Politics on the Hudson

   With just over a month to go until the Legislature is supposed to pass a 2009-10 budget, mental-health, legal rights and prisoners’ rights advocates are asking legislators to reject a part of the governor’s budget that would postpone a law to prohibit solitary confinement for most seriously mentally ill prisoners.

   Gov. David Paterson proposes implementing the law in 2014, rather than 2011; reducing training; and excluding about 2,400 prison beds from the law’s requirements. The state, which faces a projected 2009-10 budget gap of $14 billion, would save $11 million in 2009-10 and $15 million in 2010-11 as a result.

   “This law is not about money,” Leah Gitter, who has a loved one in solitary confinement, said in a statement. “This is about compassion for people with disabilities who deserve the treatment they desperately need and to which they are entitled.”

   “While we have accepted cuts to mental health services in the community in view of the difficult financial times we are in, we cannot accept any further delays in ending the inhumane suffering of our most vulnerable prisoners with severe psychiatric disabilities,” Harvey Rosenthal, head of the state Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, said in a statement.

   Statistics show that most people in solitary confinement are mentally ill. Prisoners may end up in solitary because of behaviors associated with their illnesses, and their mental health can deteriorate due to the isolation and treatment, according to Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement, a coalition of advocacy groups.

   The coalition said the state can reduce the cost of housing inmates who would otherwise go to solitary confinement by retrofitting existing prison facilities.