Correctional Mental
Health Collaboration
Current Projects
Understanding Supermaximum Confinement:
Intensive Management Units in Washington State
The architectural,
procedural, and surveillance features of Washington's intensive
management units (IMUs) are designed to hold the most dangerous
prisoners under conditions that minimize opportunities for
assault or escape. The goal of our IMU studies is to better
understand who is in IMUs, how their time in IMU relates to
their histories and institutional practices, and the chances
of successful transition to general population and the community.
Ultimately this is part of a larger effort to improve community
and prison safety by designing interventions for specific
groups of inmates.
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We have reviewed
the electronic files of all inmates living in IMUs as
of November, 1999 to provide a systematic profile of the
IMU inmates and the diverse issues they pose. Results
have been published ("Who lives in supermaximum custody,"
Federal Probation).
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To provide
more depth on clinical and policy issues, we have conducted
interviews with 87 inmates and 38 staff at Washington's
three principal IMUs, along with reviews of 122 medical
charts.
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We have conducted
a participant-observation study of reform efforts at the
largest of Washington's IMUs ("Challenging the Warehouse
Mission," under review).
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With the
Department of Corrections and members of concerned outside
groups, we are planning a conference, "Human Rights
and Best Practices in Supermax Prisons: A Dialogue,"
to be held September 26-29th, 2001 in Seattle, Washington.
We have prepared three reports
for the Department of Corrections. Journal articles include
one publication, one under review, and one in preparation:
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Who Lives
in Supermaximum Custody? A Washington State Study,
by D. Lovell, K. Cloyes, D. Allen, and L. Rhodes. Federal
Probation, 2002, 64(2): 33-38.
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Challenging
the Warehouse Mission: A Case Study of Change in a Supermaximum
Prison Unit, by. L. Rhodes, G. Jones, D. Lovell, and
D. Allen, under review.
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The
Clinical Status of Supermaximum Inmates, by
D. Lovell, K. Cloyes, D. Allen, and L. Rhodes, in preparation.
Evaluation of McNeil Island Correctional
Center Mental Health Program: One of the Collaborations’
first projects was to help design and launch a medium-security
psychiatric unit at MICC. The unit opened in 1994 and we
have been evaluating its clinical programs since that time
(for several years a multidisciplinary team also provided
regular clinical consultations as well). The Collaboration
has provided four annual project evaluations to the Department.
Two articles have been published:
Mental Health Staffing
Plan: We have worked closely with Department of Corrections
officials and with the Mental Health Management Team (composed
of the managers of mental health programs in the major institutions)
to develop a mental health staffing plan. This plan is designed
to serve the following objectives:
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Fulfill the
Department’s ethical and constitutional obligation
to provide medically necessary treatment to inmates who
are vulnerable due to serious mental illness;
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Establish
a mental health care system that is cost-effective, consistent
across institutions, and readily understood by staff and
administrators;
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Provide
treatment that will minimize institutional disruption
while inmates with mental illness or behavioral disorders
are in custody, and reduce risks to the community after
their release.
To assist the Department in
this effort, we obtained and analyzed mental health staffing
plans from three comparison states that have made good-faith
efforts to comply with court-monitored settlement decrees
regarding mental health services. We also analyzed data
from the Department’s survey of mental health staff
effort, co-facilitated the Mental Health Management Team’s
needs assessment, and prepared major portions of the report.
Implementation of the plan will depend on legislative budget
priorities, but it represents a major accomplishment of
the Collaboration.
Legislative Initiatives. In recent
years, key legislators in Washington have commissioned or
backed legislation to improve the transition of mentally
ill offenders from prison to the community. One of these,
Senate Bill 5760 (1998), revised Washington’s sentencing
system to authorize courts to order post-release mental
health treatment for offenders whose criminal behavior is
influenced by a mental illness, with the aim of facilitating
collaboration between Department of Corrections and mental
health staff while mentally ill offenders are supervised
in the community. One of our team members wrote this bill
and coordinated with legislators and other parties to secure
its passage.
Other recent legislative initiatives have included Senate
Bill 6002 (1968), which established a housing and service
program in Seattle for 25 mentally ill offenders released
from prison each year. These are people who might have been
held in prison until their maximum release date because
adequate services and housing were not available. Also,
Senate Bill 5011 (1999), established an inter-agency task
force to identify dangerous mentally ill offenders before
their release from prison and establish treatment and community
safety monitoring plans for them.
Community Transition Study.
The Washington
Institute for Mental Illness Research and Training,
on the grounds of Western State Hospital in Steilacoom,
Washington is a facility jointly operated by the Department
of Social Health Services (DSHS), Mental Health Division,
and the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at
the University of Washington. (The Eastern branch of the
Institute, near Spokane, is academically affiliated with
Washington State University.) Since 1998, the Institute
has conducted a study of social service use and recidivism
among mentally ill offenders released from Washington prisons
in 1996 and 1997, with plans to continue the study into
subsequent release cohorts. The study is principally funded
by DSHS-Mental Health Division, and is being used to establish
baseline rates of recidivism and service use for evaluation
of Senate Bills 6002 and 5011. One of our members, David
Lovell, is lead investigator in this project.
The Community Transition Study requires identifying all
mentally ill offenders released from prison, collecting
data from a variety of sources including the Department
of Corrections, DSHS-Mental Health Division, other DSHS
social service programs, National Crime Information Center,
and juvenile, district, and superior court data from a database
maintained by the Washington State Institute for Public
Policy. There have been few studies of mentally ill offenders
after release from prison; this study will have by far the
largest number of subjects (337) and the most data to report.
In addition, analysis of these data has provided estimates
of risk factors for recidivism that compare favorably with
risk assessment methods established in other recidivism
studies.
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