Federal Judge Replaces California Prison Healthcare Czar
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Kelso |
Citing the need for a new style of collaborative leadership to move forward reform of the state’s prison healthcare system, U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson named seasoned state government troubleshooter and Sacramento law professor J. Clark Kelso to lead the California Prison Healthcare Receivership Corp.
Kelso, director of the Capital Center for Government and Law Policy at University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Calif., has held several state government posts, including interim state insurance commissioner. He recently resigned from his position as the state’s chief information officer, which he had held since 2002.
While praising Sillen’s “bold, creative leadership style,” in diagnosing problems and dysfunction in the system, Judge Henderson voiced dissatisfaction with the pace of reform under Sillen.
Sillen was given sweeping powers to run prison healthcare and order additional spending in the state’s overcrowded, understaffed prison medical wards.
“The crisis in California’s prisons was created over the past several decades as a result of political expediency, incompetence and the creation of a wasteful custody and healthcare operation devoid of accountability,” Sillen wrote early last year in a report to the judge.
However, he failed to meet his initial deadline in developing a plan of action to correct the problems and his reform plans were later criticized as being long and unfocused.
The receivership has reached a “critical juncture” where necessary changes and solutions must be implemented so that the system may be transferred back to state control within a “reasonable time frame,” Henderson writes.
This second phase of the mandated reform process “demands a substantially different set of administrative skills and style of collaborative leadership,” Henderson says
During his tenure, Sillen frequently clashed with lawmakers and other stakeholders, whom he blamed for the crisis in prison healthcare.
“I have to remind them that had they not gone so far as to violate the Constitution, they wouldn’t have me to contend with,” said Sillen in a September interview with Correctional News. “I think it would benefit the state if the Legislature and governor did what needs to be done, which is reform.”
For Sillen, the politics of prisons in California, which stifle the will and almost preclude any reasonable ability of the state to remedy the situation, necessitated the creation of the receivership.
“They had an ample opportunity for three or more years — after signing stipulated agreements — to bring healthcare up to constitutional levels,” Sillen says. “Not only did they not achieve their goals, they didn’t even lift a finger to try.”
In 2007, he blasted the Schwarzenegger administration and state lawmakers over their $8 billion prison reform package, and also suggested that he should control the hiring of correctional officers.
Sillen also marginalized inmates’ rights advocates, asking Judge Henderson to stop inmate lawyers from inspecting his work and slowing his progress.
Following his April 2006 appointment as receiver, Sillen added approximately $300 million to the prison budget and sought an additional $500 million in budget increases for the following fiscal year.
Drawing on a $125 million special state fund, Sillen raised salaries for doctors and nurses, reduced chronic staff vacancy rates, and replaced medical assistants with licensed vocational nurses.
The former executive director of the Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System requested more than $800 million to build new prison healthcare facilities with 10,000 new beds, and outlined a $3 billion plan to provide 5,000 long-term care beds, officials say.
Sillen also authorized construction of a new emergency room at San Quentin state prison, acquired patient transport vehicles for every prison facility, and announced the comprehensive overhaul of the prison pharmacy system.
Judge Henderson established the receivership under Sillen’s leadership as the result of a 2001 class-action lawsuit over the quality of medical care in California’s 33-prison corrections system.
Henderson found the standard of inmate care — with an average of one unnecessary death per week — violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The state settled the suit in 2002, agreeing to implement a range of reforms designed to bring prison medical care in line with constitutional standards.
However, in June 2005, Henderson announced the creation of the receivership to assume control of California’s prison healthcare system, after ruling that the state had failed to significantly improve prison healthcare standards.