The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued a state social service agency, charging that it’s failing to provide timely competency evaluations and mental health treatment for people facing criminal charges while confined at Larned State Hospital.
The federal lawsuit against the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services claims the agency is failing to meet its constitutional requirement to provide a competency evaluation in a timely manner for people confined at the understaffed hospital.
Currently, individuals charged with crimes who have had their competency to stand trial
questioned – or have been deemed incompetent to stand trial – spend months waiting for bed space at Larned to undergo a competency evaluation, the ACLU said.
The ACLU says that it can take as long as 13 months for confined individuals facing criminal charges to get a competency evaluation.
“As a result, individuals charged with crimes languish in county jails, where they
receive little treatment and are housed in untherapeutic environments that can result in further decline in mental health and stability, self-harm, and continued threats to their safety and well-being,” the lawsuit said.
“Due to the egregiously long wait for bed space at Larned, some individuals spend more time in county jails, pretrial, waiting to be admitted to Larned than they would ever receive as a sentence if convicted,” the lawsuit said.
Larned is one of Kansas’ two state psychiatric hospitals, and the only one to operate
a forensic unit dedicated to the evaluation and treatment of people who are facing criminal charges.
The state’s other state psychiatric hospital, Osawatomie State Hospital, does not have a
forensic unit.
Larned is the largest psychiatric facility in the state serving the western two-thirds of Kansas with nearly 1,000 employees and the capacity to treat more than 450 patients daily, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The lawsuit says Larned’s forensic evaluation and treatment unit is operating at a reduced capacity.
Although there are 120 beds dedicated to the unit, Larned is only filling roughly 65% percent of them because it has insufficient staff to cover shifts for the full unit.
“As a result, Kansans with mental illnesses wait for months for a bed at Larned to undergo a competency evaluation or receive restoration treatment services, the lawsuit said.
“From public records, the current waitlist for Larned is over 11 months long,” the lawsuit said.
“This means that, in some instances, individuals are spending more time detained in jail awaiting competency evaluation and/or competency restoration treatment than they would have served in jail if they were convicted on their underlying charge(s) and given the maximum sentence,” the suit said.
The class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of four individuals representing someone awaiting services.
Wile on the waiting list, those individuals are not receiving the mental health care treatment they need and their criminal cases are stalled, the ACLU said.
The class-action lawsuit was brought by the ACLU of Kansas, along with the National Police Accountability Project and Stinson LLP.
