Judge overseeing state prisons case issues order to deal with increased suicides

A federal judge overseeing a 30-year-old case on prisoner mental health care said in her latest order the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation needs to update its suicide prevention practices.

The issue could hardly be timelier. California prisons reported 38 suicides last year, the most since the department began tracking the statistic in 1990. That also happens to be the year the case started. Coleman v. Newsom, 2:90-cv-00520-KJM-DB (E.D. Cal., filed April 23, 1990).

"Unfortunately, we hit a new record in 2019," said Michael W. Bien, co-founding partner of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco, which is leading the plaintiffs' side in the remedial litigation. "The rate of suicide is now over 30 [per 100,000 inmates], which it's never been as long as I've been tracking it."

U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller wrote in her Tuesday order the "implementation of the suicide prevention steps required by prior orders ... is taking too long." She added she would consider ordering "specific steps" to bring the department into compliance if she was not satisfied.

She noted her prior orders have adopted recommendations by Lindsay M. Hayes, a researcher and consultant who has authored a series of influential studies on prison suicide. In 2015, he began delivering a series of reports with specific recommendations to help reduce suicides in prisons.

Mueller referred back to her own July 3 order citing incomplete recommendations from the prison department's reports. These include new training for staff and monitoring inmates on suicide watch. Hayes also recommended steps to make cells, beds and other physical aspects of prisons more "suicide resistant."

The problem has been particularly centered around the Mental Health Outpatient Housing Unit at California State Prison-Sacramento in Folsom, which Hayes recommended should be closed. According to Bien, nine of the 2019 suicides last year occurred in that prison, though not all were in the outpatient unit.

The latest order also set out a series of other required steps, such as data collection and providing enough beds for mentally ill patients. Mueller also declared the Department of Corrections was primarily at fault for a breakdown in coordination among the parties in the case and warned it against wasting "valuable court time" by attempting to raise improper privilege claims.

The order is one of several by Mueller that have grown out of a 2018 whistleblower report by Dr. Michael Golding, the prisons department's chief psychiatrist.

"She's starting a period of quarterly status conferences to try to move the case along and be more proactive," Bien said. "There's just so many things going on. She's keeping everyone's nose to the grindstone and making sure she's more in control."

Prisons department officials did not reply to an email seeking comment.