Prison Halts Isolation Program

The state Department of Corrections on Tuesday abruptly suspended a plan to house mentally ill inmates in special segregation units after lawyers for the prisoners said the cells are inhumane and would make the convicts sicker.

Under the plan, mentally ill inmates at Corcoran State Prison were to be isolated, beginning today, in a special “Supermax” unit designed for prisoners deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Eventually, officials planned to expand the housing approach to nine other prisons.

But after learning that lawyers for the inmates intended to ask a federal judge in Sacramento to block the move, the Department of Corrections put the program on hold.

A department spokeswoman, Margot Bach, said prison officials would work with the attorneys to try to resolve their concerns. The lawyers, however, went ahead with their request for a court order halting the plan, saying they had no firm commitment from the department.

Prison officials have been working for more than a year to design a housing approach to better serve mentally ill inmates, Bach said.

The new Supermax facility, she said, was selected because it creates “a quieter, smaller environment where they can’t see and imitate other inmates who may be behaving badly.

“We thought it would be easier for them to function in this environment, with fewer distractions,” Bach said.

Lawyers for mentally ill prisoners painted a different view of the unit. Steve Fama, one of the attorneys, called the housing a place of “endless sterility, monotony and sensory deprivation” that would aggravate their condition.

The court documents requesting a judicial order blocking the program elaborate: “The cells are laid out so that ... inmates stare at a blank wall and cannot even see guards or inmates in other cells. The cells have heavy solid doors through which there is only a small window to see into the corridor.”

There is no stimulation such as radio, and exercise is limited and takes place in individual cages, the documents say.

Because there is no video monitoring of the cells, guards cannot quickly spot suicidal, bizarre or predatory behavior, the documents say. And inmates would attend therapy in specially constructed cages barely large enough for a 6-foot-2 man to fit in comfortably, the lawyers said.

“Mentally ill people need human contact and socialization,” said another attorney on the case, Michael Bien of San Francisco. “These units are actually dangerous.”

The lawyers also charge that prison officials, uncertain what effect the Supermax might have on mentally ill inmates, planned an “experimental” six-month evaluation project to determine the impact on an initial group.

They say department officials planned to house about 50 mentally ill inmates in the Supermax cells while leaving another 50 in the traditional segregation unit as a control group.

“The [department] ‘scientists’ will measure whether those mentally ill inmates unlucky enough to be housed in the [Supermax] have a higher rate of suicide attempts, crisis bed admissions, emergency referrals and changes in levels of mental health care than the control group,” the court documents say.

A Department of Corrections memo outlining the evaluation project acknowledges the department’s uncertainty over whether the Supermax would create “extreme sensory deprivation that may be detrimental to the mental health of the inmates.”

But Bach, the department spokeswoman, said it was unfair to characterize the evaluation as an “experiment.”

“There’s no data that says this would be harmful to mentally ill inmates, and we believe it would be appropriate,” Bach said.

Tuesday’s request for a court order is part of ongoing litigation over the prison system’s treatment of mentally ill inmates.

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Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.