Reports and Assessments

Key Findings

  • The mental health program at SCDC is severely understaffed, particularly with respect to mental health professionals, and impacts the proper administration of services from Reception and Evaluation through discharge.
  • Seriously mentally ill inmates are exposed to a disproportionate use of force and segregation (solitary confinement) when compared with non-mentally ill inmates. These conditions have contributed to the deaths of multiple inmates in segregation, while placing other inmates and staff at risk.
  • Mental health services lack a sufficiently systematic program that maintains accurate and complete treatment records.
  • SCDC's screening and evaluation process is ineffective in identifying inmates with serious mental illness and in providing those it does identify with timely treatment.
  • Administration of psychotropic medications is inadequately supervised and evaluated.
  • SCDC's current policies and practices concerning suicide prevention and crisis intervention are inadequate and have resulted in the unnecessary loss of life among seriously mentally ill inmates.