Hartford — The state Senate unanimously passed a bill Wednesday aimed at what advocates say is the state Department of Correction’s flawed health care system for prison inmates.

Senators first voted in favor of a strike-all amendment to replace Senate Bill 448, An Act Concerning the Delivery of Health Care and Mental Health Care Services to Inmates of Correctional Institutions, as it was originally written. Now, instead of calling for outside oversight of the DOC's health care system, the bill mandates that the DOC study the issue and come up with a comprehensive health and mental health care plan.

“This amendment asks that the commissioner of corrections submit a report no later than January 1st, 2023, that they develop a plan for the provision of health care services including but not limited to mental health care, substance use disorder and dental services for inmates of correctional facilities under the jurisdiction of the department,” Sen. Mary Abrams, D-Meriden, said Wednesday night.

The bill asks the DOC to make sure it has a sufficient number of mental health care providers available to give services to those who request it. It also asks that each inmate receive an initial health assessment upon first entering a correctional institution.

Ranking member of the Public Health Committee, Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, rose in support of the bill during a quick debate on Wednesday.

“For years now the state of Connecticut has struggled with health care for its inmates, and we’ve had some trying and difficult outcomes of that care,” Somers said Wednesday evening. “I think this bill provides a good groundwork for us to look at what needs to be done for the improvement of health care delivery in our correctional facilities. I believe that doing an initial health assessment is a critical part of this to have an initial baseline. Also providing mental health is undeniably something desperately needed in our correction system.”

“We know with COVID it’s become so evident that we have to do the best we can for the people in our corrections facilities,” Abrams said.

The original iteration of the bill would have created a commission to oversee the DOC’s administration of health care, as the DOC currently is self-monitored. This commission also would have evaluated “whether the Department of Public Health should have oversight over the provision of such services or license the facilities located in such correctional institutions where inmates receive health care services,” supporter and state Sen. Saud Anwar, D-Bridgeport, said in March.

In pushing for the bill, Anwar and others pointed to numerous examples of alleged health care failures at York Correctional Institution in the Niantic section of East Lyme.

Ken Krayeske, a Hartford civil rights attorney with a long history of activism in the state, cited several women who served as examples that the health care issues at York are systemic.

“I’m here for Tianna Laboy, who gave birth on a toilet. The Attorney General’s Office asked her if she could’ve given birth on the bed instead,” he said last month at a news conference about the bill. “I’m here for Mojah Neish, who had a medical event and sat in the infirmary at York Correctional for three days before she was taken to a hospital. She’s in a nursing home in Hartford ... she can’t even clap. She can’t talk, she can’t walk. I’m here for Desiree Diaz who ... wasn’t in for 24 hours when she was detoxing and when they found her in the morning, she was in rigor mortis. She wasn’t convicted of a crime but she suffered a death sentence. I’m here for Cara Tangreti. She was repeatedly raped by multiple different correctional officers when she was at York.”

The family of Diaz, who was from Groton and died at age 33 in 2018 after spending one night in York, again has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the state and its Department of Correction. Her mother, Katherine Lindsay, is represented by Krayeske in this matter. Lindsay and Krayeske withdrew a similar 2020 action before reentering the standing complaint in February of this year. 

Proponents of the original bill said they didn’t understand why a system built to imprison people is also being tasked with keeping them alive.

“Connecticut is the only state in the country where DOC oversees and operates its own health care. Just like any other entity that oversees itself, it undermines public trust,” Diane Lewis, the communications director for the social justice firm Voices of Women of Color and mother of a man who was formerly incarcerated, said during the news conference in March.

“This bill originally was not going to be a study, but after much trepidation and discussion we felt it better to be a study so that the DOC could come back to us with what their plan is for the delivery of health care within their system, and to really make sure we have enough providers in the DOC for health care including mental health and dental,” Somers said Wednesday of the changes to the bill.

The House could take up the bill in the final days of the session, but time is dwindling and the House just began taking up Senate bills on Thursday.

s.spinella@theday.com