Federal Judge Approves California Plan to Reduce Isolation of Mentally Ill Inmates [NYTimes.com]

Samantha Sangenito 9/3/144:00 AM

Corrections officials in California will make significant changes in the use of solitary confinement for mentally ill prisoners, revising decades-old policies that have kept thousands of inmates who have psychiatric disorders in isolation.

The revised policies, filed in Federal District Court on Friday by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, were drafted in response to an order issued by Judge Lawrence K. Karlton last April. When put in place, they should greatly reduce the number of mentally ill prisoners held in so-called Security Housing Units, where prisoners remain in their cells for 23 or more hours a day, and in several other types of isolation units throughout the state.

The policies also provide for improvements in mental health treatment and suicide prevention.

[For more of this story, written by Erica Goode, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...7627&tntemail0=y]

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The two worse things that can be done to produce psychological trauma spoken over and over at the Boston Trauma Conference are

1. Physical Restraint in the Face of Life Threat (or Preceived Life Threat) and

2. Social Isolation and Alienation.

Prisons do the two things that traumatize people and worsen trauma in those already traumatized --- so I am constantly wondering -- how on earth are these places where people learn a lesson about all the "bad" things they have done?? They cannot! And then society is a safer place in the long run? It isn't. To me this is just common sense that for some reason doesn't seem to be common.

9/3/146:50 AM

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