| People in the News
STOCKTON January 25, 2008 12:01am
• Clark Kelso, a professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, has been appointed the new federal receiver overseeing health care for California prisons. Mr. Kelso replaces Robert Sillen, who has served in that role since April 2006. Mr. Kelso comes to the California Prison Health Care Receivership with more than 15 years of experience in a wide variety of positions in all three branches of state government, including the California Judicial Council and Administrative Office of the Courts, where he worked in support of court unification; the Department of Insurance, where he replaced Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, who abruptly resigned amid allegations of corruption; and as California’s Chief Information Officer, where he turned around the state’s troubled information technology program. http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com:80/stories/001/?ID=7655
Posted on Wed, Jan. 23, 2008 Judge replaces Calif. prisons overseer
The blunt, tough-talking overseer of California's troubled prison health care system was replaced Wednesday by a law professor who has been a fixture in the administrations of two governors. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, in removing Robert Sillen as court-appointed receiver for the health care system, said the task ahead for the system "would best be accomplished by appointing a new receiver who brings a different set of strengths." Henderson replaced Sillen with Clark Kelso, the professor who has worked for both Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic former Gov. Gray Davis. Kelso, 48, takes control of inmate medical care with orders from Henderson to complete the repair job quickly so the system can be turned back to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Sillen had estimated that it could take more than a decade to fix a system that at one point was blamed for killing an inmate a week through negligence or malpractice. Kelso said Wednesday that he hopes to complete the task in three or four years. "Bob (Sillen) was like the bull that could come in and get things started, and he had the Constitution in his back pocket," said state Sen. Mike Machado chairman of a committee overseeing prison spending. "I think Clark Kelso brings a management ability. I think we can look for greater interaction and cooperation than we had previously." Sillen, 65, declined to comment. He was replaced after picking fights with the attorneys whose lawsuit prompted the federal takeover of California's inmate health care system. Don Specter, director of the San Ramon-based nonprofit Prison Law Office, welcomed the switch, and said Kelso will bring "a more collaborative style and administrative skills." Sillen had demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in new medical equipment and buildings he said were needed to improve inmate health care. He sparked a salary war between state agencies when he unilaterally raised the pay scale for prison health care workers. At one point, Sillen threatened to send U.S. marshals to raid the state treasury if legislators didn't approve his spending plans. By comparison, Kelso signaled that he will try to work within a state budget that is stressed by a $14.5 billion deficit through July 2009. "I have an intimate knowledge of California government and I think it's fair to say a high degree of credibility in both the executive and legislative branch for doing quality work," Kelso said in a telephone interview. Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Hoch, thanked Sillen and said the administration looks forward to working with Kelso. "We all share the same goal of developing and implementing a constitutionally adequate prison medical care system," Hoch said in a statement. Associated Press writers Aaron C. Davis and Samantha Young contributed to this report.
San Quentin warden fired over health care
Sacramento -- The warden at San Quentin State Prison, after little more than a year on the job, was fired Thursday amid an investigation into health care problems at the facility. Jill Brown, a longtime corrections official who took over the top job at the Marin County prison in May 2004, has been under investigation by the state inspector general's office, and a corrections official said the office's report led to Brown's dismissal. Todd Slosek, press secretary for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said Brown was told Thursday of her firing. The inspector general's office, which acts as an independent corrections watchdog, investigated allegations that Brown had threatened disciplinary action against a doctor who spoke with attorneys about problems with health care delivery at the prison. The report has not yet been made public, and calls to the inspector general's office were not returned Thursday. The office's findings include that a lack of communication between prison officials and medical staff played a large role in the poor health care there, according to a corrections official who asked to remain anonymous. California's prisons have been under fire for more than a year over medical care for inmates. Last week, a federal judge ordered that a receiver take over health care in the state's prisons. The judge concluded that conditions were so bad that inmates were dying for lack of proper medical treatment. Inmates have a constitutional right to adequate health care, and U.S. Judge Thelton Henderson found that that right was being violated. Court-ordered improvements could send costs skyrocketing above the $1.1 billion already spent annually on prisoner health care. San Quentin had been singled out earlier this year by medical experts who described filthy examination rooms and "deplorable'' conditions. The prison's administrators have repeatedly failed to implement court- ordered improvements to health care, said Alison Hardy, an attorney for the Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in a class-action lawsuit over inmate medical care. Hardy noted that a 2003 directive to inform inmates of upcoming doctor's appointments so they wouldn't miss them was not implemented until a few months ago. Inmates frequently were given just a few hours' notice of an appointment and often couldn't get out of work or other duties and were forced to forgo doctor's visits. "San Quentin has had enormous health care problems and has lacked the leadership to fix them,'' Hardy said. "Jill Brown inherited a big mess, but she didn't lead them out of it.'' Brown had replaced Jeanne Woodford, who is now second-in-command of state prisons, after five years as San Quentin's warden. The oldest prison in California, San Quentin houses the state's condemned inmates. The Death Row there is undergoing a $220 million renovation. The prison has 5,967 inmates, about twice its intended capacity. Slosek said John Stokes, who has been chief deputy warden at the prison since April, will become acting warden. It is unclear what will happen to Brown. Under state civil service rules, she could return to a prison job, such as associate warden, that isn't an appointed position. Brown has been a state corrections employee for more than 20 years, working at numerous prisons in the state's system. E-mail Mark Martin at markmartin@sfchronicle.com
