Originally published July 18 2005
Administrator takes over poor health care system in California prisons
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A federal judge in San Francisco ordered an administrator to take control of health care in the California prison system because of evidence of poor medical treatment and preventable deaths in the prisons.
A federal judge, saying he was acting urgently to stop the needless deaths of inmates because of medical malfeasance, ordered Thursday that a receiver take control of California's prison health care system and correct what he called deplorable conditions.
Experts said the order by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco was unprecedented in its scope given that the prison system provides health care to roughly 164,000 inmates at an annual cost of $1.1 billion.
The prison medical system offered "at times outright depravity, and I intentionally call it that," said Henderson.
He also said the need for action was so dire that he might appoint a temporary receiver in just weeks to at least begin to limit the harm to inmates from the poor medical care before a permanent receiver is put in place.
"It's certainly everything we asked for," said Donald Specter, head of the Prison Law Office, the prisoner rights group that filed the suit on which the judge was acting.
"This is humiliating," said James Jacobs, a law professor at New York University and an expert on court intervention in prison management.
The unions representing prison health workers, who have been at war with the prisons department, in part over who was responsible for conditions in the prisons, said they were thrilled at the judge's decision.
A prison doctor refused to believe the inmate's claim that he couldn't move, and the doctor wrenched the inmate's head and neck during the examination, aggravating his paralysis.
In a case at San Quentin in January, an inmate reported to the infirmary seeking emergency treatment with signs of shock.
He indicated that the receiver was likely to have the ability, at the least, to fire incompetent doctors and hire quickly to fill the more than 150 positions that have been vacant for years and to order construction to improve conditions in the state's 33 prisons.
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