California Prison Medical Court Receiver Robert Sillen Bares All Before Sacramento Press Club

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

Robert Sillen, appointed Receiver of the California prison medical care system by Federal Court Judge Thelton Henderson, spoke to the Sacramento Press Club yesterday. Here is what he said without notes, looking at the audience in the eye.

He is a man on a mission, wanting to tell all what he is doing and why. He faults the political system for not being able to take care of this problem, but lays the blame at the governors and legislatures of the last 30 years. He says unnecessary deaths have occurred. He describes his role and how he perceives it, predicts that some state officials will eventually be held in contempt because of the number of court orders that have not been obyed, and indicates AB 900 has made his job more difficult, not easier. The bracketed items are my editor's notes.

"I am one of those kinds of people who think that everybody ought to know what's going in the prison system, whether they want to or not.

Historically, too many people in California have not wanted to know what's going on in the prison system and that's from every governor for the last 30 years right on down through the legislators and the general public, the unions that are involved, etc., etc.

It seems to me that if the unethical, immoral, illegal activities involving health care--just health care, especially medical care, mental health care--were known to the general public, they wouldn't have put up with it for this long.

Because let me make it clear right from the start, it is a horrid, horrid health care system. Unnecessary deaths, unnecessary abuse, clearly unnecessary, in my opinion, overcrowding. The living conditions, the medical conditions are just horrid and are not deserving of the state of California in any year, in any century, let alone the 21st century.

It's just totally out of control. CDCR [The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] is an organization in chaos and the state over the years ha shown itself to be incapable of turning this situation around.