The Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s request to extend a contract with a health care administrator to manage treatment services for psychologically impaired inmates at the Robert Presley Jail in Riverside at an aggregate cost of $4.82 million.
The board’s 5-0 vote clears Bianco to cinch a three-year extension with Liberty Healthcare of California Inc.
The firm was first hired in October 2013 to oversee the “Jail-Based Competency Treatment Program,” and contract renewals have continued since then. The three-year extension under the new terms expires on Dec. 31, 2023.
The California Department of State Hospitals, which is likely to reimburse the county for all program costs, indicated a preference for the continuation of Liberty as the JBCTP administrator based on the desire for consistency, according to sheriff’s officials.
No competitive bids were sought.
The program is geared to “restoration of competency services,” under which psychologists and other clinicians work with inmates who are charged with serious felonies but have been found mentally incompetent to stand trial.
The goal is to return them, through therapy, to functionality so they can stand trial. If it is determined that goal cannot be achieved, the inmates are transferred to state mental institutions, according to sheriff’s documents.
Prior to the JBCTP at the Robert Presley Jail, all inmates eligible for restoration therapy were automatically sent to state hospitals. The local program maintains a fully staffed unit with 25 beds.
Keeping the mentally incompetent inmates closer to home “allows them to begin treatment immediately upon receipt of court-ordered paperwork and eliminates the waiting period, which significantly decreases the time the defendant remains incarcerated and expedites restoration to competency processes,” according to an agency statement posted to the board’s agenda.
Twenty-three inmates are currently involved in the program. In the last seven years, a total of 669 have been through it, and of those, 337 went on to stand trial based on restoration of competency, while 332 were declared long-term cases and sent to state facilities, officials said.
The daily cost for each inmate in the unit is $176.18, and at full capacity, the total annual expense comes to $1.6 million, according to the sheriff’s department.