House Judiciary passes bill to limit solitary confinement for mentally ill
The Denver Post
The Colorado House
Judiciary Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill that would
restrict prison officials from placing inmates in "long term" solitary
confinement if they are mentally ill.
The bill, introduced following the slaying of prisons chief Tom Clements last year, already passed the Senate. Clements was killed by a parolee who spent several years in administrative segregation, also known as solitary.
The bill now goes to the House Appropriations Committee.
If
the bill is enacted into law, the Colorado Department of Corrections
would have 90 days to evaluate all offenders in solitary confinement.
If
the department determines the offender is mentally ill, the state would
have to move them to a step-down unit, a prison for the mentally ill or
other housing.
Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, said the
bill is important for offenders in solitary confinement who are mentally
ill, but he added that it will come with costs. According to the
current amendment those costs will be about $1.6 million a year.
"Keeping
mentally ill patients out of administrative segregation is crucial,"
agreed Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver. "But there is so much more to be
done."
Kellie Wasko, deputy executive director of CDOC, said that
1,979 Colorado inmates, or about one in 10, have been diagnosed with a
serious mental illness and of those 1,400 are in the general population.
The
Senate bill is sponsored by Sens. Lucia Guzman D-Denver, and Jessie
Ulibarri, D-Westminster, and Rep. Joseph A. Salazar of Thornton.
"Warehousing
prisoners with mental illness in long-term solitary confinement is a
cruel, costly and unlawful practice that unnecessarily jeopardizes
public safety," said Denise Maes, the American Civil Liberties Union's
Colorado public policy director.
In testimony Maes said
rehabilitation strategies are critical, because 97 percent of prisoners
will be released into communities.
She said solitary confinement
cells are a bit bigger than a king-size bed and offenders stay there
more than 22 hours a day where they "sleep, eat and defecate — one lives
their entire daily life in that cell."
1 comment:
At CSP it is 23 hours a day, 5 days a week and 24 hours a day on weekends, due to security concerns. Staff does not like to work....on weekends.
Post a Comment