"state’s practice of keeping such inmates in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.... inhumane and causing suicides.... mentally ill prisoners were kept in closet-size solitary confinement cells.... conditions had led to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and numerous suicides"
Because they CLAIM they DO NOT HAVE the MONEY!!!!!!
"Massachusetts ignored repeated calls from its mental health providers and consultants.... [that] keeping such prisoners in their cells 23 hours a day violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and that the state’s fiscal crisis was irrelevant.... no federal court has ruled that finances trump an inmate’s constitutional rights.... it would cost “several million’’ dollars to fully fund high-security treatment units.... Prisoner rights groups as well as specialists on the treatment of inmates have repeatedly criticized the Massachusetts prison system"
Need a FEW MILLION, Massachusetts?
Look HERE: State Keeps Watering Evergreen
Massachusetts Residents Taken For a Ride on the T Governor Guts State Services
Pigs at the State Trough
A Slow Saturday Special: Statehouse Slush Fund
Biotech Giveaway Was Borrowed Money
Massachusetts Residents Taken For a Ride
UBS Picks Up Pike
Slow Saturday Special: Day at the Movies
The Hollywood Heist of Massachusetts
Why Massachusetts Needed to Raise Taxes
Massachusetts' Business Tax Increase Was a Corporate Tax CutTax Increase Fails to Save Massachusetts Services
Blood All Over Massachusetts State Budget
State Government On Probation
The Next Taxachusetts Tax Increase
Bankers' Bark Worse Than Bite to State
Slow Saturday Special: Patrick Pimps Football Footpath For Patriots
The Compassionate Budget Choices of Massachusetts
The rest of the sad and sordid story!!!
This is LIBERAL, LOVING, COMPASSIONATE Massachusetts we are talking about, huh?
"Treatment units for mentally ill inmates on hold; State cites budget crunch as talks to end suit fail" by Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | November 10, 2009
The Patrick administration has shelved plans to build special treatment units for hundreds of seriously mentally ill inmates, two years after advocates for prisoners alleged in a federal lawsuit that the state’s practice of keeping such inmates in solitary confinement 23 hours a day was inhumane and causing suicides.
Citing the state budget crisis, lawyers for top state prison officials said negotiations to settle the civil rights suit by the Disability Law Center against the Department of Correction out of court have ended. The center has asked a federal judge in Boston to schedule a trial for January 2011, while the state wants it to start a year later.
The collapse of negotiations, made public in court filings Friday, marks a startling reversal from where things stood a year ago....
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The nonprofit Disability Law Center sued the state in March 2007, alleging that hundreds of mentally ill prisoners were kept in closet-size solitary confinement cells in response to unruly behavior. The conditions had led to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and numerous suicides, said the center. The suit, which resembled legal challenges that led to changes in other states, said Massachusetts ignored repeated calls from its mental health providers and consultants to provide high-security treatment units for violent, mentally disturbed inmates.
A Globe Spotlight Team series in December 2007 reported 15 suicides in the prisons from 2005 through 2007, most by those in solitary confinement with histories of mental illness or drug addiction. There had also been more than 3,200 suicide attempts and self-inflicted injuries in the prior decade, the Globe found....
Related: The Boston Globe Shuts Off Its Spotlight
Laurie Martinelli, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Massachusetts, an advocacy group that supports the lawsuit, said keeping such prisoners in their cells 23 hours a day violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and that the state’s fiscal crisis was irrelevant. “You can’t get around a constitutional violation by saying, ‘We don’t have money,’ ’’ she said.
Fred Cohen, a retired criminal justice professor at the State University of New York at Albany and an expert on the treatment of the mentally ill in prisons, agreed, saying no federal court has ruled that finances trump an inmate’s constitutional rights. If the case goes to trial, however, plaintiffs would have to prove that the isolation of inmates violates their civil rights.
GUILTY until PROVEN INNOCENT again, huh, AmeriKa?
In some states, Cohen said, politicians were glad for judges to order them to improve conditions for inmates; that way, judges, rather than the politicians, had to take the heat from the public for spending scarce tax dollars on convicted criminals. “It’s not unheard of, and it’s especially popular during times of economic duress,’’ he said.
Well, they SURE DON'T WORRY when they LAVISH TRILLIONS on WAR-LOOTERS and BANKSTERS!!!!
Yup, TO HELL with CARING for the PEOPLE, this is about POLITICS and IMAGE!!!! Do you know HOW SICK I AM of this SHIT SYSTEM?!!!!!!!!
And what is it going to take, YEARS in the COURT SYSTEM while PEOPLE are TORTURED?
Several states, including Connecticut, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin have faced lawsuits in recent years that have been resolved by settlements or court orders requiring improvements in the treatment of mentally ill prisoners. Kevin M. Burke, Patrick’s public safety secretary, was quoted as saying in 2007 that it would cost “several million’’ dollars to fully fund high-security treatment units....
Prisoner rights groups as well as specialists on the treatment of inmates have repeatedly criticized the Massachusetts prison system.... Lindsay M. Hayes, a national specialist in prison suicide prevention who wrote the report, said suicidal inmates were being punished instead of being helped....
In Massachusetts? The gay love capital of the world?
The liberal bastion of progressive tolerance and compassion?
Where is that place I've heard so much about, anyway?
Fantasy Island?
--more--"
You should be ASHAMED of YOUR SMUG, ARROGANT SELVES, Massachusetts!!!!
