $2 billion for new prison medical facilities, doubled its prison health care budget to nearly $1.7 billion and reduced its prison population by more than 40,000 inmates in the last decade,” the AP noted. This was to address the deficiencies in its prison health care system that Henderson found violated inmates’ constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
Some prisons lag far behind others and more work still needs to be done system-wide, reported the court-appointed receiver, J. Clark Kelso.
Henderson also noted in his order that “critical areas of improvement remain.”
The judge said prisons that pass the inspections could be returned to state control, but the receiver could retake control if conditions at a prison decline. Eventually, the receiver is expected to take on “more of a monitoring function,” he said.
To regain control, the state must meet constitutional standards for a year, Henderson said.
“I agree with Kelso that there are still significant issues, both systemic and individual institutions, which have to be corrected before the receivership should end,” Specter said.
