Florida’s Department of Children and Families is being sued after several civil rights groups claim the agency is failing to transfer county inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial to state hospitals within the legal timeframe.
State law requires the transfer within 15 days of a court order, but data cited in the suit claims many patients wait more than 100 days on average.
The civil rights groups involved in the suit are the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Disability Rights Florida (DRF), Florida Justice Institute (FJI) and Terris and Pravlik & Millian, LLP (TPM).
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Kelly Knapp, a senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says this is a decades-long problem…