SALT LAKE CITY — Two new audits describe how Utah’s prison system has failed to prevent suicides and deliver mental health treatment to inmates.
The audits mostly discuss the Utah State Correctional Facility - the prison in Salt Lake City that opened in 2022 at a cost of $1 billion. Among the findings recently presented to the Utah Legislature:
- In a survey of cases, three-quarters of inmates did not receive a medication they were involuntarily prescribed.
- Prison staff often failed to properly classify inmates who discussed suicide or were otherwise deemed to be at risk of harming themselves, and those cases were not tracked properly.
- Cells for mentally ill inmates leave too many ways for them to strangle themselves, and prison staff often left them with utensils or other items they could use to harm themselves.
- The Utah Department of Corrections lacks enough staff focused on mental health.
Even when staff said they were checking at-risk inmates every 15 minutes, they often weren’t, auditors told legislators in a Nov. 19 hearing.
“We noted that some officers were filling out the [15-minutes] logs without looking in the inmate cell,” lead auditor Brendon Ressler told lawmakers.
“We know two examples,” Ressler added, “when inmates were able to engage in self-harm despite these checks occurring, one of them – an inmate who committed suicide—was not found for over an hour, despite receiving multiple checks throughout that hour.”
Molly Prince, a social worker and one of the co-founders of Utah Prisoner Advocate Network, said the audit was a “sort of validation.”
The network has asked for years for more funding for mental health services in Utah’s prisons.
Prince also believes the dormitory-style housing in the Salt Lake City prison is contributing to inmate stress, allowing gang members and more aggressive inmates to victimize other prisoners.
“When they built the prison, they told us the eight-man cells were intended to be a privileged section,” Prince said.
“What I am told happens in those eight-man cells,” she added, “is everything that's not supposed to happen in a prison.”
Rebecca Brown, a deputy executive director of the Utah Department of Corrections, told legislators the department is changing policies and making other improvements.
“We began working immediately on correcting any of the deficiencies as they were identified through the audit process,” Brown said, “and we do concur with all of the recommendations in the report.”
The department has about 6,200 inmates spread across its two prisons as well as some county jails. That’s more than the population of four of the state’s counties.