In a sternly worded order, a federal judge has found California’s top prison officials intentionally filed misleading data to the court on how frequently mentally ill inmates receive psychiatric care, and she signaled that court oversight of mental health care inside prisons will continue until the state meets its constitutional obligations to prisoners.
The order by U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller in Sacramento federal court also validates claims by by Dr. Michael Golding, the state prison system’s chief psychiatrist, who compiled a secret whistleblower report last year accusing the state of providing false and misleading data to the court to cover up woefully inadequate psychiatric care.
Mueller found that the state was so determined to get out from under years of court-ordered supervision of mental health care services that it fudged data on how frequently more than 32,000 mentally ill inmates were being seen by psychiatrists and the amount of care that was being provided.
“In the final analysis, inexplicably, it is apparent defendants lost complete sight of the reasons remediation is required here,” the judge wrote in a 49-page order issued late Tuesday. “Defendants adopted a laser focus in an effort to obtain termination of court supervision, which led to a stark ‘ends justify the means’ approach.