New Calif. SVP Facility Struggles to Recruit Staff

COALINGA, Calif. — Despite extensive recruiting efforts, California officials are having a difficult time staffing the state’s new $388 million Coalinga State Hospital, which was featured as the facility of the month in the January/February issue of Correctional News.

The facility was built to house civilly committed sexually violent predators, but after more than six months since its opening, only about 170 SVPs are housed at the facility that was built to hold 1,500.

More than 400 SVPs are waiting to transfer to the facility from Atascadero State Hospital near San Luis Obispo, but state officials are having trouble recruiting licensed caregivers to oversee the wards. The hospital is currently mostly staffed by hospital police officers.

Coalinga is a rural farming community of about 12,000 residents located in California’s Central Valley.

Perhaps anticipating staffing problems, a change to state law backed by the state Department of Mental Health suspended the state’s staffing ratio requirement for six years to provide licensed nurses and other medical personnel at 30 of the 32 housing units at the hospital. The two units that have medical personnel house wards who suffer from psychoses or other severe ailments. At other state hospitals, a ratio of one medical technician for every six wards is required and hospital police primarily focus on criminal matters and disturbances.

The change in state law has caused some to question the legitimacy of the state’s civil commitment program, which allows sex offenders who have had more than two victims and continue to show signs of aggressive sexual behavior to be housed by the state in a therapeutic setting after their prison sentences are completed.