WI Budget Improves Mental Health Care
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s new budget lays out millions of dollars to help female prisoners get better mental health care and dodge a potentially costly lawsuit over their care, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
The U.S. Justice Department in 2006 declared the lack of mental health care at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, the state’s largest women’s prison in Fond du Lac, violated inmates’ constitutional rights. The state agreed this past September to make improvements or face a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit. “These investments will help us improve the continuity of care for women who have mental illnesses in our prison system,” Corrections Department spokesman John Dipko said in a statement. Part of the state’s plan calls for building a 45-bed women’s-only wing at the Wisconsin Resource Center, a mental health facility for male inmates in Winnebago. The $11 million project was approved as part of the state’s 2007-2009 capital budget. It’s set to open in 2011.
Doyle’s spending plan sets out $4.6 million in taxpayer dollars for the Department of Health and Human Services to hire 113 workers at the facility in 2011. The governor’s budget also devotes another $4.2 million in taxpayer dollars to hire 15 guards for the female-only wing and another 40 mental health workers at Taycheedah. The spending proposals come despite the state’s massive $5.7 billion deficit