In the Allegheny County Jail’s 2025 correctional officer survey, an officer made the following observations:
“We currently have two doctors employed for the mental health department who refuse to medicate sick individuals properly. Inmates who are lucky to be sent to Torrance State Hospital are placed on a medication routine that works for them and then returned to the ACJ, where these doctors remove them from those medications prescribed.”
Important questions must be raised about why jail doctors would dismiss the diagnosis and medication orders of the Torrance treatment team when the team has worked with the individual for several months in a clinical setting, not a jail, and has stabilized the resident to a state of competency to stand trial.
This officer further states: “I’ve seen inmates sitting in their own filth for months, and these doctors say ‘they’re allowed to choose this.’ ”
Without medications, residents are at high risk for psychiatric decompensation which, among other perhaps even more negative consequences, costs taxpayers for extended incarcerations and personal suffering on the part of those incarcerated and those who care for them.
Severe/persistent and episodic mental illness can be disguised by such factors as the residents’ resistance to probation/parole becoming aware of their mental health issues, being moved to a more restrictive unit in the jail and the stigma of mental illness.
Who is monitoring the prescribing of medications of jail doctors? What is the Jail Oversight Board doing about this?
John Kenstowicz
Morningside