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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/08/MNGK2DKSE21.DTL
U.S. seizes state prison health care
A federal judge, saying he was acting urgently to stop the needless deaths of inmates because of medical malfeasance, ordered Thursday that a receiver take control of California's prison health care system and correct what he called deplorable conditions. Experts said the order by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco was unprecedented in its scope given that the prison system provides health care to roughly 164,000 inmates at an annual cost of $1.1 billion. The order also was an embarrassing blow for the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which has promised to deliver major medical reforms for nearly two years but, Henderson said, has utterly failed. The prison medical system offered "at times outright depravity, and I intentionally call it that," said Henderson. He also said the need for action was so dire that he might appoint a temporary receiver in just weeks to at least begin to limit the harm to inmates from the poor medical care before a permanent receiver is put in place. Inmate families and those who have long fought for change in the prisons were ebullient. "It's certainly everything we asked for," said Donald Specter, head of the Prison Law Office, the prisoner rights group that filed the suit on which the judge was acting. Henderson said he would begin the process of selecting a receiver and defining his or her powers in consultation with state officials and the inmates' lawyers. The decision followed weeks of testimony from medical experts that Henderson described as horrifying in its depiction of barbaric medical conditions in some prisons, resulting in as many as 64 preventable deaths of inmates a year and injury to countless others. The state's attorneys have never even bothered to fight those characterizations or the need for federal intervention in spite of their damning reflection on prison managers. "This is humiliating," said James Jacobs, a law professor at New York University and an expert on court intervention in prison management. "What's extreme here is, it's like the judge is saying to the state, 'I'm totally giving up on you -- you are unwilling or unable to do this on your own.' " Indeed, top prisons officials for months have admitted the department was incapable of administering the system, a massive and complex medical program stretching the length of the state, often in remote locations. The state's lawyers have focused principally on trying to limit the power of the receiver. "Nobody can do this by themselves," said Bruce Slavin, the prison system's general counsel. "A receiver can help us do what we want to do faster. " The unions representing prison health workers, who have been at war with the prisons department, in part over who was responsible for conditions in the prisons, said they were thrilled at the judge's decision. The unions had jointly filed a brief in favor of the appointment of a receiver. "All the unions are more than willing to work with the receiver," said Gary Robinson, the executive director of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. "We think the department is incapable of the reforms that are necessary. The judge's position is absolutely correct. The management has been incompetent." Michael Jacobson, the director of the Vera Institute of Justice and the former head of New York City's jails, said the receiver should begin a process of deep changes reaching into all levels of management and the culture inside the prisons. "Nothing is going to happen for some years," he said. "This has to be a catalyst for longer-term structural changes. The potential implications of this are just so humongous." Henderson said appointing a receiver was a last resort but was a result of the Schwarzenegger administration's refusal to comply with his orders to improve the appalling quality of prison medical care. A federal injunction has been in place for three years requiring phased-in medical improvements at each state prison, but the Corrections Department has met none of the goals. In one case described by court-appointed experts, an inmate's spine was injured in a fight. A prison doctor refused to believe the inmate's claim that he couldn't move, and the doctor wrenched the inmate's head and neck during the examination, aggravating his paralysis. In a case at San Quentin in January, an inmate reported to the infirmary seeking emergency treatment with signs of shock. A doctor already under investigation for two previous suspicious deaths prescribed antibiotics for what he said was bronchitis. When the inmate collapsed on the way back to his cell, the guards brought him back. The doctor ordered that the inmate be given intravenous fluids, but when the staff could not find a vein, the inmate was simply returned to his cell. The inmate died the next day from a serious lung ailment. He indicated that the receiver was likely to have the ability, at the least, to fire incompetent doctors and hire quickly to fill the more than 150 positions that have been vacant for years and to order construction to improve conditions in the state's 33 prisons. "This is no panacea," said Jacobs. "It's a staggeringly large job." Henderson was clear that the process is likely to be long and arduous because of the depth of the problems. In spite of condemning incompetent doctors described in earlier testimony, Henderson went out of his way to praise the rank-and-file prison health workers while excoriating prison managers. "It's also become apparent that the state has no effective management structure to offer health care," Henderson said. He added later in his comments from the bench, "My decision to establish
a receivership is just a start."
