[NYAPRS Enews] T&G: Massachusetts Poised to Launch Effort for MH Alternatives to Solitary Confinement

[Harvey Rosenthal]

NYAPRS Note: While advocates for mental health alternatives to solitary
confinement in state prisons anxiously await the Assembly's return so
that they can pass the SHU bill and send it on to Governor Spitzer's
desk, a similar campaign is being launched next door in Massachusetts. 

 

Prisons Urged Not To Isolate Mentally Ill

Better Care Sought For Ailing Inmates

By John J. Monahan TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

 

BOSTON- A state legislator and advocates for mentally ill prisoners
yesterday urged passage of legislation to require that prisoners with
serious mental illness be placed in secure residential treatment units
and no longer be held in solitary confinement in state prisons. 

 

Recounting that 11 of 16 suicides in state prisons during the past three
years involved prisoners in segregation units, and more than 500 cases
of self-wounding and self-mutilation occurred among those prisoners last
year, Toby Fisher, policy director for the National Alliance on Mental
Illness of Massachusetts, said the practice must change. 

 

"Mentally ill people should not be locked up 23 hours a day, mutilating
themselves and killing themselves. They are human beings," he said.   

 

State Rep. Ruth B. Balser, D-Newton, chairwoman of the Joint Committee
on Mental Illness and Substance Abuse, called for adoption of a bill
that would require state prisons to evaluate any inmate being sent to
segregation within 48 hours to determine if they are mentally ill, and
refer them to secure residential units within prisons if appropriate. 

 

She said an estimated 25 percent of the state's inmate population has
severe mental illness and placing them in solitary confinement "is the
worst possible thing you can do to someone who is psychotic" or severely
disturbed. "It will only make them sicker." 

 

Ms. Balser said the legislation calls for the state to set up such
secure residential treatment units within state prisons. She said it
would also call for training of correction officers to better identify
and handle inmates with mental disorders. 

 

Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal
Services, said the Department of Correction has known about the problem
for decades and failed to act. She said the state prison system has
inadvertently become "the state's biggest psychiatric facility" and has
a duty to treat mentally ill inmates in a humane fashion. 

 

"Massachusetts is putting seriously disturbed prisoners in sensory
deprivation cells where they sit 23 hours a day for years," Ms. Walker
said. "They are released untreated, untrained and completely unable to
cope with the daily stresses of society." 

 

Maximum security residential treatment units will cost about $12,700 per
bed, per year, above regular incarceration costs, but the state could
save through fewer medical emergencies and fewer costly referrals to
Bridgewater State Hospital, advocates said. They estimated the initial
cost at $2.4 million to $4 million to set up the residential psychiatric
units in state prisons. 

 

The advocates maintain the state needs to provide between 300 and 500
secure residential treatment units in prisons to address the problem. 

 

Diane Wiffin, spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction, issued
a statement yesterday saying DOC officials are going to begin improving
mental health treatment services for inmates and are also open some
residential treatment units in some maximum security facilities. In
addition, she said, the department will undertake "more cohesive suicide
prevention training" for correction officers. 

 

http://www.telegram.com/article/20071212/NEWS/712120599/1008/NEWS02 

 

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