Crime and Punishment Edmund G. Brown, Jr. (Jerry) Mental Health Prison Policy State Government State Politics

Plush Prison Hospitals?

yogaclass-prison.jpg

The SF Examiner just ran an article that characterizes the new construction
requested by the draft report for the court-appointed receiver tasked with overhauling the state’s prison health care system as loaded with “plush” “amenities.”

They may be right.

Or not.

(For the back story on this issue see these posts.)

Here’s the relevant clip:

The recommendations called on the cash-starved state to spend $8 billion on seven new hospitals – each roughly the size of 10 Wal-Mart stores – to replace a decrepit health care system that a federal judge says is killing an average of one inmate per week. Judge Thelton Henderson said state officials were incapable of fixing the system and handed the job to receiver Clark Kelso.

The draft report, posted recently on the receiver’s Web site, said the new hospitals’ environment “should be ‘holistic’ in expression.”

“In the place of sterile prison corridors or barren, large-scale ‘yards,’ both staff and patient should experience landscaped courtyards and places of rest and respite,” the draft said.

The report also suggested that the new prison hospitals include:

— Workout rooms to “promote wellness,” featuring exercise machines and space for “therapeutic activities such as aerobics, yoga, (and) group exercise.” Plus handball courts.

— Outdoor courtyards “where patients will be encouraged to participate in recreational therapy programs such as horticulture.”

— Gymnasiums with a basketball court and a music room, a crafts room, game room and therapy kitchen.

— Outdoor running tracks.

The report also said there should be day rooms for patients featuring a “quiet room for reading and study, as well as a separate room for group TV watching.” Each should include “a liberal use of sound attenuation materials and be designed to maximize natural light to create a normative environment,” the document said.

Those representing Kelso, the federal receiver, say that this is an old draft of the report and that most of the kerfuffle is about mental health treatments that are already required by the courts.

The office of State Attorney General Jerry Brown, who is furious at the whole thing and tried to block it in court, sent the article around to interested press persons, myself included, with an “IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS” note.

From my chilly perch in the wilds of Vermont, I can’t readily tell you if the critics and the SF reporters are shooting at straw men with this howl over “plush prison hospitals,” or whether the requests from Kelso are indeed absurdly excessive.

But I do know two things:

ONE: the state’s prison health care system cannot continue to offer unconstitutional treatment (or lack thereof) that routinely kills an inmate a week. Sorry. That’s how it is.

And TWO: The state is perilously close to broke.

All of which adds up to the fact that the supposed grown-ups in Sac’to need to stop sniping at each other and figure this puppy out.

Now.

6 Comments

  • With those amenities, we could see more overcrowding with people trying to break into prisons and prisoners refusing parole. What bothers me is that the judicial branch has effectively taken charge of taxation, and the citizens don’t elect them.

  • $8,000,000 per prisoner to spent on health care construction????

    Based on 8 billion price tag divided by 180,000 inmates gives you a per capita constuction cost of $44,444 per prisoner! This is only construction cost — not operatiing costs.

    If 1/2% of the prison population is in the hospital (at any given time – 25% higher than USA average), that translates to $8,888,888 per hospital guest for construction.

  • Wow, those guys in the photo are unusually fit for a group of supposed beginners — most of them have their hand on the floor for “Triangle” pose, and pretty good alignment, which is unusual. All their workouts in the “yard” or gym or whatever they do has clearly paid off, when there’s relatively little else to do. Combine that with some poetry and meditative yoga practice, and we’ll have some very fit, poetic zen-oriented members of society upon their release.

    Seriously, as long as they’re not violent offenders which I assume they’re not if they have a female instructor and so many of them in close quarters, this isn’t a bad idea at all. But I harp again on the fact that much of California’s overcrowding is due to having to house illegal immigrants who make up upto 1/4 of the State prison population and 1/3 of the L A County prison population, while we don’t get reimbursement for this from the feds — which we are owed, since this is a federal problem. That is NOT a “rightwing” view at all, just an observation of fact where you get agreement from odd bedfellows like Antonovich/ Knaba as Supervisors, to an editorial from the liberal L A Times a couple of months ago.

    Then there’s the fact that upto 1/2 the prison population has substance abuse problems they’re not being treated for or are mentally ill and should be housed separately and treated — that bunch needs more than yoga and certainly more than poetry.

  • Where is the comment about the
    1) Draconian prisons
    2) Corrupt Prison Industrial Complex
    3) Robber Baron Gavachos
    4) Pinche Gavacho Republicans

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