Prisoners at Hampton Roads Regional Jail were subjected to medical and mental health care so bad that it violated their constitutional rights in a facility where officials didn’t fix problems even after becoming aware of them, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division said in a report released Wednesday.
The investigation of the jail, located in Portsmouth, began after press coverage of the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, who was mentally ill and died in the jail in August 2015 after wasting away in a cell without adequate mental health treatment.
Among many other cases, the report also cited the death of Henry Stewart, 60. He died two days after his request for emergency medical help was denied.
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“Our investigation found reasonable cause to conclude that the Jail fails to provide constitutionally adequate medical and mental health care and that prisoners experience serious harm as a result,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said in a news release. “The Justice Department hopes to continue to work with the Jail to resolve the Department’s concerns.”
The jail is taking steps to fix problems, the report said, but more work remains.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring joined calls for an investigation on Sept. 2, 2016, following reports by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other media outlets of inadequate care in the jail.
The Justice Department notified the jail of the investigation in December 2016. Officials visited the jail four times between then and October 2017.
A September 2016 Times-Dispatch story reported inmates had died nearly nine times more often in custody at Hampton Roads Regional Jail than at other local or regional jails in Virginia in the previous three years.
The Justice Department report found that the jail did not have enough medical staff, and lacked security for mental health staff. The Justice Department found the jail “does not take prisoner requests for treatment seriously, and often ignores them.”
“When we visited the Jail in May 2017, the nursing director was admonishing the nursing staff for leaving sick call slips uncollected in a box for one month without any answer,” the report said.
“The Jail fails to provide adequate intake, discharge planning, sick call, chronic care, and emergency care such that prisoners are subjected to an unacceptable risk of harm due to delays or lack of treatment.”
On mental health, the report said: “Specifically, the Jail’s current program fails to: properly screen prisoners for mental illness; provide adequate treatment planning; adequately administer medications and psychotherapy; and properly treat and supervise suicidal prisoners.”
Even after Mitchell’s death, the jail failed to take proper steps to fix problems, the report said.
The report, citing numbers from 2016 and 2017, said the jail subjects prisoners with serious mental health problems to “prolonged periods of restrictive housing,” more commonly referred to as solitary confinement, putting them at risk of harm. Prisoners locked in their cells for 23 to 24 hours a day had much less chance of requesting medical attention.
The Justice Department found that in 2017 the jail was putting mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement because it hadn’t properly addressed their mental health needs while they were in general population.
During one week in August 2017, 65 of the jail’s 500 cameras used to monitor inmates were not working, which put suicidal inmates at risk. The report also said the jail’s physical structure is not designed for its high-needs population.
Medical care did not significantly improve under Correct Care Solutions, the jail’s medical provider since December 2015, the report said.
Herring issued a statement Wednesday saying the DOJ report should be a wake-up call for more to be done at the jail and across the state to protect inmate safety.
The Justice Department sent a letter Wednesday to Martin Thomas, a Norfolk councilman and chairman of the jail’s board, and David Hackworth, the jail superintendent. If the jail hasn’t addressed the DOJ’s concerns in 49 days, the attorney general could file a lawsuit, the letter said.
Thomas said by email that jail administration “has significantly changed since the subject incidents occurred years ago. I would suspect that many of the concerns in the report have already been addressed but if they have not I have faith and confidence that Superintendent Hackworth will work with the Department of Justice moving forward to resolve any outstanding issues.”
The jail is overseen by a 15-member board of sheriffs, city managers, and city council members from the cities that use the jail, generally transferring inmates from their city jails who have significant mental health problems. About a quarter of the jail’s inmates have serious mental illness, the report said.
In one stunning detail, the report found that in fiscal 2017 the cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Hampton and Newport News spent $505,890 to incarcerate 62 people with serious mental illness at the jail whose only booking charges were minor offenses such as shoplifting, trespassing, or probation violations.
