CAPT Outreach magazine
July-August 1998

When inmates prey on the asylums

Following is condensation of a July 9 Los Angeles Times column by one of the paper's regular columnists. The above headline was on the column.

By Shawn Hubler

California politics are big on outrage. Outrage gets the votes out, loosens the pocketbooks. The latest case in point is festering, even as you read this, at a jail or mental hospital near you.

It was spawned a few years back by an especially effective form of outrage, that of crime victims. The child Polly Klaas had been murdered. The Pillowcase Rapist, attacker of scores of women, was being freed.

From the candlelight vigils, the terrified cry arose: Lock up the monsters. Swiftly it was decreed that when a monster gets paroled, the state could declare him a mentally disordered "sexually violent predator" and lock him up some more.

Department 95 of the Los Angeles Superior Court specializes in cases involving mental patients. In a harsh system, it has been a gentle place. No more. On this morning, three defendants have come before Judge Harold E. Shabo.

Two are ex-cons whose rap sheets marked them as predators. In a place normally populated by psychotics, these guys don't seem crazy. But both are awaiting hearings to determine whether they should be locked up in a mental hospital.

They are two among hundreds. And for two years now, their ranks have been stacking up in our last remaining mental institutions. Under the law, once an inmate gets out, he now is screened by the state Department of Mental Health and the district attorney to see whether he qualifies as an SVP.

If so, there's a trial, after which he can be committed to Atascadero State Hospital for two years at $107,000 a year each. There they pick on the mental patients, work the system, hit the staff.

Already, officials say, the brutal ethos of the penitentiary (see Corcoran State Prison) has infected the hospital. One SVP had his parole revoked for attacking a hospital staffer, and advocates report that SVPs are exploiting sicker patients for sex.

Meanwhile, SVP complaints to the patient's rights advocate at Atascadero are piled eight inches deep. One predator groused that he couldn't develop normal sexual desires because there were too few good-looking nurses.

Quietly and slowly, an expensive and awful thing has been happening: As our jails have filled up with mentally ill people, our last few mental hospitals have begun to be overtaken with criminals.