Mentally Disturbed Jail Inmates to Get Help

Los Angeles County Jail inmates showing signs of mental illness will be segregated from other prisoners and receive prompt treatment--including hospitalization--under an out-of-court settlement reached Tuesday between civil rights lawyers and the Board of Supervisors.

The unanimously approved agreement ends a 7-year-old class-action lawsuit that had been scheduled to go to trial today before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Christian Markey, who now is expected to approve the settlement.

1979 Injunction

The settlement, in part, calls for the continuation of many procedures ordered in a court-imposed preliminary injunction in 1979, said Jonathan B. Crane, a senior deputy county counsel. It also requires county Mental Health Director Roberto Quiroz to implement a daily treatment program for about 100 inmates at a time involved in a jail “outpatient” program.

The class-action suit, filed March 9, 1979, stemmed from allegations by Ronald A. Beltram, who, his lawyers said, “flipped out” and became mentally ill because of his treatment in the jail. The suit charged he was kept in restraints, made to lie in his own wastes in an isolation cell for eight days and tried five times to commit suicide.

Attorney Randall Gephart of the Public Justice Foundation said that the county, without admitting wrongdoing, settled Beltram’s portion of the lawsuit last July. The county agreed to provide inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care as well as an undisclosed amount of money to Beltram, Gephart said.

Timothy McFlynn, executive director of the foundation, credited county officials such as Sheriff Sherman Block and Quiroz for the settlement, adding that, since the filing of the complaint, the jail “has served as the largest mental health facility for indigents and homeless mentally ill persons (in the country).”

“(This settlement) will divert those persons from jail to appropriate mental health treatment facilities and free up an already overcrowded jail and police resources to fight real crime,” McFlynn said.

State Time Limit

State law requires psychiatric evaluations within 72 hours of inmates with apparent mental problems, but the suit had alleged that backlogs of as much as 40 days were common during the period Beltram was housed at the jail.

As a result of the preliminary judgment, the procedures were “cleaned up” and screening for mental illness conducted daily, Crane said.

Under terms of the settlement, the county will continue to maintain a 35-bed psychiatric hospital facility at the men’s Central Jail, as well as a 47-bed outpatient facility that is staffed by mental health and sheriff’s nursing personnel. All inmates treated under the settlement terms must first be judged by a court to be mentally disordered, attorneys in the case said.