Why is Ohios prison system at the forefront of improving conditions for mentally ill prisoners? Are any other states following Ohios lead?
Two incidents spurred the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to improve mental health care within its prison system. In April 1993, nine inmates and one prison guard were killed during an 11-day riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. The following November, a class-action lawsuit, Dunn v. Voinovich, claiming that prisoners with serious mental illness were provided with a constitutionally inadequate level of psychiatric care was filed in federal court. The Dunn suit, which named nine inmates and was filed on behalf of 12,000 “psychiatrically-impaired inmates,” also alleged that mentally ill inmates were sometimes chained to their beds and beaten, and that one inmate, Juan Dunn, drove a pencil through his ear to stop the voices in his head. In June 1995, the state and the defendants entered into a consent decree, and Fred Cohen led a court-appointed expert team to monitor the progress.
