Disability Rights NC sues state health department over months-long jail waits for capacity evaluations and treatment
Carolina Journal reported on a federal complaint filed by Disability Rights North Carolina against the state Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary. The suit argues that people whose capacity to stand trial is in question wait on average about two months for an assessment and nearly five months for a state psychiatric hospital bed, in some cases longer than any sentence they would face.
The complaint points to Virginia's average of about seven days for a capacity assessment as a contrast and says the state's psychiatric bed count fell from 892 to 453 over seven years, with roughly 35 percent of remaining beds occupied by patients ready for discharge but lacking community placements. It invokes the Fourteenth Amendment, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The case became the central litigation over North Carolina's incapacity-to-proceed pipeline.
Source: Federal suit claims mentally ill languish in NC county jails — Carolina Journal, by CJ Staff
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