What it means The administrator will answer to the court, not the Schwarzenegger administration, and will have the power to order improvements regardless of how much it costs state taxpayers. What's next Prisoner rights advocates and prison officials will recommend candidates to take control of health care programs. The judge will have the final say. The judge also may appoint a temporary receiver until a permanent appointee is named. The numbers 164,000: Approximate number of inmates at 33 state prisons. $1.1 billion: What state will spend this year on prison health care. 64: The number of inmates who may be dying unnecessarily in state prisons each year because of poor medical care, according to court-appointed physician Michael Puisis. E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/01/MNGOCDHPP71.DTL
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/30/MNprisons30.DTL Judge orders takeover of state's prison health care system
A federal court judge, saying he was acting urgently to stop the needless deaths of inmates due to medical malfeasance, ordered Thursday that a receiver take control of California’s stumbling prison health care system and correct the deplorable conditions. Experts said the order by the judge, Thelton Henderson of the San Francisco district court, was unprecedented in its scope, given that the corrections system provides health care to roughly 164,000 inmates at an annual cost of $1.1 billion. The order was also an embarrassing blow for the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which has promised to deliver major medical reforms for nearly two years but, Henderson said, has utterly failed. The prison medical system offered “at times outright depravity, and I intentionally call it that,” said Henderson. He also said that the need for action was so dire that he may appoint a temporary receiver in just weeks to at least begin to limit the harm to inmates from the poor medical care before a permanent receiver was put in place. Inmate families and those who have long fought for change in the prisons were ebullient. “It’s certainly everything we asked for,” said Donald Specter, the head of the Prison Law Office, the prisoner rights group that filed the suit on which the judge was acting. The decision, which the judge had hinted was coming, followed weeks of testimony from medical experts that Henderson described as horrifying in its depiction of barbaric medical conditions in some prisons, resulting in as many as 64 preventable deaths of inmates a year and injury to countless others. The state’s attorneys have never even bothered to fight those characterizations or the need for federal intervention, in spite of its damning reflection on corrections managers. “This is humiliating,” said James Jacobs, a law professor at New York University and an expert on court intervention in prison management. “What’s extreme here is it’s like the judge is saying to the state, ‘I’m totally giving up on you, you are unwilling or unable to do this on your own.’” Indeed, top corrections officials have for months admitted that the department was simply incapable of administering the system, a massive and complex medical program stretching the length of the state, often in remote locations. The state’s lawyers have focused principally on trying to limit the power of the receiver. “Nobody can do this by themselves,” said Bruce Slavin, the corrections agency’s general counsel. “A receiver can help us do what we want to do faster.” The unions representing prison health workers, who have been at war with the corrections department, in part over who was responsible for the disastrous conditions, said they were thrilled at the judge’s decision. The unions had jointly filed a brief in favor of the appointment of a receiver. “All the unions are more than willing to work with the receiver,” said Gary Robinson, the executive director of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. “We think the department is incapable of the reforms that are necessary. The judge’s position is absolutely correct. The management has been incompetent.” Michael Jacobson, the director of the Vera Institute of Justice and the former head of New York City’s jails, said that, to work, the receiver had to begin a process of deep changes reaching into all levels of management and the culture inside the prisons. “Nothing is going to happen for some years,” he said. “This has to be a catalyst for longer term structural changes. The potential implications of this are just so humongous.” Judge Henderson said that appointing a receiver was a last resort, but a result of the Schwarzenegger administration’s refusal to comply with his orders to improve the appalling quality of prison medical care. A federal injunction has been in place for three years requiring phased in medical improvements at each state prison, but the corrections department has met none of the goals. In one case described by court-appointed experts, an inmate’s spine was injured in a fight. A prison doctor refused to believe the inmate’s claim that he couldn’t move, and so the doctor wrenched the inmate’s head and neck during the examination, aggravating his paralysis. In a case that took place at San Quentin in January, an inmate reported to the infirmary seeking emergency treatment with signs of shock. A doctor already under investigation for two previous suspicious deaths prescribed antibiotics for what he said was bronchitis. When the inmate collapsed on the way back to his cell, the guards brought him back. The doctor ordered that the inmate be given intravenous fluids, but when the staff could not find a vein the inmate was simply returned to his cell. The inmate died the next day from a serious lung ailment. Henderson said that in the weeks ahead he would begin the process of selecting a receiver and shaping the precise scope of his or her powers, in consultation with state officials and the inmates’ lawyers. He indicated that the receiver was likely to have the ability, at the least, to fire incompetent doctors and make quick hires to fill the more than 150 vacancies that have been open for years, and to order construction to improve conditions in the state’s 33 prisons. “This is no panacea,” said Jacobs. “It’s a staggeringly large job.” Henderson was clear that the process was likely to be long and arduous because of the depth of the problems. In spite of condemning incompetent doctors described in earlier testimony, Henderson went out of his way to praise the rank and file prison health workers yesterday, while excoriating corrections department managers. “It’s also become apparent that the state has no effective management structure to offer health care,” Henderson said. He added later in his comments from the bench, “My decision to establish a receivership is just a start.” E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com
