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Federal court orders monitors for mental health care in Alabama prisons

Montgomery Advertiser - 9/3/2020

A federal judge Wednesday ordered external monitors to keep track of the Alabama Department of Corrections’ compliance with mental health care orders and train department officials to perform it on their own in the future.

DOC and a group of plaintiffs who sued the department over inadequate mental health care had agreed to the monitoring, but could not reach a consensus on its implementation. In his order, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote that DOC had been “unable or unwilling to take necessary steps to monitor its own practices.”

"ADOC has had ample opportunity, in this litigation and for decades prior, to correct voluntarily its failings regarding the mental health care in its prisons, and its conduct during the course of this case has been consistent with its historical failures to do so,” Thompson wrote.

A message seeking comment was sent to DOC on Thursday. Ebony Howard, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented inmates in the case, said in a statement Thursday that “people in Alabama prisons have been languishing for far too long at the hands of state officials.”

“The court’s order requiring long-term external and internal compliance monitoring will hopefully ensure that people with mental health needs will finally receive the humane and just treatment they deserve.”

Inmates in Alabama prisons sued over inadequate mental health care in 2014. Jamie Wallace, an inmate who testified during the trial in December 2016, died by suicide about two weeks after his testimony. The following year, Thompson ruled that mental health care in Alabama prisons was “horrendously inadequate” and ordered changes.

Negotiations over implementation have continued and DOC has made changes, including implementing a remedial suicide plan. The families of four men who died by suicide in Alabama prisons in 2018 and 2019 sued DOC in February, alleging the department failed to comply with court orders and that their loved ones received inadequate mental health treatment.

More: Families sue Alabama prison officials over suicide deaths

The external monitors will remain for at least a year, according to the order. They will also train a team of internal monitors to allow DOC to take over the role. Thompson will decide when DOC can handle internal monitoring, and only after a hearing between the parties.

Attorneys for DOC and the plaintiffs told Thompson in March they could agree on a monitoring program.

Thompson said he would allow both sides to propose members of the team, though he would have to approve them. The judge wrote some of the monitors proposed by DOC had potential conflicts of interest.

DOC also sought to limit the ability of plaintiffs to bring contempt proceedings against the department for noncompliance, requiring at least three consecutive quarters of noncompliance to take place before doing so. Thompson rejected the proposal, writing that three quarters was too long for the department to stay in noncompliance on matters like suicide risk. Thompson did order mediation to take place before contempt proceedings could occur.

The judge wrote that DOC wanted more freedom to develop its own monitoring plans as a way to promote “buy-in” in the program. Thompson wrote that buy-in would occur in part by “appointing monitors in which all parties have faith.”

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Federal court orders monitors for mental health care in Alabama prisons

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