Pennsylvania prison inmates diagnosed with serious mental illness will be diverted to special treatment units instead of being punished by placement in isolated cells, under the terms of a settlement between the Corrections Department and advocates for the disabled that was released Tuesday.
The settlement with the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania, which sued the state in federal court in March 2013, affects hundreds of inmates out of the nearly 51,000 in the state prison system.
The advocates said the agreement will end what they had described “a Dickensian nightmare” in which mentally ill inmates were trapped in “an endless cycle of isolation and punishment” that kept them in prison longer than most inmates.
Robert Meek, the network’s lead attorney in the case, said the agreement would improve the screening process used to identify prisoners with serious mental illness, sharply reduce the likelihood that that those inmates would end up in solitary confinement and provide programming that keeps them on track for parole.
[For more of this story go to http://www.theguardian.com/us-...solitary-confinement]
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