Mentally ill ex-Ohio offenders get more medication

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Legal Affairs Writer

COLUMBUS — Men­tally ill inmates leav­ing Ohio pris­ons will walk out the door with a month’s worth of med­ica­tions, dou­ble the amount they used to receive, under a change by the prison sys­tem that offi­cials hope will ease inmates’ tran­si­tion and keep them from com­mit­ting new crimes.

The Depart­ment of Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Cor­rec­tion is also devel­op­ing a pro­gram that could give the same inmates pre­scrip­tions for up to two addi­tional months, though they would have to find a way to pay for the medications.

The change, which went into effect Mon­day, will affect about 158 men­tally ill inmates a month, at a cost of about $220,000 a year, to be cov­ered by inter­nal bud­get adjust­ments. Inmates receiv­ing med­ica­tions include those with severe depres­sion, schiz­o­phre­nia or bipo­lar disorder.

“These are some of our most vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als that we take care of,” said Stu­art Hud­son, the agency’s chief of cor­rec­tional care. “Some­times leav­ing them out there with only a 14-day sup­ply, and basi­cally telling them that they have to fend for them­selves — it’s hard for some of them to do that.”

Inmates’ post-release lives aren’t the state’s respon­si­bil­ity, at least on paper, said Terry Rus­sell, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the National Alliance on Men­tal Ill­ness’ Ohio chap­ter, which worked with the pris­ons agency and the Depart­ment of Men­tal Health on the issue.

But the change also shows the state is tak­ing seri­ously “an eth­i­cal issue” involv­ing these inmates, he said.

Many men­tally ill inmates ended up in prison because of impulse deci­sions made as a result of their ill­ness and not because of any con­scious crim­i­nal behav­ior, Rus­sell said.

“I can guar­an­tee you, when a per­son leaves prison, if they don’t have suf­fi­cient med­ica­tion as they did in prison, they’re going to get in trou­ble,” Rus­sell said Tues­day. “These ill­nesses don’t go away just because they left prison.”

A 2010 fed­eral law­suit alleged the state made it harder for men­tally ill inmates to meet the con­di­tions of their release by not ade­quately help­ing them obtain hous­ing, food stamps, Med­ic­aid, dis­abil­ity ben­e­fits and other assistance.

A judge dis­missed the com­plaint, say­ing attor­neys for inmates hadn’t proved that the state was at fault for the many fac­tors lead­ing to men­tally ill ex-offenders’ prob­lems. The judge, San­dra Beck­with, ruled in Jan­u­ary 2011 that many fac­tors con­tribute to the prob­lems, “includ­ing access to men­tal health care, find­ing safe and afford­able hous­ing, or secur­ing trans­porta­tion or employment.”

Sim­i­lar law­suits have been filed in recent years involv­ing state pris­ons and jails in New Mex­ico, New York and Chicago.

The Ohio Jus­tice and Pol­icy Cen­ter, which filed the Ohio suit, dropped an appeal to con­tinue nego­ti­a­tions with the state, said David Sin­gle­ton, the center’s exec­u­tive director.

He wel­comed the med­ica­tion announce­ment and said his group looks for­ward to work­ing with the state to solve remain­ing issues in the law­suit, includ­ing con­nect­ing seri­ously men­tally ill pris­on­ers to ben­e­fits before they leave prison.

Hud­son said the med­ica­tion change was not a result of the lawsuit.

Posted by AP News on Jul 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.