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http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/12028312.htm Posted on Thu, Jun. 30, 2005
California's prison health care system to get outside oversight BY MARK GLADSTONE
SAN FRANCISCO - (KRT) - With the toll of preventable deaths mounting weekly, an alarmed federal judge on Thursday seized control of California's woefully inadequate prison health care system to ensure that inmates receive the care they're guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. It is the most sweeping federal takeover of a prison health care system in the nation's history. Citing "incompetence and outright depravity in the rendering of medical care," U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson said he had no choice but to strip the Schwarzenegger administration of management of the $1.1 billion-a-year prison medical system and turn it over to an outside administrator. The San Francisco judge estimated that an inmate dies every six or seven days due to medical negligence or malpractice. He described a bureaucracy engulfed in institutional inertia, unable to fix the problem. In April, the San Jose Mercury News detailed one of the cases. An inmate who could neither eat nor drink and was dehydrated arrived at the San Quentin clinic shortly after 8 p.m. With a fever over 103 and a racing pulse, his vital signs indicated possible shock and a life-threatening emergency. The prison doctor on duty did not have a chart to check the inmate's history. The doctor failed to evaluate for dehydration and diagnosed bronchitis and the flu. He prescribed Tylenol, Benadryl, cough syrup, antibiotics and two other medications and told the inmate to come back in a week. The inmate collapsed on the way back to his cell, according to a report from three court-appointed medical experts obtained by the Mercury News. The physician, known only as "Dr. X," gave him some fluids and sent him back to his housing unit. By the next afternoon, the man was in shock and died - about 30 hours after he was first seen by Dr. X. The litany of health care woes shows the rocky road the Schwarzenegger administration faces in trying to overhaul a dysfunctional prison system where costs defy containment, inmate care is shoddy and guards wield enormous political clout. Along the way, people die needlessly on the inside, while the state spends millions of dollars to guard comatose patients who cannot move, let alone escape. Henderson said he would move within the next few weeks to name a temporary administrator who could hire qualified physicians and then launch a search for a permanent manager to crack down on mistreatment. He wryly said his challenge is to find someone who administered a major medical system like Johns Hopkins, received an MBA from Stanford in medical management and served as a prison warden. Attorneys for the nonprofit Prison Law Office, which brought the action that resulted in Henderson's landmark decision, indicated they would support one of three court-appointed experts as the interim administrator. State officials conceded inmates receive shoddy care and said they have no plans to appeal the ruling. Instead, they expect to cooperate with Henderson, who now will have the final say in health care in prisons. "I have said all along that if something is broken it needs to be fixed," Corrections Secretary Roderick Hickman said in a statement. "The taxpayers of this state can't afford to keep paying for repeated lawsuits that result from the same kinds of problems such as inadequate health care, poor mental health treatment and insufficient staffing." Attorneys for the state and inmates described the decision as historic and said they were unaware of such a sweeping action undertaken in any other prison health care system. Henderson hailed it as a "bold and uncharted adventure" that could last several years. At 71 and already on part-time status, the bearded and bespectacled Henderson said he would like "to retire and go fishing" but he feels an obligation to provide humane treatment to the state's 16,000 inmates. The decision is expected to shake up the sprawling prison system - which effective Friday is changing its name to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as part of a massive reorganization. For one of the first times, someone with an independent set of eyes and broad power will be examining prison practices and that could affect the closed culture of the state's 33 prisons. For the past 18 months, the Schwarzenegger administration has faced mounting problems in the prison system and has been at loggerheads with the guard union. The union represents some medical personnel, too. Another key issue has been who has the ultimate say when an inmate is ill - the security staff or medical personnel. If the new health care administrator fails to give as much leeway to guards, it could lessen the power officers have inside institutions. Thursday's hearing was set to hear final arguments in the latest episode of a class action lawsuit filed in 2001 by nine plaintiffs, including inmate Marciano Plata. The state previously had entered into a broad legal agreement intended to improve health care. Sitting in front of a U.S. flag in the quiet courtroom with about 40 spectators, Henderson calmly described a trail of mostly broken promises made by the state prison authorities dating back 25 years. In the Plata case, Henderson said, over the past four years he's tried to encourage the state "to fix what the state admits is a broken system." After viewing the historic ruling from the jury box, Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, told reporters she expects the new receiver to find more problems. "It's the tip of a very big iceberg," Romero said. --- © 2005, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.). Visit MercuryNews.com, the World Wide Web site of the Mercury News, at http://www.mercurynews.com . Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
http://thereporter.com/editorials/ci_2837301 July 12, 2005 Prison system hope
