Death at a Young Age: Custodial Suicide and Qualified Immunity

I have written a good deal about Coleman v. Wilson, 912 F.Supp 1282 (E.D. Cal. 1995)(the original decision) in my Landmark Cases Appendix in Fred Cohen, The Mentally Disordered Inmate and the Law, App. B-104 (1998). If one reads enough correctional law decisions from California you would expect to be immune from shock, particularly after Plata v. Schwarzenegger, No. C01-1351 (February 14, 2006), leading the state’s correctional medical system into a receivership that will cost over $8 million annually simply to administer. In what is now Coleman v. Schwarzenegger, Senior Judge Lawrence K. Karlton, in the summer of 2006, ordered California to hire some 750 new mental health care staff to improve treatment for inmates.* These new hires range from psychiatrists to nurses and clerks with an estimated annual cost of $30 million a year. One immediately thinks of that Malibu beach house that $30 million could buy, unfurnished of course. Special Master Michael Keating issued a Report on July 27, 2006 that provides agonizing detail related to California’s Department of Finance (DOF) requests of the legislature for funding needed to provide adequate mental health staffing in California’s prisons. When the dust from the numbers game settles there appears to be a series of delays and misstatements by California officials as to the numbers Death at a Young Age: Custodial Suicide and Qualified Immunity