Overview
During the Spring and Summer of 2002, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) received numerous alarming reports of abuse, neglect and poor medical care faced by women prisoners confined to the on-sight medical unit at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) located in Chowchilla, CA. In response to these complains, LSPC worked with our clients and other Bay Area prisoner rights groups (Justice Now, California Prison Focus, and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners) to file official complaints with the Department of Health Services (DHS). DHS released a series of reports which found several serious violations of prisoners’ rights including failure ensure that patients were treated with dignity and respect.
The Paris Lamb Treatment Center is a skilled nursing facility (SNF) which houses disabled, terminally diagnosed and seriously ill women prisoners. Based on client interviews and record reviews, LSPC identified the following serious complaints: verbal and physical abuse on the part of SNF medical staff; lack of basic hygiene care including regular baths and teeth cleanings for disabled prisoners; patients forced to change their own bandages; failure to administer antibiotics and pain medications to post-operative patients; delays or outright denials of food, water and ice; emergency call buttons ignored and/or malfunctioning; punitive lock-downs of up to 20 hours a day; limited access to visitors both legal and social; no access to any regular prison programs; failure on the part of medical staff to issue Compassionate Release chronos to patients meeting the requirements; and retaliation against prisoners who spoke out about these conditions.
The Department of Health Services (DHS) functions as the oversight agency responsible for ensuring compliance with the strict laws governing the operation of SNFs throughout California, including the medical unit at CCWF. By law, the DHS must investigate all complaints of licensure violations. Complaints about conditions in the Chowchilla prison SNF are not new. DHS conducted investigations in April 1999 and February 2000 and identified several major licensure deficiencies. Findings included the following:
- failure to keep medical records in detail consistent with professional standards;
- patients medical orders not carried out as specified by the treating physician
- failure to provide therapeutic diets as prescribed
- patients being admitted with open wounds
- mental health patients were denied eating utensils and forced to tear off portions of Styrofoam cups to use as makeshift spoons
- residents had foul body odors, their hair was uncombed and looked dirty, their fingernails were long with dirt under the nails and none of the residents appeared to have had oral care for a long period of time.
To find out more about the history of the struggle to end the abuse of women prisoners in the SNF, refer to the "Read More" section below, or contact Heidi Strupp at 415-255-7036 ext. 321 or heidi@prisonerswithchildren.org.
