California Prisons Now Limiting Medical Parole To Solely These In Ventilators – CBS San Francisco

SACRAMENTO (AP) – A new California policy could send dozens of paralyzed, paraplegic, or otherwise permanently incapacitated inmates from nursing homes back to state prisons.

Prison officials say a change in federal regulations caused them to restrict medical parole to inmates who are so ill that they are connected to ventilators to breathe, meaning their movement is restricted so that it does not pose a public hazard . The state previously encompassed a much wider range of permanent disabilities that made it possible to care for inmates in nursing homes outside the prison walls.

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Steve Fama, an attorney for the nonprofit Prison Law Office, said the court-appointed federal agency that oversees health care in California prisons had told him the change could affect about 70 of the 210 inmates under the current medical probation system were released and started in 2014.

“It would be a terrible shame if these people were taken back to prison,” said Fama. “These patients have been shown not to need a prison facility because of their medical conditions.”

Political change comes as the state reduced its prison population due to the coronavirus pandemic, and more generally urge voters and lawmakers to free older and frail inmates who are less likely to commit new crimes.

California officials say they have no choice in a new approach to enforcing federal nursing home licensing requirements through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This is a division of the US Department of Health under the direction of former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

The federal agency’s position is that probation officers cannot impose conditions on inmates in community medical facilities, the state says. This includes a rule that inmates only leave with the permission of their probation officer – a restriction that state officials believe is necessary to maintain public safety.

In response, only those with ventilators will be placed in the community, correctional department spokeswoman Dana Simas said.

Federal officials disagree that the state’s only option is to lift medical parole and put incapacitated inmates back behind bars.

They say California could leave inmates in nursing homes with no travel restrictions or place them in facilities that are not regulated by the federal government – “assisted living or non-certified qualified facilities that a state may wish to license to serve.” Probation officers who have additional health needs. “

Simas replied that sending offenders to such uncertified facilities would “require the establishment of an entirely new program to monitor and audit the care provided in these facilities”. The health care of the offenders in the current facilities is checked by the federal administration and several external agencies.

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The state’s ruling affects incapacitated inmates believed to still need some form of supervision, but does not affect court-approved, unconditional, compassionate dismissals. Detainees can seek compassionate release if they are diagnosed with an illness that is likely to cause death in 12 months or less and is a condition they did not have when they were sentenced.

Several other states had to deal with the same problem, although federal officials couldn’t immediately tell which, when, or how they complied.

Almost every state allows prisoners with serious illnesses to be released on parole, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the organization said in a 2018 review that such laws are rarely used.

Researchers at the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit research and advocacy group, said obstacles included limited eligibility criteria and the difficulty of applying for a release. Their 2017 report found that Alabama had released 39 people on medical grounds over eight years, while Texas approved 86 of more than 2,000 requests in 2016.

California dwarfed those releases by approving 210 medical releases and declining 110 requests since 2014, though that’s a tiny fraction of the nearly 100,000 inmates currently incarcerated in the most populous state.

California MP Phil Ting, who chairs the congregation’s powerful Budgets Committee, is putting forward a bill to expand the criteria and create a simpler process for placing incapacitated inmates in community health facilities.

“The ventilator restriction is arbitrary and not based on medical science,” he said. “Public safety will not be improved if this policy is unnecessarily narrow.”

Ting’s bill would include those who qualify for hospice care or have debilitating pain or a debilitating illness. Rather than leave the decision to the state parole board, which is largely made up of law enforcement officers, a new medical parole board made up of health care providers would be created in each prison. It would also keep patients in off-site facilities even if they no longer meet the criteria for medical parole.

Originally worn by former MP Rob Bonta, now the Attorney General, it cleared the gathering before it stalled in the Senate last summer. Ting plans to try again next year.

Those sentenced to death, life without parole, or the murder of police officers are not eligible under California law, and that would not change even after Ting’s suggestion.

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