Advocates say Colorado is breaching its 2012 deal on speedy competency evaluations
The advocacy group, then called the Disability Law Center, said 74 jailed people had waited longer than the 28 days the 2012 settlement allows between a competency order and admission to the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo, and 17 of them had waited 70 days or more. It gave the Department of Human Services until early September 2015 to submit a plan for fixing the problem.
The Associated Press report tied the delays to staffing and demand. Roughly 81 of 491 nursing positions at the hospital were vacant, which by early June limited admissions to about one a day, while court-ordered competency evaluations had more than doubled over nine years, from 681 in 2005-06 to 1,533 in 2014-15.
The dispute was the opening move in a fight over waitlists that would continue through new settlements, a consent decree and years of fines.
Source: Group: Colorado Inmates Languishing Without Mental Evaluations, Care — CBS Colorado (Associated Press), by Dan Elliott
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