by Bob Walsh
Like most prison systems, the formerly great state of California has a lot of guest of the people who have significant mental health problems. Some of them just want to stay in an air conditioned prison. Some of them are really barking mad. Most of them are somewhere in between. Close of half of the people currently in the custody of the state system have some degree or other of documented mental illness.
The federal courts run the health care system in the CA prison system. This includes setting salaries and many operational practices within the system.
A federal judge, Kimberly J. Mueller, has decided that Dr. Michael Golding, the state prison system's chief shrink, was giving out the straight skinny when he filed a secret whistle blower complaint last year, alleging among other things that CDCr is cooking the books on the stats they are giving the court. Judges don't like that. It pisses them off.
Dr. Golding has asserted that CDCr has been fucking with him even though the judge ruled that they should not do so. (Big surprise there. The system has a long history of ignoring the law when they find it inconvenient.)
Mueller did find that the defendants have "presented misleading information to the court" but said they did not commit "intentional fraud." I confess I do not see the difference, but I am a human being and not a lawyer.
The state has been trying desperately to get the camel's nose back out of the tent, with damn little luck, pretty much since the feds shoved their nose in there. I guess the idea of "doing it right" hasn't occurred to them yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment