County says it’s a prisoner of new parolee plan

L.A. County officials Tuesday criticized ongoing plans in Sacramento to trim the state prisons’ population and costs by shifting the care of thousands of former inmates to the county.

Department of Mental Health Director Marvin J. Southard ticked off a series of costly and potentially disruptive effects on county mental health care during the Board of Supervisors weekly meeting. In the earliest stages of the shift, Southard said, the county could end up shouldering anywhere between $8 million to $24 million.

Southard described three groups of inmates and parolees for whom the county could assume responsibility for their mental health care. They are:

• An estimated 1,200 parolees, already residing in L.A. County, whose state-based mental health treatment is about to disappear, throwing them on the county services.
• An unknown number of mentally ill inmates still in state prison who may be released in upcoming months as the state struggles to meet court orders to cut overcrowding in the 168,000 inmate system. This group is particularly worrisome to county officials because it’s expected to be large and coming directly from prison with their needs unclear. For now, a court has stayed their release.
• State mental hospital patients confined because they were judged insane or unfit to stand trial. So far, in the last year, only a small number have been sent to county hospitals as part of a release program. Some of those individuals, Southard said, have been taken to county hospitals in “midnight drop-offs,” an unacceptable practice that he said has been rectified.

The 1,200 new patients will add about 3 percent to the county’s mental health outpatient caseload, Southard said in an interview following the supervisors’ meeting. “It’s an additional 1,200 people added to an already rising patient population when resources are declining,” Southard said.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who led the questioning of Southard, called it “bizarre” and “irresponsible” that the state would force the county to provide mental health care for these individuals in difficult economic times without providing funding.

The shift of the parolees to county services is the byproduct of a plan that went into effect in late January to reduce the state’s prison population. Reclassifying more than 7,000 individuals to “Non-Revocable Parole” allows the state to reduce parolee supervision and shift care from Parole Outpatient Clinics, funded by the state, to county facilities.

The plan brought strong reactions from county officials.

County CEO William T Fujioka, for one, said the additional burden on the county amounted to an “unfunded mandate”—an all-too-common practice of the state requiring programs for which it will not pay.

State officials argue that the parolees they will reclassify—as well as prisoners scheduled for release—are non-violent offenders who pose little risk to the community. Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, has said that the state could save as much as $500 million a year by lowering probation costs and providing earlier releases for some inmates.

Complicating the financial issues is a federal court order requiring California to dramatically reduce the prison population. The order arises from a federal lawsuit showing that inadequacies of the prison health care system violated inmates’ constitutional rights in the over-crowded institutions.

State prison officials promise to assist the county with the paperwork and referrals. But Southard said after the meeting that, despite good intentions, getting help is tough when “the state is in a shambles” because of retirements, furloughs and cutbacks. “They’re trying their best, but just scheduling meetings with people at the state who know the situation is difficult.”

New County Counsel Andrea Sheridan Ordin told supervisors that “the lack of coordination I think is one of the most disturbing portions of this at the moment.” She promised to look at “all types of [legal] remedies” to increase coordination and communication with the state.