Four months after a federal judge in Sacramento declared that conditions for mentally ill inmates in the state’s prisons were “horrific,” California corrections officials unveiled sweeping new policies that will house them in specially designed units, provide greater time out of their cells and offer vastly increased treatment for the ill prisoners.
The new policies, outlined in a filing Friday in federal court, dramatically alter the manner in which tens of thousands of state prison inmates are to be treated, and are designed to reduce the number of prisoner suicides and deaths.
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Karlton, who has overseen for nearly a quarter century the legal battle over how mentally ill inmates are treated, signed off on the revised policies Friday afternoon, marking what is likely to be the final order he will issue that dramatically reshapes California prison policy before his retirement Oct. 1.