SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The court-appointed receiver overseeing California's prison health care system said Friday that the state must keep its promise to spend more than $2 billion for new medical facilities before the federal courts can end an oversight role that has lasted six years.
California has committed to spending $750 million to upgrade existing medical facilities, building a new medical center and converting juvenile lockups. So far, only the new medical center in Stockton is being built.
Receiver J. Clark Kelso told The Associated Press that the state must begin all the upgrades before it should be allowed to retake control of the prison medical system. They are his first public comments since a federal judge last week told officials to begin preparing for an end to the receivership.
"That leaves a court order that the state is now out of compliance with," Kelso said during the 75-minute interview. "The courts have been promised construction for the last half-decade. Somehow those promises don't get kept."
California officials are analyzing the need for new medical facilities in light of a state law that took effect last year that is sending lower-level criminals to county jails instead of state prisons. Federal judges have ordered the state to reduce its prison population by 33,000 inmates over two years to improve the treatment of mentally and physically ill inmates.
Kelso said the central medical center in Stockton and the $750 million in upgrades still are needed even with fewer inmates in the system. Conversion of the juvenile lockups was to have included new housing and treatment facilities for sick and mentally ill inmates.
Kelso has been negotiating with officials from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and attorneys representing inmates after a federal judge issued a notice saying it was time to begin ending the federal receivership, which has led to improvements in inmate medical care that have cost California taxpayers billions of dollars.
"We'll just see if the parties can't find a middle ground for agreement," Kelso said.
The pace of those negotiations will determine how quickly the state can retake control of prison medical care, he said. Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said earlier this week that he wanted to see the receivership end as early as this summer.
The San Francisco-based federal judge ordered Kelso, state officials and inmates' attorneys to report by April 30 on when the receivership should end and whether it should continue some oversight role.
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