Hundreds of incompetent California defendants wait in county jails as state hospital beds run short
Defendants found incompetent to stand trial in California are supposed to reach a state hospital within a couple of months, but KQED found that more than 300 were backed up in county jails in fall 2015, with some waiting up to a year. The story follows Rodney Bock, arrested in Yuba City in 2010 for carrying a loaded gun into a restaurant, found incompetent, and held in the Sutter County jail, where he died by suicide after a little more than two weeks.
Bock's daughters are plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit against the Department of State Hospitals and another state agency, which argues that jail is too dangerous for the most vulnerable defendants. The state budget had set aside more than $17 million for added beds, but mental health court judge Stephen Manley told KQED that the hospitals are already overcrowded and understaffed and that community-based treatment would serve many of these defendants better.
The article is an early, plain-language account of the bed-versus-community debate that would shape California's competency policy for the next decade.
Source: Long, Dangerous Wait for Hospital Beds for Those Incompetent to Stand Trial — KQED, by Scott Shafer
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