In 1994, a federal court found that California inmates with serious
mental illness do not receive minimal, adequate care. In 2005, a federal
court in a different case found that the state had failed to provide
adequate basic mental care in its prisons. And in 2011, the U.S. Supreme
Court found that the state’s prison health care was so deficient that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
But California still hasn’t gotten the message. With this litigation still ongoing, a federal judge held Thursday
that pepper spraying of mentally ill inmates is “horrific” and that
solitary confinement of these inmates has got to stop without approval
by a mental health clinician.
“[F]ailure to properly consider the mental state of class members
requires the court to act,” wrote Judge Lawrence Karlton. “If
defendants fail to meet their Eighth Amendment obligations, this court
must enforce compliance.”
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