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson is a man of courage and conviction. On Thursday, he took the unprecedented action of putting California's out-of-control prison system into federal receivership. This, after days of hearings in which he heard doctors and other witnesses testify about the deplorable medical situations that exist in our state's prisons. Story after story painted a picture of a system so barbaric and callous that scores of inmates are dying tortured deaths out of sheer neglect. Nearly one inmate a week is dying needlessly while Department of Corrections bureaucrats flail about, desperate to maintain order. Now even the department's top brass are pledging cooperation. The judge's action may seem extreme, but extreme action was required. Nothing else worked - not Senate hearings that exposed a corrupt and flawed system, not media attention, protests, letters or even lawsuits. What was viewed as a landmark case five years ago has gone virtually ignored. The Plata case, named after one of 10 inmate plaintiffs, resulted in a settlement which required that CDC develop new medical protocols and procedures that address staff training, timeliness of care and other issues. Registered nurses were to staff emergency clinics 24 hours per day every day. And the department agreed to secure funding and implement policies at each prison according to a specific schedule. Yet the system - including our two prisons in Vacaville - failed to meet these basic requirements. The bodies and the lawsuits continue to stack up. Judge Henderson will meet with attorneys for the nonprofit Prison Law Office next week to discuss who the receiver should be, or if it should be a team of people with a mix of medical administration, political management and correctional skills. The new receiver will report directly and only to the judge however long it takes to get the state's $1.1 billion system back on track. It could be years. During our recent series on Vacaville's California Medical Facility, we met a lot of good people who really want to do a good job and make a difference. But it is impossible for them to succeed and thrive in a system as distorted and corrupt. Too many bad apples - scattered throughout the 32-prison system - and too many callous practices undermine the credibility of good doctors and nurses. Desperate action was needed, and desperate action was taken. We believe that Judge Henderson is just the man to select an appropriate agent of change - an individual or team of individuals - that will raise standards and establish a protocol with dignity. Failing is not an option.
Oakand Tribune http://insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2834819 Inmates' health up to judge
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge seized control of medical care in California's
prisons Thursday, deciding to appoint a receiver to overhaul a $1.1 billion
system in which an inmate needlessly dies every week on average.
Likely to be in place for at least a few years, the receiver will report directly to Henderson. Though the scope of duties has yet to be determined, it will almost certainly include firing and hiring personnel and reworking policy on health care at the state's 32 prisons. Henderson said he realizes this takeover — unprecedented in its scope — is "perhaps the most extreme remedy that's available" and said he orders it neither lightly nor with a clear idea of exactly how it will work. But all lesser means havefailed, lives are at stake, and time is of the essence, the judge said. The current crisis violates the Eighth Amendment's protection from cruel and unusual punishment, he said, and "is simply not to be tolerated." State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who as chairwoman of the Select Committee on the California Correctional System has crusaded for prison reform, was in the courtroom Thursday and said, "This is the right thing to do, this is the only thing to do." Having the system placed in receivership will "force the state of California to do a gut check" after a quarter-century of neglecting the basics, Romero said. Prison Law Office Director Donald Specter, who argued for receivership, called this "a historic moment — nothing like this has ever been done in the country" on a scale near to this. "This is akin to running a major corporation ... in some ways it's more complicated." Some states have outsourced medical services in their prisons, but California administers its own. Prisoner advocates sued the state in 2001 over constitutionally inadequate health care in the prisons, and the prisons already have operated for three years under an injunction requiring systemic health care improvements. Yet few if any have come to pass; a plague of unqualified, unsupervised doctors and vacant management positions continues. Henderson issued an order May 10 for the parties to show cause why a receiver should or should not be put in charge. Expert testimony given in Henderson's courtroom over five days in May and June described instance after instance in which inmates suffered or died due to neglect or improper care; statistically, it happens about once a week. State officials initially were lukewarm to the idea of receivership, acknowledging the system was a failure but blaming stubborn doctors' unions and unwieldy bureaucracy for the lack of progress. By Thursday, however, they'd apparently embraced it as inevitable. Jerrold Schaefer, the state's hired counsel, told Henderson on Thursday that the state hopes this will be "a collaborative process" with a high-ranking member of the correctional agency's Health Care Services Division acting as liaison. Schaefer said the state hopes the receiver will be "a creator, not merely a critic of the system" who will enact policies to provide constitutionally adequate health care for decades beyond the receivership's end. California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency Secretary Roderick Hickman issued a statement pledging his agency's cooperation and noting he's "said all along that if something is broken it needs to be fixed." "That's what we intend to do with this case. We need to find a sustainable solution to the inmate health care issues that will keep this department out of the federal courts," he said. "The taxpayers of this state can't afford to keep paying for repeated lawsuits that result from the same kinds of problems such as inadequate health care, poor mental health treatment and insufficient staffing." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill in May to reorganize and centralize the state's correctional agencies; officials will roll out the structure, leadership and logo today. "Tomorrow marks a new day for California's corrections system as the agency is transformed into the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation," Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said Thursday. "The governor looks forward to working with the receiver to create a sustainable health care system for our prisons." Henderson praised the reorganization Thursday as being in the same spirit of reform as his decision to appoint a receiver. "I'm afraid, however, that the reorganization doesn't go far enough" in elevating inmate health care as a priority, the judge said. Henderson said he'll expand on his ruling with a written order within the next few weeks. He refrained from declaring any state officials in contempt of court for their past failures to correct the problem, saying he'll need everybody's cooperation from this point forward. The 71-year-old jurist also said the receivership will last however long it takes to solve the crisis, despite his personal desires. "I want to retire, I want to go fishing," he said, drawing laughter
from the audience. "I don't want the receiver in here any longer than necessary."
Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com
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http://www.thereporter.com/search/ci_2838510' United Front
It isn't the usual thing that happens in California courtrooms, where
a judge is actually informed about what is terribly wrong within the system
and takes corrective action.
But death sentences have routinely been given to hundreds of men and women through methods of slow and painful torture in the form of medical neglect in California's prisons. And the man who is doing something about it is Federal Senior Judge Thelton Henderson. In his San Francisco courtroom Thursday, he ruled that the medical neglect and its death toll is so rampant that he must put the entire California Department of Corrections under the control of an emergency federal receiver. This happened after shocking testimonies given by two investigative physicians, each with 20-years-plus experience, who compared California's medical crisis to that of Angola, one of the worst federal prisons in the country. Both physicians stated that in all their decades in practice in correctional settings, they had "never seen such callousness and gross incompetence so widespread." They reported scores of preventable deaths verified from the medical records. At least 64 more per year are predicted to happen until the bureaucratic mess is cleaned up. Physicians predicted an immeasurable toll of serious injuries that fall just short of death. I sat through their testimonies in San Francisco, heard their stories told with tones of grief and moral outrage, and I cried silently as they described what is nothing less than torture. Records were "missing" or never filed on 60 or more additional deaths. Is this a coverup or just unbearable incompetence? The crisis isn't happening because there is a shortage of money. Everyone agrees on that point. The medical care budget for inmates is $1.1 billion per year. Undersecretary Kevin Carruth, one of the men hired to remedy the problems in corrections quit his job during the course of the hearings. He admitted that medical care isn't exactly CDC's forte. The governor and legislators implemented a grandiose reform plan that puts far too many responsibilities on a few men and women, but already it has crumbled by the resignation of one of the key men hired just 18 months ago to bring about the reform. The plan was impractical to begin with, but the attempt at least caused some recognition to the problem. In itself, that was a bit of progress. The key element of the all-new, improved prison plan was civilian oversight, which struck out of it before the ink was dry. After that, I couldn't take it seriously while others were anxious to pass anything just to get a start on the behemoth problems which have claimed numerous lives per year. It's a simple equation. If prisoners doubled who are locked in cages and basic needs aren't met, such as decent food, water, proper housing and sanitary conditions, then the result is predictably chaos and crisis. The core of the problem is severe overcrowding. We simply have too many people in prison. But nobody in the Legislature or those on boards and commissions will admit it. Even though state murder by medical neglect is common, it is still an unthinkable remedy to grant compassionate release for terminal illness way past the time that anyone is a danger to society. Releasing nonviolent inmates or changing the sentencing laws to include alternative sentencing is a common-sense approach that few want to consider. That's because most of the callous people who block this reform were put into office by law enforcement labor unions so they could serve their interests, not the interests of the people. And certainly not the interests of the 3 million people who are connected to the state's inmates. This number doesn't include the family members of those in jails, federal prisoners or juvenile halls. These people are mostly the poor and uneducated who have not organized a funded, voting lobby to the size and power that it would take to outnumber the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The booming prison industry probably would be much smaller, around 30,000 inmates instead of 165,000 if former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson hadn't wanted to run for the presidency on a "tough on crime" platform. As founder and director of UNION - United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect - I believe the lawsuits my group has helped families file in several wrongful death cases have made a serious impact. Now people are going to get fired for killing prisoners and demonstrating deliberate indifference. In the past there was no accountability. Three of those lawsuits were filed against Vacaville prisons for deliberate indifference. In June, the Inspector General reached a surprisingly sensible conclusion that the death of a mentally ill prisoner who was carelessly doubled-celled was the prison's fault. Will there be murder charges filed against the prison administration or any consequences at all? It remains to be seen. But after the millions we taxpayers have spent for this impotent "independent agency," it's good to see one sensible finding. How did all these people die without the media and the citizenry catching on? It's a valid question and one I am frustrated over every day. The families alerted legislators and the media about what was happening by calling, faxing, writing thousands of letters, showing up to important hearings and picketing the Capitol and prisons. Lawsuits were filed, press conferences were held, I published a daily newsletter, did a television series and recorded literally hundreds of radio and TV programs to get out the alert. Still, the curmudgeons in elected office buried this dirty little secret of prisoner deaths deep into state politics. A few of these relics always voted the right way on the bills, don't get me wrong. But were their egos too big to admit to this full-blown crisis so dire that an emergency federal takeover became the only llth-hour option? The short answer is yes! While most legislators, the Inspector General and the Office of Internal Affairs have all failed to be responsive to appeals from inmates and their families - even in life and death emergencies - at least Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, had the common decency to admit that intervention by a higher power was needed. That much we should recognize. Because grumpy old men in power were hiding the enormity of this emergency, it could not surface. Sen. Romero conducted a number of hearings demanding CDC to clean up the problems but they did not. Nor could any prison in California comply with court-ordered reform. The dead bodies of men and women imprisoned in these blood houses are stacking up right under the noses of the taxpayers, the media and the legislators. Judge Henderson considers those deaths reason enough to call an emergency. I agree. But why did no one listen to thousands of screams before now? The graphic courtroom descriptions equal abuses in Abu Ghraib, but we all faced and reported many of these deaths as they happened, working with devastated families. Shame on all connected, whose callousness covered this up. The author is founder and director of UNION - United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect - a Sacramento-based statewide group of advocates for prisoners and their families since 1998. Website: www.1union1.com email: rightor1@yahoo.com
