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| The Pennsylvania prison system will stop putting mentally ill inmates in solitary |
| By washingtonpost.com- Mark Berman |
| Published: 01/08/2015 |
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The Pennsylvania prison system will stop putting inmates with serious mental illnesses in solitary confinement, instead moving them to special treatment units that allow them more time outside their cells. This shift could impact thousands of inmates in one of the country’s largest prison populations, moving away from practices that the Justice Department described last year as “unjustifiably harsh” for many prisoners. The change was announced Tuesday as part of a settlement between the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania, nearly two years after the rights network filed a lawsuit against the corrections department. This suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, argued that the Department of Corrections had violated the constitutional rights of inmates with serious mental illnesses by moving them to isolated cells. Inmates placed in isolated cells, known within the Pennsylvania system as “restricted housing units,” are confined there for at least 23 hours a day. Many inmates were placed in these cells for actions that were attributable to their serious mental illness, and this isolation would only exacerbate their symptoms, the Disability Rights Network’s lawsuit. Read More. |
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