On February 3, 2005, inmates confined to the Secured Housing Unit ("SHU") at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Indiana filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU National Prison Project and the ACLU of Indiana, asked the court for declaratory and injunctive relief, claiming that the confinement of certain mentally ill prisoners there was unconstitutional.
On March 10, 2005, the District Court (Judge Larry J. McKinney) certified the case as a class action. The class was defined as all prisoners currently, and in the future, confined within the Secured Housing Unit at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility who were mentally ill.
Following two years of litigation and several court-ordered settlement conferences, the parties reached a tentative settlement of the case in the form of a private settlement agreement ("Mast Agreement"). The Mast Agreement provided that it was inappropriate for the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) to place seriously mentally ill prisoners into the SHU or into any correctional setting that features isolation and solitary confinement and the IDOC agreed to abandon that practice. The Mast Agreement further called for the IDOC to provide appropriate mental health treatment for seriously mentally ill prisoners, in a setting and settings other than the SHU. Monitoring of IDOC's implementation of the agreement provision was set for a two-year period.
The parties submitted the agreement to Judge McKinney for approval. Class notices were sent and the matter was set for an approval hearing on March 30, 2007, before Judge McKinney. On November 26, 2007, Judge McKinney approved the settlement and ordered the case stayed for two years, thereafter to be dismissed without prejudice.
On October 7, 2008, a mentally ill prisoner filed pro se a motion to hold the defendants in contempt of court for violating the settlement agreement and award of punitive damages for continuing to confine him in the SHU and then moving him to a facility that was similar to the SHU.
On December 31, 2009, Judge McKinney closed and dismissed the case without prejudice pursuant to the terms in the Mast Agreement.
In 2019, the case was reopened. On March 18, 2019, the parties stipulated to terminating the Mast Agreement because of the related settlement agreement in
Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services Commission, et al. v. Commissioner, Indiana
Department of Correction ("IPAS Agreement"). Specifically, the IPAS agreement prohibited the placement of seriously mentally ill persons in segregation or segregation-like settings for more than 30 days. The IDOC interpreted the class affected by the IPAS Agreement to be slightly narrower than the class in this case. The IPAS Agreement was scheduled to expire on March 25, 2019, but IDOC agreed to extend it if the Mast Agreement was terminated. Because of the IPAS Agreement's immediate,
concrete benefits to IDOC prisoners, the parties agreed to terminate the Mast Agreement and extend the IPAS Agreement. On March 19, 2019, the case was reassigned to Judge James Patrick Hanlon, who approved the parties' stipulated agreement and closed the case on July 23, 2019.
Kristen Sagar - 10/02/2008
Jessica Kincaid - 07/21/2014
Elena Malik - 03/13/2020
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