RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Mental illness taxes jails

Grand jury, lawsuit criticize mental health care for inmates. Sheriff’s and mental health officials said they are trying to close gaps.

September 21, 2014

The Press Enterprise

By Richard K. De Atley, Staff Writer

California’s prison realignment has sharpened an already critical focus on Riverside County’s treatment of mentally ill and suicidal jail inmates – issues cited in negative grand jury reports and in a current federal court lawsuit.

Sheriff’s and mental health officials said they are trying to close the gaps, doubling the number of dedicated beds for mentally ill inmates and increasing the mental health personnel to care for them. The sheriff has also established a faster treatment program for those declared incompetent to stand trial.

Treatment of mentally ill patients is a big component of state prison realignment, which focuses on local incarceration, probation and rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.

But one psychiatrist, who reviewed Riverside County’s five adult jails on behalf of the inmates who are part of the federal lawsuit, said mental health care remains in “crisis management mode” this year, despite grand jury reports in 2011 and 2012 that cited inadequate mental health worker staffing and other systemic problems.

Sara Norman, an attorney representing Riverside County inmates in the federal lawsuit, said her clients aren’t the only ones who would benefit from improvements in mental health care.

“A poorly run system is harmful to patients, but also demoralizing and difficult for health care staff and detention staff,” she said. “You have a very difficult population. The vast majority are getting out, and it’s a burden on health care on the outside to deprive them on the inside.”

Among the lawsuit’s several claims are that psychotropic medications are poorly managed and monitored for jail inmates.

TRYING TO CLOSE THE GAPS

Issues regarding mentally ill jail inmates are national. A branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that about 800,000 people with mental illness enter jails in the United States annually, and about 72 percent of that number also have substance abuse disorders.

An estimated 47 percent of Riverside County jail inmates have some kind of mental illness, and about 10 percent to 15 percent are considered seriously mentally ill, said Correctional Chief Deputy Jerry Gutierrez, who oversees the system for the Sheriff’s Department.

“Systemwide, we are doubling the housing unit capacity for severely mentally ill patients,” with conversion of facilities at both the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside and the Larry Smith Correctional Center in Banning, Gutierrez said.

At the Smith facility, 64 beds were recently added. Work is underway at Presley to add 40 additional beds for female inmates. That will expand capacity from 80 to 184 beds in the system.

And the Riverside County Department of Mental Health, which oversees treatment of inmates, has proposed increasing its overall staff in the jails from a current 139 to 162 positions for the next fiscal year, and is asking for a combined budget increase for jail staffing from this year’s $19.8 million to $22.1 million.

The mental health department receives funding for staffing jails from both the county and a state-supplied fund shared by others in the Community Corrections Partnership, a joint agency mandated by the realignment law.

CRISIS MODE

Despite those changes, advocates for inmates say the entire system needs an overhaul.