On August 6, 2003, the State of Connecticut Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities (OPA) filed a § 1983 lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut against the Connecticut Department of Corrections and two prisons it operated. Represented by a coalition of attorneys from the local ACLU, ACLU's National Prison Project, local legal aid organizations, the plaintiffs alleged that prisoners and detainees with mental illness who were confined at CDC's Northern Correctional Institution and Garner Correctional Institution were subjected to unconstitutional conditions of confinement in violation of the Eighth Amendment. According to the complaint, the facilities housed both prisoners and pretrial detainees and subjected individuals with mental illness to conditions that exacerbated their mental illnesses. The plaintiffs detailed the isolation and lack of access to exercise or light, as well as prevalence of use-of-force and restraints. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief to bar defendants from subjecting prisoners with mental illness to these unconstitutional conditions.

Soon after the filing of the lawsuit, the parties entered into settlement negotiations and participated in many court ordered settlement conferences. The parties reached a tentative settlement agreement in March 2004. Approval of the proposed agreement was debated by the Connecticut Legislature and a public hearing was held by the joint Judicial Committee of the Connecticut State Senate and House. The settlement was ratified and the parties filed a joint motion to dismiss and approve the settlement with the District Court on September 22, 2005. The District Court (Judge Robert N. Chatigny) entered an order of dismissal and approved and adopted the terms of the Settlement Agreement on September 26, 2005. The District Court retained jurisdiction to enforce compliance with the Settlement Agreement for three years.

The Agreement provided that services for seriously mentally ill prisoners would be consolidated at the Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, Connecticut, which would be designed as the mental health institution for the CDC. In order to initially determine which prisoners would be transferred to Garner, an evaluation of the entire prison population at Northern would be conducted by the UConn Health Center Psychiatric staff. The Agreement also called for increased staffing and changes to mental health evaluation and services. All prisoners and detainees held in the most restrictive form of confinement at NCI were assessed by psychiatric experts to determine whether their placement was appropriate. Individuals with serious mental illness or who were at risk of developing serious mental illness were transferred to a facility with intensive psychiatric services. The parties each designated a mental health consultant and a confinement consultant to monitor and evaluate compliance.

The parties subsequently submitted the issue to the court whether the four monitoring consultants would be granted access to prisoners' mental health records. On March 30, 2007, the court granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs' request. The issue was that while the plaintiffs required access to prisoners' medical records in order to monitor compliance, the defendants were concerned that disclosure without prisoners' consent would violate their constitutional rights. The court applied a balancing test and concluded that the state's interest in disclosure outweighed the burden on the constitutional right, especially because OPA was a state agency designed to protect civil rights. The court denied the motion in part as to certain protected materials, but otherwise granted it and allowed access to the records for the express purpose of monitoring compliance.

On August 5, 2008, the plaintiffs filed a motion for contempt for the defendants' failure to pay expert consultants' reimbursements. The plaintiffs subsequently withdrew the motion by the end of the month after the parties resolved the issue out of court. The defendants made payments to the plaintiff's consultants until December 2008. The court's jurisdiction over the settlement has ended and the case is now closed.

Dan Dalton - 01/31/2007
Chelsea Rinnig - 01/16/2020


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