Critics who declare Bridgewater State Hospital is grievously failing the mentally sick males held there made an impassioned case for shifting oversight of the ability from the state’s Department of Correction to the Department of Mental Health at a legislative briefing Tuesday.

“It doesn’t feel like a hospital at all,” Representative Mary Keefe stated. “It feels like a prison. Let’s just cut to the chase.”

Bridgewater State’s population is mentally sick males who’ve been civilly dedicated and who’re awaiting pretrial court docket evaluations.

Keefe co-chairs the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, which has taken an intense curiosity within the hospital’s operations. Two of her legislative colleagues, State Representative Ruth Balser and State Senator Cynthia Creem, have filedbills that may shift management of the hospital to the Department of Mental Health, which they are saying is way extra able to assembly the acute psychiatric wants of individuals held there.

“That seems like it should be a no brainer,” Creem stated. “Who could be opposed to that? Because those people who are in Bridgewater really need help.”

“Sadly, so many people with mental health challenges land in our criminal justice system,” Balser stated. “But I feel it’s very important that when they do … they be treated with the respect that they deserve, and have their needs met as severely mentally ill people.

“At the risk of stating the obvious, the Department of Mental Health is the mental health authority of the state,” Balser added. “And therefore, it is they who should have oversight and responsibility for people that are severely mentally ill.”

The Disability Law Center, which started monitoring circumstances at Bridgewater State underneath a court docket order and has continued on the state’s behest, has additionally repeatedly referred to as for a shift to Department of Mental Health management.

In a collection of reviews, the middle has, amongst different issues, painted a damning image of the bodily surroundings within the hospital, citing widespread mould and infestation by bugs and rodents.

The middle additionally says inmates are repeatedly subjected to the compelled administration of antipsychotic medicine. Tatum Pritchard, the middle’s director of litigation, described movies she’s seen of this observe as particularly troubling.

“[Hospital staff] barge in … they knock the person down, the force them to lie down on their bed prone, hold them down, pull down pants to expose their buttocks, and that individual then receives multiple shots of forced medication,” Pritchard stated. “That is how we are administering emergency treatment in this so-called state hospital.”

From December 2022 to June 2023, Pritchard added, that individual protocol, generally known as an emergency therapy order, was performed 239 occasions on 106 completely different inmates.

In 2017, then-Gov. Charlie Baker introduced a plan to enhance circumstances at Bridgewater State Hospital by allocating additional funding and outsourcing most care within the facility to a specialised non-public supplier.

Donna Winant, a member of the Bridgewater Friends and Family Group whose grandson is an inmate on the hospital, stated that originally, that shift appeared to enhance circumstances considerably.

But now, she added, within the wake of a merger that created a brand new supplier, these positive factors appear to have been reversed and her grandson has declined.

“My grandson [was] a 21-year-old, physically healthy young man who was well cared for by his family,” Winant stated. “Now, he’s turned into a 30 year old whose teeth have become abcessed. We’ve watched his face swell up and close up his eye.”

In its five-year capital funding plan, the Healey Administration stated it’s going to resume consideration of constructing a brand new forensic psychiatric hospital that may change Bridgewater State Hospital and be administered by the Department of Mental Health.

At Tuesday’s briefing, Balser forged the Healey Administration as an ally in her ongoing push for reform.

“I’m very excited to be working with this new administration,” Balser stated. “I’m very optimistic. This is an administration that I think we can all partner with.”

Keene famous that the state’s contract with Wellpath, the present outdoors care supplier on the hospital, is up for renewal subsequent 12 months, and stated that may very well be an becoming time to lastly shift management to DMH.

A spokesperson for the Department of Correction declined a request for remark, saying the division doesn’t touch upon pending laws.

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