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The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the class-action status of a lawsuit alleging that Arizona's prison system overuses solitary confinement and provides inadequate health care.
The ruling essentially clears the way for the suit to go to trial in October. It also means that the more than 34,000 inmates in Arizona's 10 state-run prisons will be part of the suit, first filed in 2012, seeking wide-ranging changes in how the state's Department of Corrections confines inmates and treats — or fails to treat — their health- and mental-health-care problems.
The suit doesn't include just under 7,000 inmates in six private prisons under contract with the state. However, because inmates who develop chronic medical conditions or mental illness are typically transferred from the private prisons to state facilities, any of those inmates could potentially become part of the class as well.
U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake, in Phoenix, granted class-action status in March 2013; Arizona officials had appealed that ruling to the circuit court.
"The state of Arizona has long ignored the basic need of people confined in its prisons, including the constitutional mandate to provide adequate health care. Prisoners have suffered unnecessarily and even died while waiting for basic care," said David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Fathi argued the case to the appeals court on behalf of the ACLU and the Prison Law Office, a California group that filed the suit.
In a written statement, Department of Corrections officials said they disagree with the decision, but will not comment on details of the ruling.
"The allegations are not accurate, and the Department of Corrections looks forward to vigorously challenging them and presenting our case at trial," read the statement, provided by department spokesman Doug Nick.
Arizona officials had argued that prisoners don't have enough in common to be considered a class. In its decision, the appeals court said that given that "every inmate in ADC custody is likely to require medical, mental health and dental care, each of the named plaintiffs is similarly positioned to all other ADC inmates with respect to a substantial risk of serious harm resulting from exposure to the defendant's policies and practices governing health care."
Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, said the plaintiffs in the suit include "the seriously mentally ill and other prisoners whose mental health has markedly deteriorated in solitary confinement — weeks, months, sometimes years of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation. Sometimes the damage is permanent.
"Arizona must stop this cruel and unusual punishment," he said.
As The Arizona Republic has reported, from 2011 to 2013, Arizona's prison system had a suicide rate 60 percent higher than the national average. More than half the suicides were among prisoners held in solitary confinement, even though they accounted for 9 percent of the prison population. Inmates in solitary are kept in windowless units with lights on 24 hours a day.
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