Years of “grossly inadequate” healthcare for Arizona prisoners represent a violation of the inmates’ constitutional rights and will require outside help to remedy, a federal judge ruled late last week.
U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver issued the decision June 30 in light of “an unusually large amount of evidence” against the state’s Department of Corrections.
The department has delivered all correctional health services via private contractors since 2012, with Centurion of Arizona winning a roughly $216 million-per-year contract to cover services since July 1, 2019, according to court documents.
The department had recently finalized a new five-year, $280 million-per-year contract with correctional healthcare provider NaphCare, according to Arizona Republic, although that arrangement could now be in jeopardy with the court’s ruling that a “qualified expert” be appointed by Aug. 15 to craft an injunction addressing the constitutional violations.
“Defendants have failed to provide, and continue to refuse to provide, a constitutionally adequate medical care and mental healthcare system for all prisoners,” Silver wrote in the ruling.
“Defendants have been aware of their failures for years and Defendants have refused to take necessary actions to remedy the failures. Defendants’ years of inaction are acting with deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of serious harm posed by the lack of adequate medical and mental healthcare affecting all prisoners,” she wrote.
Testimony from plaintiff prisoners as well as correctional and medical records reviewed by the court outlined frequent mistreatment of complex medical patients and those with behavioral health needs, Silver wrote. Testimonies from experts reviewing those records similarly highlighted medical negligence toward prisoners as well as insufficient staffing to meet their needs, according to the court.
Silver said these conditions place prisoners across all 10 of the corrections department’s facilities who develop life-treating conditions “at a significant risk of serious harm. The ones that do develop such conditions may die prematurely, suffer prolonged pain or symptoms or survive with lifelong disabilities.”
She also chastised defendants who “stubbornly maintain there is nothing amiss (other than the need for a new [electronic health record].”
“In a system that produces this many catastrophic outcomes, where its own healthcare expert’s chart reviews reflect care that meets the definition of deliberate indifference, … when not one witness could validate the existing staffing allocation and when nearly everyone agrees that [the corrections department] is critically understaffed, it is simply not possible to draw any other conclusion than the healthcare delivery system poses a substantial risk of serious harm to all prisoners,” she wrote.
Beyond their health and mental care, Silver’s ruling also condemned the state’s corrections department for “almost round-the-clock confinement” in restrictive housing units that deprived “basic human needs” such as nutrition, exercise and social interaction.
Last week’s decision is the latest legal condemnation of Arizona’s prison healthcare system.
A 2012 class action against the department with similar claims yielded a settlement agreement in 2015 that in the years since saw federal judges twice hold the department in contempt and fine millions of dollars, according to court documents. Silver rescinded that settlement agreement in 2021 to pave the way for a new trial against the department.