"It's very difficult even to get men out onto the [prison] yard or in any kind of recreational program," Kahn said, "which just adds to the problems facing the mentally ill."
Other problems include a 1,000-bed shortage of space for inmates whom authorities consider so disturbed that they cannot live in the general population, and an upward trend in suicide behind bars. California's prison suicide rate is nearly double the national average -- 27 deaths per 100,000 inmates, compared with a national rate of 14 per 100,000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Last month, the federal judge overseeing the mental health case, expressing increasing frustration over the state's lack of progress, ordered the immediate hiring of 550 psychiatrists and other prison mental health staff.
In the meantime, the corrections department has embarked on a plan to add $600 million in beds for mentally ill inmates at several prison sites. Staffing will add considerably more to the cost, expanding a prison system budget that now exceeds $8 billion a year.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton, who has presided for 11 years over the mental health case, acknowledged that raising care for inmates to constitutional standards would be "horrifically expensive."
That, he added at a court hearing in April, is because "the prisons have become, in effect, mental hospitals."
Referring to the 1960s-era decision by California to close its state mental hospitals, Karlton added: "The state has made that judgment, and now the state has to pay the piper."
The study, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, can be found at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/mhppji.htm.
jenifer.warren@latimes.com
