Two new audits describe how Utah’s prison system has failed to prevent suicides and deliver mental health treatment to inmates.
The audits mostly discuss the Utah State Correctional Facility – the prison in Salt Lake City that opened in 2022 at a cost of $1 billion. Among the findings recently presented to the Utah Legislature:
- In a survey of cases, three-quarters of inmates did not receive a medication they were involuntarily prescribed.
- Prison staff often failed to properly classify inmates who discussed suicide or were otherwise deemed to be at risk of harming themselves, and those cases were not tracked properly.
- Cells for mentally ill inmates leave too many ways for them to strangle themselves, and prison staff often left them with utensils or other items they could use to harm themselves.
- The Utah Department of Corrections lacks enough staff focused on mental health.
Even when staff said they were checking at-risk inmates every 15 minutes, they often weren’t, auditors told legislators in a Nov. 19 hearing.
“We noted that some officers were filling out the [15-minutes] logs without looking in the inmate cell,” lead auditor Brendon Ressler told lawmakers…