http://www.thereporter.com/letters/ci_2842786 Article Launched: 07/06/2005 07:08:25 AM Receivership is key to overhaul
A landmark decision was made by Judge Thelton Henderson last week that will eventually prevent future deaths of California inmates due to medical neglect and improper treatments. Receivership hearings were part of one of the most important and progressive steps toward prison reform. Medical neglect is such an important issue with prisoner advocate groups. Yet the absence of their representatives at these hearings was quite noticeable. They've asked for public support regarding prison issues, but are a "no show" to the most important judicial hearings in years that will impact the well-being of all inmates! That's not helping the prison reform movement in my opinion. Cayenne Bird, founder of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect), and some UNION members attended. UNION is an advocacy group for California prison inmates and their families. I thank them for their unconditional support and dedication to the inmates and their families. Onita Rand, Antioch
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/12051590.htm Posted on Mon, Jul. 04, 2005
A chore the state's happy to hand off
Mercury News Editorial Health care in the state prison system needed new management so badly that when a federal judge said he would take over, the Schwarzenegger administration essentially said ``be our guest.'' Citing ``incompetence and outright depravity in the rendering of medical care,'' U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson said that ``a prisoner dies needlessly an average of roughly once a week.'' The judge will appoint a federal receiver within the next few weeks to manage prison health care, taking it away from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. This is a mess that Schwarzenegger inherited, not one he created. And it's a mess that the governor is probably happy to hand over to someone else. The administration pledged cooperation. It's not heading off to the court of appeal. Perhaps the federal court will be able to combat the entrenched bureaucracy and the powerful prison guards union. They have been abetted by the legislative and public enthusiasm for locking people up on the cheap and forgetting about them. Previous reform efforts haven't made much headway. Despite the many accounts of waste in the prison medical system, the most likely immediate consequence of the federal takeover is that the bill for prison health care will go up, probably $100 million to $200 million more than the $1.1 billion spent now. Vacancy rates are running at 15 percent to 20 percent in some medical job categories; the positions will be filled. The barely functioning system of medical records kept on paper needs to be replaced by computer tracking. Facilities will need improvement. But eventually, better management should save money. One expert who has been inspecting medical care in prisons reported so much confusion that ``medical providers are reduced to guessing or repeating tests and treatment already done.'' And the state should lose fewer lawsuits from victims of mistreatment, or their survivors. Henderson was more than patient with California's elected leaders and
prison officials. He couldn't wait any longer. Even prison inmates have
a right to a health care system that is not criminally bad.
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-printerfriendly/story/10810057p-11585498c.html Prisons' fix expected to be costly
By Andy Furillo / The Sacramento Bee (Updated Sunday, July 3, 2005, 5:46 AM)
SACRAMENTO -- Lawmakers will need to get the checkbook ready when a judicially appointed receiver takes over the state prison health-care system, say close observers of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Short-term fixes for the system, mostly in personnel costs for physicians, nurses, pharmacists and top-level managers, and installing a new, computerized records-tracking system, will probably end up costing at least $100 million a year, the experts said -- about a 10% increase over the $1 billion California currently budgets on health care for adult offenders. Prison department spokesman J.P. Tremblay also said "there will be costs associated with whatever plan comes out" with the receiver, but that "it is premature to really make any kind of an estimate." U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson did not offer any cost estimates Thursday when he ordered the prison health-care system into receivership. And although the structure and scope of the receivership remain to be determined by the judge, prison watchers said that addressing the personnel issues probably would represent the first order of business. Richard Steffen, a staff member to state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, and a leading expert in the Capitol about prison health care, said he expects the receiver to move quickly to hire as many as 50 more general practitioners for the system, on top of the approximately 300 that were employed as of last September -- while at the same time weeding out the physicians and surgeons who aren't qualified for the work. Prison doctors currently earn an average of $134,000 a year, said Gary Robinson, executive director of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, an affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Robinson said it probably would take $30,000 more a year to make the job more attractive to more doctors. Steve Fama, one of the lawyers with the Prison Law Office who has pressed the lawsuit that resulted in Henderson's receivership decision, said that "incompetence" and "lack of management" were significant issues in the prison health crisis. But a failure on the part of the state to spend more money, mostly on
good people, also has contributed to the problem, Fama said. "Most specifically,
with regard to the inability to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of
qualified nurses and physicians, a big part of the problem is inadequate
levels of compensation," Fama said.
