The S.C. Department of Corrections mental health program is “inherently flawed and systemically deficient in all major areas,” and prison officials should address the constitutional deficiencies and provide more humane treatment of prison inmates with serious mental health illnesses, a circuit court judge ruled January 8, 2014.
Circuit Judge Michael Baxley said in his ruling that the five-week trial of T.R., P.R., K.W., et al. v. South Carolina Department of Corrections, et al. was the most troubling of the 70,000 cases to come before him in the past 14 years.
Click here for a copy of the ruling (PDF)
“The evidence in this case has proved that inmates have died in the South Carolina Department of Corrections for lack of basic mental health care, and hundreds more remain substantially at risk for serious physical injury, mental decompensation, and profound, permanent mental illness. As a society, and as citizen jurors and judges make decisions that send people to prison, we have the reasonable expectation that those in prison – even though it is prison – will have their basic health needs met by the state that imprisons them. And this includes mental health. The evidence in this case has shown that expectation to be misplaced in many instances,” Baxley wrote.