JUDGE BLASTS STATE'S PRISON HEALTH CARE

California May Lose Control Of 'Horrifying' System

SACRAMENTO - Calling the state's $1 billion-a-year prison medical system
"horrifying," a federal judge Tuesday threatened to strip the
Schwarzenegger administration of control over inmate health care.

Noting that the administration inherited many of the deficiencies, U.S.
District Judge Thelton Henderson nonetheless cited "the problem of a highly
dysfunctional, largely decrepit, overly bureaucratic and politically driven
prison system" that "is too far gone to be corrected by conventional methods."

Henderson, who has been overseeing the settlement of a 2001 inmate lawsuit,
set two weeks of court hearings in San Francisco starting May 31. He wants
the Department of Corrections to show why he should not name a federal
official to temporarily manage the prison medical system until the mess is
cleaned up. The threat -- his second in a year -- springs from expert
reports and Henderson's own observations during a recent visit to San
Quentin Prison.

"This is a big deal," said Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, which
brought the case on behalf of prisoners. "To take over the medical care
system means that he believes the system is out of control and is killing
people. It cannot be more serious."

Acknowledging that the system was riddled with problems, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger earlier Tuesday signed legislation that clears the way to
reorganize adult and youth corrections, including health care. The action
is his first successful attempt at what he calls "blowing up the boxes" of
government.

J.P. Tremblay, a spokesman for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency,
said the reorganization would improve health care by centralizing
management in Sacramento.

"This is the effort of the administration to cut through the bureaucratic
Gordian knot that's been created," Tremblay said. He could not immediately
say whether the state would oppose the naming of a "receiver," who would
have almost total control over all aspects of the prison health system.

But in just the latest of blistering reports, Henderson proposed something
far more dramatic than anything Schwarzenegger has laid out. In effect, the
judge said the state's 162,000 inmates are being denied their
constitutionally guaranteed civil rights because of wretched health care
conditions, as recently sketched out by medical experts in a scathing
report about San Quentin State Prison.

He noted that the experts said they had "observed widespread evidence of
medical malpractice and neglect." A representative of prison doctors said
he could not comment until he had seen Henderson's court filing.

In the document, Henderson said he, too, had toured San Quentin and that
what he had found "was horrifying." He observed a San Quentin dentist who
neither washed his hands nor changed his gloves after putting his hands
into inmates' mouths.

The judge said: "The pharmacy was in almost complete disarray (with
unlabeled cardboard boxes piled in no particular order, antiquated and
dirty computers, wiring suspended like a drunken spider's web and extremely
frustrated nurses and technicians.)"

He said it was beyond his understanding how the state could allow such "an
unconstitutional system" to continue.

Henderson oversees compliance of the sweeping legal agreement known as the
Plata settlement -- after Marciano Plata, one of nine plaintiffs in an
April 2001 class-action lawsuit filed by inmates' rights activists. Under a
legal settlement, California's 32 prisons are required to provide adequate
health care by 2008.

While drastic, a federal takeover would not be unprecedented. Specter of
the Prison Law Office noted that a similar takeover occurred in the
Washington, D.C., prison system. Henderson himself issued a similar threat
last year.

Tuesday, Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, echoed Henderson's latest
assessment of inmate health care.

"I believe drastic measures are necessary," said Romero, who chairs several
committees overseeing prisons. "The appointment of a federal receiver will
give inmate health care the attention it deserves."

In an elaborate ceremony on the grounds of Folsom Prison, Schwarzenegger
signed legislation by Romero that is a companion to the governor's prison
reorganization. The two measures set the stage for the creation of a new
Cabinet-level department that emphasizes rehabilitation along with
incarceration.

It also folds in the California Youth Authority under the new agency.

Hugging Romero several times, the Republican chief executive stressed that
the cooperation on this issue illustrated that he can work with Democrats
in trying to solve some of the state's seemingly intractable problems.