Severely mentally ill prisoners in Hawaiʻi are being cared for in dismal understaffed facilities and receive inadequate treatment, according to a pair of outside experts who inspected two jails under a class-action lawsuit settlement.
The psychiatrists’ grim report on mental health services in Oʻahu Community Correctional Center and Hālawa Correctional Facility — completed earlier this summer but never before made public — identified inmates who were so severely ill they clearly should have been moved to Hawaiʻi State Hospital for treatment.
The inspectors also flagged overuse of pepper spray to control inmates as a problem in an OCCC module for mentally ill prisoners, and reported staff at Hālawa deliberately made inmates on suicide watch endure harsh conditions as a strategy to discourage malingering…