SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge heard closing arguments Thursday in a decadeslong case over whether California should face hefty fines for not having enough mental health staff for its prisons.
The arguments capped a multiday hearing in early October, in which Chief U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller heard testimony ranging from recruitment and retention of staff to salary ranges. The judge will consider that testimony when determining whether the state should be held in contempt and pay fines accumulated since late March.
Almost $6.7 million in fines accrue each month, or over $40 million from April through September.
The hearing is part of the 1990 class action Coleman v. Newsom, which focused on mental health care in state prisons.
Class attorney Lisa Ells argued that the state had opportunities to establish during the hearing that its wages couldn’t draw the required number of mental health professionals. It also could have established its salaries had no effect on recruiting the necessary number of clinicians.
“But the reality is, they didn’t try either one of those,” she said.
Ells also slammed the state over working conditions, saying testimony showed prisons were infested with rodents. One person said they lacked two-ply toilet paper.
The state, Ells argued, doesn’t want to pay more to hire clinicians and has taken no steps to improve its working conditions. It must increase salaries to get enough mental health professionals to work in difficult conditions.
“They have not tried that and that is perhaps the most important part of this entire proceeding,” Ells said.
Arguing in court filings, attorney Ernest Galvan wrote that over 13 years have passed since the state adopted its 2009 staffing plan, and over six years since a judge ordered it to comply with that plan within a year.
“Nearly three years have passed since the scale of defendants’ current staffing crisis became clear,” Galvan wrote. “Yet the salaries defendants provide to psychologists and social workers still do not come close to compensating them for the abysmal working conditions they must endure.”
Attorney Paul Mello, representing the state, said his clients have taken all reasonable efforts to fill vacancies and streamline the hiring process.
“They don’t have to take unreasonable steps,” he added.
Officials recognize the staffing situation and know hiring must be hastened. However, the state has faced significant challenges over the past few years.
“There’s a nationwide shortage of mental health providers,” Mello said, adding moments later: “Everybody is having difficulty in hiring and retaining these types of staff.”
Emphasizing that point, Mello pointed to the recent strike by Kaiser Permanente workers. Those employees have said they want higher pay as the cost of living climbs, and have demanded better staffing levels and the cessation of outsourcing work.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not recruit and retain employees in a vacuum, Mello said. It’s dealing with a scarcity of mental health workers, changed employee expectations since the pandemic and the Great Resignation.
Mello asked the judge to consider those factors when deciding whether to find the state in contempt.
Arguing in court documents, attorneys Damon McClain and Samantha Wolff wrote that the state’s expenditures on mental health care have grown significantly over the past 30 years. It spent some $40 million in 1990, when the original class action was filed, to over $650 million in fiscal year 2023-24.
“The state’s commitment to provide adequate mental health care to the incarcerated population has had the following results: Coleman class members now have significantly greater access to mental health care than the general adult population of California, even accounting for the greater demand among incarcerated persons,” they wrote.
The next hearing is set for 9 a.m. Tuesday in Sacramento.
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