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/04/EDGD4DHTVG1.DTL Death in state prisons Monday, July 4, 2005
LAST WEEK, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson described the horrifying consequences of providing inadequate health care to prison inmates. He estimated that "a prisoner needlessly dies an average of roughly once a week," as a result of "incompetence and outright depravity in the rendering of medical care" to them. He said the prison system had no "effective management structure" to deliver adequate health care to inmates. Henderson wasn't describing conditions in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, but in prisons right here in California. How did this happen? Over the past three decades, California's voters and legislators have blithely passed initiatives and laws that have crammed more and more inmates into a prison system built to handle only half its current population -- without taking into account the full costs of running such a system. Apparently no one really planned for the costs of just providing health care to an aging, increasingly sickly prison population. The bill to the taxpayer for providing even inadequate health care is already $1.1 billion a year. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must himself take some responsibility for the crisis, because of his central role in defeating an initiative last year to reform California's "three strikes" law. The defeat of the initiative means that California taxpayers will have to spend a fortune just on health care to keep thousands of inmates behind bars for the next several decades for committing relatively minor crimes. In addition, the taxpayer must also cover the costs of thousands of inmates serving indeterminate life sentences, who have been denied parole even though many have strong claims to being fully rehabilitated. Being tough on crime may sound appealing on the campaign trail. But
ratcheting up California's prison population from 22,000 in 1979 to 163,000
today has brought with it enormous costs -- as well as responsibilities.
One of them is providing decent health care, so that inmates don't die
because of poor medical care. That has no place in a civilized society,
even in its prisons.
http://www.thereporter.com/letters/ci_2849304 Article Last Updated: 7/09/2005 07:58 AM
Labor unions not doing justice for our prisons
TheReporter.Com The article by B. Cayenne Bird ("Real hope for reform," Forum, The Reporter, July 3) is bold and accurate. The families of prisoners and inmates have absolutely no place to go for help in an emergency. The families are regarded as criminals, even though they are crime victims. Being related to an addict or a mentally ill person in California apparently makes you a criminal in the eyes of the non system. As Ms. Bird stated, the Inspector General's Office is impotent and so are the legislators, if they bother to open their mail. While they might care, they are all absolutely powerless against the California Department of Corrections and its sister organization, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association labor union. When Ms. Bird referred to the CCPOA as "iron-fisted," that was an understatement. I agree with her that the core of the problem is overcrowding. These prisons are stacked three bunks high and even the dayrooms are full of beds. Then we read about 7,000 parole violators being arrested. The law enforcement labor unions have taken over the government and there is no justice through parole. How many families must be destroyed before the voters decide to do something about the overcrowding? How many dollars will be paid out in wrongful death and torture lawsuits that could have been used for prevention of mental illness and addiction? What if everyone voted? That would be a big start. What if a real inspector general listened to the families and inmates who know when they are going to die? That would be huge. You'd think that after billions spent, somebody would be getting the job done. Susan Randall, Vacaville
http://www.thereporter.com/letters/ci_2850586 Article Last Updated: 7/10/2005 07:40 AM Prisons become death camps
Every crime has a victim. Every victim wants justice. No one individual can afford to pay the price of locking up the person who committed the crime because that person must be housed, fed and receive basic health care. Add to that cost the enormous numbers of correctional officers and high-priced prison personnel to make sure that person walks the line and pays the price to society. The price tag for this type of justice, just keep adding up the dollars. Your dollars. We do not live in Nazi Germany with government death camps, but maybe we live in California with state death camps. If we are so bloodthirsty for justice that we are willing to lock up another human being for even the smallest offense, with a life sentence, then we better get out our wallets and be prepared to pay the price for our abusive justice system. Federal Judge Thelton E. Henderson happens to believe a person, yes, even prisoners, live under a Constitutional state and if the taxpayers want this kind of justice, they must pay the price. Maybe it is time we revise our death camp prison system and our bloodthirsty mentally. Nora Weber, Bakersfield
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