SACROMENTO – Through intent that aired a year ago, federal judges put control over California’s troubled prisoner mental health program in the hands of outsiders. He is President Biden’s former prison chief.
The candidate’s suicide rate is the highest ever, and senior US district judge Kimberly Mueller said her goal was to force a change in the California prison mental health system, which federal judges deemed poor enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment in 1995.
To that end, Mueller has named the federal government’s “recipient nominations” to develop a monitoring plan for psychiatric services for California’s prison population. Three previous candidates received the job for a variety of reasons.
Mueller’s choice to tackle the prisoner mental health care system is Collet Peters, who resigned as federal prison director on the day Donald Trump returned to the White House. The choice was announced at a closing door meeting with inmates and lawyers for government Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, and was made public as an order on Wednesday. Participants in the case said Peters had accepted the four-month position.
Meanwhile, Mueller suggests that Peters work with the other side to develop an offensive plan. Her full appointment as a recipient depends on the plan. State and inmate lawyers will need to comment on the judge’s professor for 10 days.
Newsom’s Office will not immediately comment on what it describes as a “pending lawsuit.” State lawyers told Mueller on Tuesday that Peters is an acceptable option, but they reserved the right to challenge California’s loss of control over important and expensive elements of the vast incarceration system, attendees at the hearing told Mueller Tuesday.
In that vein, the state attorney in December argued that a “heavy decision” to the court’s acquisition requires a hearing of evidence. At the time, he was the director of Deputy Atty. General Damon McLain said that improving conditions denied the need for recipients, namely, employment of more social workers, and one position in which the prison system has a chronic shortage.
The rosy portrayal of the state’s improvements sparked responsibilities on Wednesday as the Ninth Circuit supported the findings of a civilly contagious investigation into the state in July 2024. The state allegedly “significantly complied” in an order that hires mental health staff “by taking all reasonable steps to comply.”
The appeals panel said it was not true. It noted that it had complained from staff who were unhappy with job seekers and high workloads, lack of security protections, inadequate supplies and poor workspaces.
The appeal’s opinion said the state did not rebuttal this evidence or show why it failed to address those issues.
The attorney for the prisoner in a long-term class action lawsuit explained Mueller’s decision to cite recipient nominations as a breakthrough. Plaintiff’s attorney Michael Bien said the recipient is authorized to make decisions that could lead to him being caught up in a long-standing lawsuit. Dockett says lawyers on both sides have shown that half of their mental health staff have been fighting for years to ensure they can work remotely and provide care via video and phone.
More than a third of California’s prison population – more than 34,000 prisoners are believed to have some kind of serious mental disorder. According to court findings, in the 35-year lawsuit, California had enough mental health staff to provide the lowest level of care that is acceptable.
The court declaration cites a 2023 state analysis that found out that of the 30 inmates who committed suicide in 2023, more than the fourth had received inadequate mental health care due to a shortage of staff. Those who hanged themselves on a bed sheet had not made mental health visits for more than seven months.
The special master, appointed by the court to conduct fact-finding in the case, said last year that “true mental health staffing emergency” continued and worsened in some prisons. The report concluded that only 38% of the patients reviewed received appropriate care.
The class action lawsuit was named after a 1990 complaint filed by inmate Ralph Coleman in opposition to a lack of psychiatric services at Pelican Bay State prison. Expanded by prison rights lawyers to address what they claim to have suicides in prisons, that mentally ill prisoners are naked with barren, isolated cells, and long waiting lists for treatment.
During the course of the lawsuit, prison rights lawyers show videotapes recording the use of pepper spray, restraints, hoods and batons on mentally ill infringers in the suffering of episodes of mental illness.
Mueller, a former Sacramento City Council member who studied law at Stanford University, was appointed to the Eastern District bench by President Obama in 2010. She inherited the Coleman case from Judge Lawrence Carlton, who died in 2015 after her retirement.
The Coleman case is one of two landmark class action suits against the Californian prison system, overseen by three judges who issued a sweep order to California a decade ago calling for reduced prison crowds.
Companion Case discovered that medical care in prisons was poor enough to cause preventable deaths, resulting in the appointment of its federal recipients in 2006. As it still exists, recipients require an increase in funding for their medical and electronic health records. Given the improvements, in 2015, the court began repatriating control of health services to the state, one prison at a time. The process is almost complete.
The Coleman case has so far failed to provide similar improvements to inmate psychiatric care. As the prison population overall declined, the proportion of inmates requiring mental health services increased.
Citing “continued unconstitutional violations,” in 2023 Mueller asked the U.S. Attorney General to consider staffing for California prisoner mental health care and suicide prevention efforts.
“The state has repeatedly violated its constitutional obligations in many important areas: suicide prevention, treatment of mentally ill people in administrative separation, access to higher levels of care, including beds in mental health crisis, staffing,” she wrote in a 2023 petition.
The Ninth Circuit supported Mueller’s finding of light emptying against California in 2024, but the appeals committee asked the judge to provide calculations of related monthly fines currently exceeding $197 million. This amount is intended to reflect the savings the state recognizes from filling prison mental health jobs.
In 2024, Mueller wrote that the light empty order and fines had little effect.
“The court has exhausted virtually any mechanism for the accused to ultimately achieve compliance,” Mueller wrote in July 2024 in an order considering the appointment of the recipient.
In prison medical cases, recipients created a state turnaround plan, increased physician salaries, and negotiated with the administration for funds to build medical facilities. Medical recipients launched an electronic record system to tackle the outbreak of diseases, including valley fever, and monitored the health of prisoners who staged hunger strikes throughout the system.
It is not yet clear what mental health recipients will be given.
As head of the Biden-based federal prison system from 2022 to early 2025, Peters faced problems including collapsed infrastructure, inadequate staffing and scandals at the federal women’s prison in Federal Women’s County in Alameda County, due to sexual abuse allegations dubbed “rape club.” She ordered the prison to be closed.
Prior to that, she implemented the Oregon prison system.
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