Lack of Staff Stifles Opening of New Prison Facility
At a time when California's penal system is so overcrowded that a federal judge has intervened, one facility which houses violent sexual preditors remains largely empty. Coalinga State Hospital, which opened in September 2005 still sits with more than one thousand empty beds each night.
"Here we are sitting in a state of the art facility, a brand new hospital essentially with the very latest equipment," said physician staff Dr. Jonathan Hamrick. "Yet we can't find the people that can operate the hospital at the level it was intended to operate."
Coalinga State Hospital is indeed a model facility. Built at a cost of $390 million, it looks more like a barbed wire enclosed resort than it does a prison. Inside the modern compound, visitors find polished hallways, an impressive library, cafeteria, barber shop, music studios, a well equipped weight room with professional equipment, a gymnasium, and a complete medical/dental center. The maximum security facilty is there to house mentally ill inmates and former convicts who have completed their sentences but are still deemed too dangerous to be released into society.
For all of its attributes, Coalinga State Hospital has one major problem. It cannot lure enough staff to work here. Therefore, half the facility has never been opened.
"Most people aren't willing to uproot themselves and move to this remote area," said Dr. Hamrick. It is a reality that apparently escaped the minds of the state's top facility planner when they proposed building the hospital off a remote stretch of Interstate 5, roughly halfway between Sacramento and Los Angeles.
http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=24383&GID=+WUtfV1MV/ziKGjgQU3sSv1nELHjD/SQeXMhdpMl730%3D
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