Jail inmates file federal class action over South Dakota's delays sending them for competency restoration
KFGO reported that three men held in South Dakota jails filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the state's Human Services Center. Each had been ordered by a court to go to the center to have his competency restored, but none had been transferred and all remained in jail.
The Yankton Press & Dakotan's account of the complaint adds detail: the suit, filed in late December by a court-appointed guardian on the men's behalf against the center's administrator, says they were ordered to the center between late August and mid-October and were still waiting. It argues that holding people in jail instead of transporting them as ordered violates the Fourteenth Amendment's due process guarantee, and it seeks to cover others in the same position.
KFGO notes the center, the state's public mental health hospital, has chronic staffing shortages that limit how many patients it can accept. The case puts South Dakota alongside the many states where restoration bed shortages have ended up in federal court.
Source: Jail inmates sue to get mental health treatment — KFGO, by Paul Jurgens
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