A federal judge is considering whether to hold Alabama prisons in contempt of court for failing to provide inmates with adequate mental health care.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson is hearing testimony in Montgomery on a request by inmate attorneys to sanction the department. On Tuesday, the Montgomery Advertiser reported, testimony showed a contractor hired to provide medical and mental health care for more than 20,000 inmates is not complying with its contract.

The Alabama Department of Corrections only has about three-quarters of the number of mental health workers that it’s supposed to have, testimony showed.

Corrections officials say they do not have enough funding. They have denied providing unconstitutional care.

The judge previously ruled that psychiatric care in Alabama prisons was “horrendously inadequate.”

Thompson ruled the situation created unconstitutional conditions in state prisons.

Elaine Gedman, chief administrative officer and executive vice president for Wexford Health Sources, the contractor hired to provide health care by the state, testified she was unaware if Wexford had been involved in negotiations about paybacks for failing to meet staffing benchmarks in a $360 million contract signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in March.

Maria Morris, a Southern Poverty Law Center attorney representing inmates, has said the state wants to amend or vacate Thompson’s order and has asked for specific ways to count the number of staff members it has in prisons.

The class-action lawsuit filed by the law center and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program in 2014 led to a trial over inmates’ claims of inadequate mental health care.

An inmate who was the first witness to testify killed himself in prison days later.

In the 2018 fiscal year, which prison officials use to report its data, seven people were killed and six died by suicide. Nearly 40 inmates attempted suicide.
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)

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