Report: Marin jail's mental health care still deficient
Marin Independent JournalMar 04, 2018
The panel, which serves as a government watchdog group, wrote the report as a followup to its investigation on the same subject during its 2016-17 session.
In the earlier report, the grand jury concluded that mental health services at the
Among other findings, the report said the jail often has no dedicated mental health staff on duty; that mentally ill inmates are sometimes kept isolated in padded cells for longer than 24 hours at a time; and that the jail does not provide individual or group psychotherapy.
The 2016-17 report sampled the jail population in two months,
The report made 13 recommendations to improve the care. The followup report, which was released on Wednesday, says only a few of the recommendations have been implemented.
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The grand jury made additional recommendations, including that the jail have a psychiatrist available on-site eight hours a day for five days a week and on-call around the clock. The panel also recommends that mentally ill inmates have "10 hours of unstructured out-of-cell time as well as 10 hours of structured therapeutic or programmatic time per week."
Sheriff
Doyle also said the grand jury performs "an important service" but it is not responsible for delivering any government functions or paying for them.
"I think the grand jury's a bit naive that they make a bunch of recommendations and we're going to drop everything and implement them," he said.
Dr.
"We remain committed to providing to good behavioral health services in the jail," he said.
The new report, which includes the prior recommendations and responses, is at bit.ly/2FhDM9k.
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