The whistleblower who accused California prison leaders last year of providing false and misleading data to a federal court on how the state handles inmate psychiatric care made his first public appearance Tuesday, standing behind his claims and saying corrections officials concocted “utter statistical garbage” in some cases.
Dr. Michael Golding, the chief psychiatrist at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation headquarters, testified in Sacramento federal court Tuesday about what he said were repeated instances to gin up phony data the state needed to present to U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller to prove they were making progress on improving psychiatric care in the prisons.
Golding, who compiled and sent a scathing, 161-page report on psychiatric care in the prisons to the federally appointed receiver in October 2018, said there had never been anything secret about his views that corrections officials were trying to produce “extraordinarily misleading data” to come into compliance with court orders.