Consolidation Planned—

Mental Health Role

To Expand At Garner

By Andrew Gorosko

Garner Correctional Institution, the state’s high-security prison on Nunnawauk Road that has long specialized in housing inmates with mental health problems, will expand that role in the coming months as it becomes the state Department of Correction’s (DOC) prime facility for prisoners with serious mental disorders.

At a February 26 session at Garner, Warden Giovanny Gomez and other DOC officials described the planned consolidation of mental health services at the 260,000-square-foot institution, which sits on a 118-acre property.

The consolidation is intended to concentrate DOC inmates with serious mental health problems in a facility that is staffed with employees specializing in mental health care. The consolidation is intended to improve and streamline the DOC’s mental health screening and diagnostic programs to generally improve its prisoner mental health care.

The consolidation’s goal is to allow mentally ill inmates to return to a higher level of functioning and to allow them to live in the least restrictive prison environment possible.

The planned consolidation would bring DOC into compliance with a federal mandate to treat mentally ill inmates in accord with the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires due process under the law.

Under the consolidation project, new inmates in the state prison system who are found to be acutely mentally ill or to have a serious mental illness will be transferred to Garner for treatment.

Treatment will seek to have inmates increase their personal skills, with the overall goal of improving their quality of life, and ultimately reducing prisoner recidivism.

Group psychotherapy, individual psychotherapy, and psychotropic medications will be the prime components of inmate treatment, according to the DOC. Occupational and recreational therapies will be employed. Treatment programs will address problems including depression and mood disorders, psychotic behavior, mental retardation, organically based disorders, and impulse control.

Inmates who do well after therapy at Garner may be transferred to another prison, where they would receive out-patient, follow-up mental health care. But inmates who exhibit chronic serious mental illnesses, which require specialized prison housing, would remain at Garner, according to the DOC.

Added Training

Considering that Garner will become the DOC’s prime prison for mental health care, prison staffers, including correction officers and health service employees, will receive specialized training on how to work with mentally ill inmates.

Warden Gomez said he is seeking approval for additional 17 Garner staff members as part of the consolidation. The prison currently has 302 staff members. Of those 302 workers, approximately 225 are correction officers.

The consolidation is planned for June. After the consolidation, about 80 percent of Garner’s inmates would be held there for mental health treatment. Garner will retain one cellblock of general prisoners, consisting of about 96 inmates, according to Warden Gomez.

In the consolidation, the traditional role of the correction officer would expand to include mental health care.

Garner, which was designed to house approximately 750 prisoners, would contain a target number of approximately 650 inmates after the consolidation. The actual number of inmates housed at Garner at any one time is variable and subject to change, Warden Gomez stressed.

For example, the prisoner count at the institution on March 2 was 692 prisoners. Of that number, 304 prisoners were designated as mental health inmates.

The prisoner population at Garner is expected to decrease to approximately 650 because some inmates with serious mental health problems will require single-occupancy cells rather than dual-occupancy cells.

“Our goal is to make this a national [mental health] model and I think my staff is up to this,” Warden Gomez said.

Physical changes planned at Garner include an improved surveillance camera system, the creation of a central pharmacy within the prison, and some modified prisoner-holding facilities to make the facility more secure, Warden Gomez said.

“From a security standpoint, we’re only going to get better,” he said. Mental health inmates are less likely than general population prisoners to organize and plot group actions, he said.

Incarceration

“The incarceration of mentally ill people, who previously would have been treated at mental hospitals that have been closed, is a problem that has been receiving national attention. The consolidation of seriously mentally ill inmates at Garner is part of an overall alternative-to-incarceration plan,” according to the DOC. The consolidation is based on a prisoner treatment model that was developed by the Texas Department of Correction.

The DOC is working with the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) in making the Garner consolidation.

Garner, which opened in November 1992, is a Level 4 prison, in a prison system in which the highest security rating is Level 5. The DOC manages its Garner prisoner population through containment and isolation, preventing large numbers of inmates from gathering. 

Garner’s site formerly was part of the grounds at Fairfield State Hospital, a sprawling mental institution commonly known Fairfield Hills. At its height, Fairfield Hills housed more than 3,000 mental patients. Fairfield Hills closed in December 1995. The town plans to buy Fairfield Hills’ 189-acre core campus, including 17 major buildings, from the state for $3.9 million.

Although Garner’s prime role will become a high-security prison that provides services to prisoners with serious mental health problems, the facility will retain some pretrial prisoners, who are either awaiting trial or awaiting sentencing.

It is those inmates who are transported between Garner and various courthouses by security personnel. As of March 2, Garner housed 183 pretrial inmates, besides 205 general prisoners, and 304 mental health inmates for a total of 692 inmates.