(May 18, 2016) Inmates with mental illness at Sonoma County Jail endure serious rights violations, according to a new report released Monday by Disability Rights California (“Disability agency blasts Sonoma County Jail's treatment of mentally ill,” KQED, May 16).
In their report, Disability Rights California, a nonprofit advocacy organization that reviews and investigates government services and agencies affecting the disabled, alleges violations ranging from improper medication procedures and inadequate mental health care to excessive isolation and solitary confinement in Sonoma County’s main jail — a facility where nearly 40 percent of inmates locked up last year suffered from mental illness.
In response to the report, Mike Kennedy, head of the county mental health department which provides mental health services in the jail, said the county is doing the best it can with the limited resources allotted to it.
“What we’re stuck with is having to do the most humane treatment that we can in settings that aren’t set up to do it,” Kennedy said.
But Anne Hadreas, an attorney for DRC, said when she and her colleagues toured Sonoma County Jail last August, it was clear that the jail’s mental health unit did not have adequate mental health services to treat inmates with such severe mental illness.
“We were really struck by the fact that people were incredibly acute in their need,” Hadreas recalled. “Higher than we’ve seen in units that are licensed designated hospital units. Something was wrong here.”
Kennedy points out that the problems cited in the report are not unique to Sonoma County. He said the real problem stems from the lack of inpatient psychiatric beds for the general population as well as for jail inmates with mental illness.
“It’s a huge problem that needs to be dealt with on a state and federal level,” Kennedy said.
Indeed, the conditions found in Sonoma County Jail are a reflection of what is a disturbing reality nationwide: Decades of cuts and neglect have left our system facing a critical shortage of needed psychiatric beds. This scarcity often leaves the most severely ill with nowhere to go, abandoning hundreds of thousands to jails and prisons, the streets, or worse.
People with severe mental illness deserve #aBedInstead of jail.
The Treatment Advocacy Center has launched a campaign to end this injustice – called #aBedInstead.
For more information on our psychiatric bed campaign, visit #aBedInstead.
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