(Jan. 9, 2015) The state of Pennsylvania and disability rights advocates have agreed to a plan that will liberate mentally ill inmates written up for misconduct from “an endless cycle of isolation and punishment” in isolation cells.
Under the settlement between the states Corrections Department and Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania, mentally ill inmates in new treatment units will spend more hours outside of their cells than the typical 1 hour per day allowed in isolation. They will be screened and classified for serious mental illness upon intake, and prison guards will receive crisis intervention training.
The plaintiffs said the agreement will end "a Dickensian nightmare" for inmates with serious mental illness (“Pennsylvania to expand treatment for mentally ill inmates,” Associated Press, Jan. 6).
An estimated 4,000 of Pennsylvania’s 51,000 state prison inmates are potentially affected. Already, the number of mentally ill inmates in “restricted housing” for the disciplinary issues that often arise from psychiatric symptoms is down from more than 800 a year ago to about 135.
The Treatment Advocacy Center’s 2014 study, “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails,” reported “The effect of solitary confinement on mentally ill prisoners is almost always adverse. The lack of stimulation and human contact tends to make psychotic symptoms worse. Thus, it is not surprising that many of the incidents of self-mutilation and suicide by mentally ill prisoners take place when they are in solitary confinement.”
The report called for careful intake screening so that individuals at risk for problems because of their psychiatric symptoms could be identified and handled more appropriately – a step contained in the agreement.
Pennsylvania is one of 44 states where a jail or prison holds more individuals with serious mental illness than the largest remaining state psychiatric hospital. Compared with the 4,000 mentally ill inmates potentially affected by the agreement, for example, the state’s largest remaining state hospital has less than 400 beds.
Anything that diverts psychotic and suffering inmates from the further torture of solitary confinement is progress, and Pennsylvania inmates will be better off for this agreement. Even greater progress would be diverting the mentally ill from prison in the first place by providing the inpatient beds and outpatient treatment they need to avoid arrest and incarceration in the first place.
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