Considerable controversy has surrounded the proposed relocation of the current Utah State Prison located at Point of the Mountain in Draper. Meeting in a special session on Wednesday, Aug. 19, the Utah State Legislature voted 62-12 to move the Utah State Prison from Draper to an area near I-80 and 7200 West in Salt Lake City. Gov. Gary Herbert signed the resolution. The new prison will be a 4,000 bed facility and will be built at a cost of $550 million dollars. However, the question of how many inmates with a history of mental illness issues make up the prison population in Utah is one that concerns many mental health advocates.
According to National Alliance on Mental Illness, “This week Congress is coming back from their August recess and we want to make comprehensive mental health reform an impossible issue for them to ignore.” The bills before congress are: The Mental Health Reform Act of 2015 (S 1945) and, the The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (HR 2646).”
In Washington County, Dixie Regional Behavioral Medicine Unit currently has 13 inpatient beds for people suffering from some type of mental health issue. According to their website, the Dixie Regional Behavioral Medicine Unit offers a therapeutic setting for treatment of such problems as acute depression, incapacitating anxiety and severe thought disorders. Programs are designed to offer short-term stabilization and treatment for adults in mental or emotional crisis. Adolescents may be admitted for evaluation with clinical director approval. Duration of treatment in the inpatient unit ranges from 3-14 days, depending on the patient’s response to treatment. The average length of stay is approximately four days.
The Washington County Purgatory Correctional Facility website inmate roster reports a total of 438 inmates in the jail as of Sept. 11, 2015. John Worlton, the medical health coordinator for the Purgatory Correctional Facility, told The Independent that approximately 20 percent of the inmates currently being incarcerated in the Purgatory Correctional Facility are receiving medication for some type of mental health issue, varying from depression to more serious issues.
“At any time, there are three to five inmates with mental issues severe enough to be put on a waiting list to be sent to the Utah State Hospital in Provo,” Worlton said. “It is a tragedy that these individuals, that are impaired enough to be sent to the State Hospital, have to wait so long in jail.”
Based on Worlton’s estimated percentages, with the new Utah State Prison having a capacity of 4000 inmates, that would mean approximately 800 of them could potentially have some form of mental health issue.
According to an article written for KSL News by Marjorie Cortez , a federal class–action lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for Utah on behalf of mentally ill inmates in county jails. The lawsuit has been filed against multiple defendants, including the state of Utah; the Utah Department of Human Services and its executive director, Ann Williamson; the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health and its division director, Douglas Thomas; and the state hospital and its superintendent, Dallas Earnshaw. The lawsuit alleges that state agencies unconstitutionally delay treatment to restore inmates’ mental competency, thereby violating their due process rights.
The Utah State Hospital currently has a total of 424 beds for those suffering from severe mental issues. According to the Utah State Hospitals ‘Philosophy of Treatment,’ their first priority is to provide patients intensive individualized intermediate-length care and treatment.
The lawsuit states that waiting times for treatment at the Utah State Hospital have reached a “state of crisis,” with a waiting list that has doubled each year for the past three years and wait times increasing from 30 days to 180 days. The lawsuit also notes that the Utah State Hospital is the only facility statewide authorized to perform competency restoration.
Aaron Kinikini, legal director of the Disability Law Center, which filed the lawsuit along with plaintiffs’ attorneys was quoted as saying: “For defendants with mental illness stuck in this jail ‘limbo,’ these long delays result in needless suffering, including steadily worsening symptoms, self-mutilation, suicide attempts, and prolonged detention in solitary confinement. The Disability Law Center and the other plaintiffs allege that warehousing these very ill people in jail when they have not been convicted of any crime, and are legally unable to stand trial for a crime, is both cruel and unconstitutional … While the state’s ongoing practice of placing incompetent defendants on a perpetual wait list is due to a chronic shortage of funding, beds and staff at the Utah State Hospital, such a fiscal bind certainly does not excuse it.”
Bart Kennington, the president-elect for NAMI Utah, told The Independent that unfortunately, there were too many examples like this.
“I have been on the board for a number of years,” Kennington said. “Yes, America has really dropped the ball. I have traveled all over the country and few people have heard of NAMI but are desperate for their services. Our challenge is to create awareness in any way we can. Sadly many won’t participate because of stigma and bias.”
The Independent will continue to follow this story as it develops.
I hope the Independent does continue to follow the story. Keep going and go deeper. It is a rabbit hole. The bigger question is not how many inmates are taking medication (20%) in Purgatory–the bigger question is how many need to take it and denied. The 20% quoted in this article are probably inmates that are under the state prison system instead of the jail system. The state system is required to hold itself to a higher standard. There is a huge discrepancy in the treatment of inmates in jail vs. prison. It is a tragedy what goes on in our local jail. There is no oversight committee. Extreme isolation for months and months on end. It is so terribly sad. Talk about making a bad situation worse. Worse for the person who has the mental illness, for the family members of that person and for the community at that has to deal with the compounded results of someone who started out with a mild mental illness and, as a result of the treatment in jails, progressed to a full blown mental illness. The mentally ill often can’t advocate for themselves. The public defenders aren’t going to advocate for them (too many cases, too little time–find out how much a public defender makes per case annual contract) The guards, and prison “therapists”, medical professionals don’t advocate–either because they are poorly trained–outnumbered and in the case of many on staff–as a result of too many years on the job–very jaded. Once in the system they enter a downward spiral that makes it harder and harder to get out. Get the numbers on how many people end up in extreme solitary, how long they stay in those conditions, and how that is determined–extreme isolation is not good for anyone–it will make the sane insane. But nobody over there is willing to actually speak about what is going on inside. A nation’s greatness (or how about a community’s) is measured by how it treats it’s weakest members. We kinda suck right now. Wonder what would happen if we turned the same critical eye on our jail system as we did our animal shelters a few years back. Time for a change.