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SACRAMENTO - Calling the state's $1 billion-a-year prison medical system "horrifying," a federal judge Tuesday threatened to strip the Schwarzenegger administration of control over inmate health care. Noting that the administration inherited many of the deficiencies, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson nonetheless cited "the problem of a highly dysfunctional, largely decrepit, overly bureaucratic and politically driven prison system" that "is too far gone to be corrected by conventional methods." Henderson, who has been overseeing the settlement of a 2001 inmate lawsuit, set two weeks of court hearings in San Francisco starting May 31. He wants the Department of Corrections to show why he should not name a federal official to temporarily manage the prison medical system until the mess is cleaned up. The threat -- his second in a year -- springs from expert reports and Henderson's own observations during a recent visit to San Quentin Prison. "This is a big deal," said Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, which brought the case on behalf of prisoners. "To take over the medical care system means that he believes the system is out of control and is killing people. It cannot be more serious." Acknowledging that the system was riddled with problems, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier Tuesday signed legislation that clears the way to reorganize adult and youth corrections, including health care. The action is his first successful attempt at what he calls "blowing up the boxes" of government. J.P. Tremblay, a spokesman for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, said the reorganization would improve health care by centralizing management in Sacramento. "This is the effort of the administration to cut through the bureaucratic Gordian knot that's been created," Tremblay said. He could not immediately say whether the state would oppose the naming of a "receiver," who would have almost total control over all aspects of the prison health system. But in just the latest of blistering reports, Henderson proposed something far more dramatic than anything Schwarzenegger has laid out. In effect, the judge said the state's 162,000 inmates are being denied their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights because of wretched health care conditions, as recently sketched out by medical experts in a scathing report about San Quentin State Prison. He noted that the experts said they had "observed widespread evidence of medical malpractice and neglect." A representative of prison doctors said he could not comment until he had seen Henderson's court filing. In the document, Henderson said he, too, had toured San Quentin and that what he had found "was horrifying." He observed a San Quentin dentist who neither washed his hands nor changed his gloves after putting his hands into inmates' mouths. The judge said: "The pharmacy was in almost complete disarray (with unlabeled cardboard boxes piled in no particular order, antiquated and dirty computers, wiring suspended like a drunken spider's web and extremely frustrated nurses and technicians.)" He said it was beyond his understanding how the state could allow such "an unconstitutional system" to continue. Henderson oversees compliance of the sweeping legal agreement known as the Plata settlement -- after Marciano Plata, one of nine plaintiffs in an April 2001 class-action lawsuit filed by inmates' rights activists. Under a legal settlement, California's 32 prisons are required to provide adequate health care by 2008. While drastic, a federal takeover would not be unprecedented. Specter of the Prison Law Office noted that a similar takeover occurred in the Washington, D.C., prison system. Henderson himself issued a similar threat last year. Tuesday, Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, echoed Henderson's latest assessment of inmate health care. "I believe drastic measures are necessary," said Romero, who chairs several committees overseeing prisons. "The appointment of a federal receiver will give inmate health care the attention it deserves." In an elaborate ceremony on the grounds of Folsom Prison, Schwarzenegger signed legislation by Romero that is a companion to the governor's prison reorganization. The two measures set the stage for the creation of a new Cabinet-level department that emphasizes rehabilitation along with incarceration. It also folds in the California Youth Authority under the new agency. Hugging Romero several times, the Republican chief executive stressed that the cooperation on this issue illustrated that he can work with Democrats in trying to solve some of the state's seemingly intractable problems. |
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