The news came unbidden, unwelcome and--so far--unfunded. The court-appointed receiver operating state prison healthcare plans to build a 1,500-bed prison hospital at the site of the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo.

Prisoners have a constitutional right to adequate medical care. They are, in fact, the only class of Americans blessed with that protection. Federal courts have ruled that incarceration without adequate healthcare constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Plata v. Schwarzenegger was one of several federal class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of Calif. prisoners establishing that healthcare in
the prisons is indeed "constitutionally inadequate." The state's response was so slow--and inadequate--that last year U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson put the entire prison healthcare system in receivership and appointed a receiver to direct the remedy, a move usually associated with bankruptcy.

The receiver, J. Clark Kelso, unveiled a $6.9 billion remedy featuring 10,000 hospital beds, divided among seven sites around the state, all close to urban areas so as to ensure a workforce. In May, the state legislature rejected the plan.

What part of "constitutionally inadequate" does the legislature not understand? The federal court can just take the money. Indeed, on May 29, Kelso wrote a letter to the_Calif. Department of Finance declaring his "intention to file with your office a demand that the State of California commit to setting aside $7 billion in the receiver's account...." The U.S. Constitution trumps the Legislature.

It has been years since federal courts began ordering the state to fix the prison healthcare system. The case that specifically addresses mental healthcare, Coleman, is 13 years old. Kelso wrote in his May letter that he could "no longer stand idly by while the state continues its pattern of prevarication."

Meanwhile, our local community leaders have objected to a prison hospital in our urban area and decried the loss of the more welcome Ventura Youth Correctional Facility. But here again, what Kelso wants, Kelso gets.

The VYCF has a long history in our county, beginning as the Ventura School for Girls in 1913. Although boys now reside at VYCF, it is still the only facility in California that houses girls and young women. It would be razed to make way for the new adult prison hospital; wards would be dispersed to other facilities.

The old Camarillo State Hospital (1936-1997) has a distinguished history in our county. The hospital population of mentally ill and developmentally disabled peaked at some 7,000 in the 1960s, declining to 900 the year before its closure. Modern medicines allowed--and state budget cuts obliged--people with mental illness to live in their communities.

The old hospital is now the California State University Channel Islands.

Ironically, a substantial proportion of prisoners at the new Camarillo State Prison Hospital will be mentally ill. This is due in large part to the state's failure to provide adequate community care following the old hospital's closure. Prisons are, after all, the only place where people are guaranteed adequate care.

Send your thoughts to me at atatathurstonrc@dock.net