Four months after a federal judge in Sacramento declared that conditions for mentally ill inmates in the state’s prisons were “horrific,” California corrections officials unveiled sweeping new policies that will house them in specially designed units, provide greater time out of their cells and offer vastly increased treatment for the ill prisoners.
The new policies, outlined in a filing Friday in federal court, dramatically alter the manner in which tens of thousands of state prison inmates are to be treated, and are designed to reduce the number of prisoner suicides and deaths.
“This is a tremendous breakthrough in the long struggle to bring treatment of mentally ill inmates into line with the Constitution,” said Michael Bien, lead attorney for the inmates.
[For more of this story, written by Sam Stanton and Denny Walsh, go to http://www.sacbee.com/2014/08/...to-dramatically.html]
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