Philly courts start moving mentally ill detainees from custody to treatment
Seven months after Pennsylvania officials settled an ACLU lawsuit over treatment delays for mentally ill people awaiting trial, the Philadelphia courts have moved a first handful of defendants from prison to medical care.
Seven months after Pennsylvania officials settled an ACLU lawsuit over treatment delays for mentally ill people awaiting trial, the Philadelphia courts have moved a first handful of defendants from prison to medical care.
Seven people in the custody of the Philadelphia prisons were ordered transferred Wednesday to one of three new mental health facilities in the city, according to Gregg Blender, a lawyer in the mental health unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia.
Blender said all seven were nonviolent offenders recommended by the state Department of Human Services to city prosecutors as candidates for release into treatment.
At a brief hearing before Municipal Court President Judge Marsha H. Neifield, prosecutor Salena Jones, assistant chief of the district attorney's Diversion Courts Unit, formally recommended the candidates for transfer, Blender said.
Jones withdrew criminal charges against two of the five, whose cases will be administered by the court's Civil Mental Health Unit.
Blender said all seven had been transferred from city prisons to Norristown State Hospital.
Their transfer to residential treatments means more seriously ill inmates can be moved to the secure facility at Norristown.
Blender said 13 more cases will be acted on at a hearing Thursday before Common Pleas Court President Judge Sheila Woods-Skipper.
Defense lawyers have long complained about delays of a year or more in getting mental evaluations and treatment for mentally ill people charged with a crime and in custody.
The need is especially critical in cases in which a person is believed to be mentally incompetent to assist in defense.
Without a competency ruling, a mentally ill person must wait in prison until a bed opens in one of two state mental hospitals: Norristown, Montgomery County, or Torrance, Westmoreland County, 50 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Last October, the ACLU of Pennsylvania sued the state in federal court, citing a waiting list of 220 people for 190 slots at the two hospitals.
"The bottom line is that these kinds of delays are unconstitutional," said state ACLU legal director Witold Walczak.
Under the settlement, Pennsylvania agreed to add nearly 200 treatment slots, including at least 50 in supportive housing in Philadelphia. The agreement called for at least $1 million to be spent on supportive housing in Philadelphia in the first 90 days of the agreement.
Walczak estimated that Philadelphia now has 100 new beds available for mentally ill criminal defendants. The beds are at Girard Medical Center and the Gaudenzia House drug treatment facility, both in North Philadelphia, and at a new site in South Philadelphia run by New Vitae Wellness & Recovery.
Despite the newly available beds, Walczak said, he is concerned that they are slow to be filled.
"The numbers on the waiting list are as high as they've ever been," Walczak said.
Walczak said about 220 to 230 inmates statewide are on waiting lists for mental health beds, including 180 for Norristown State Hospital.
On the other hand, Walczak said, only two people on the waiting list have been in custody for more than a year.
One problem might be that county prosecutors and defenders cannot move mentally ill detainees until they get approval from the state Department of Human Services.
Walczak said that this fall, ACLU lawyers will reexamine the progress since the settlement.
He said that if they find the progress unsatisfactory, the ACLU may return to U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, who is monitoring the settlement.
215-854-2985 @joeslobo