For now, San Diego County can continue to detain people in its isolation-style “administrative separation” units. A federal judge has refused to limit the practice, denying a motion that attorneys said was urgently needed after two recent in-custody deaths. The ruling leaves the sheriff’s current policies in place as both sides head into a settlement conference this week.
U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia turned down the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, according to Justia. The motion asked the court to block the county from placing people with serious mental illness in administrative separation units except in true emergencies, and to limit any such placements to 72 hours.
The injunction bid was filed in October by Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld on behalf of a jailwide class. It included more than a dozen sworn declarations that described cells with overflowing toilets, trash piling up and virtually no human contact. After touring county facilities, plaintiffs’ expert Dr. Pablo Stewart concluded that the administrative separation units are “among the harshest and most restrictive forms of solitary confinement.” Local reporting has echoed those accounts with stories of prolonged isolation, as covered by KPBS…