Understaffing problems go from local to state level in prison facilities.

The relationship between incarceration and mental illness is not new, nor is the public reckoning with the fact that prisons and jails resemble de facto psychiatric hospitals. For the state prison system operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, a class-action lawsuit filed in 1990 alleged that prisoners received inadequate mental health care. In 1995, a federal court agreed.

Further lawsuits and court decisions revealed continued deficiencies, ultimately leading judges in 2009 to order California to reduce its prison population dramatically, noting that overcrowding was an underlying factor. A massive transition known as realignment began, in which people who formerly served out their sentences in state prisons were instead incarcerated in county jails.

That effectively shifted the problem, and Monterey County Jail’s continued struggles to provide adequate mental, physical and dental health care to the people in its custody has been a subject of the Weekly’s reporting for years.

But while Monterey County Jail has been trying and failing and trying again to meet bare-minimum legal obligations, not to mention the moral obligations to people imprisoned, there’s been a parallel problem unfolding at the state prison level. (System-wide, CDCR has accumulated $95 million in fines as of March for failure to comply with the court’s demands.)

According to an audit released on Dec. 4 by the California State Auditor, understaffing remains a chronic problem at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad.

Staffing vacancies were up by 50 percent since July of 2019. For 2023-24, the facility faced a 65-percent vacancy rate in mental health staffing positions.

Three facilities are covered in the audit – CDCR’s Salinas Valley State Prison, the Department of Developmental Services’ Porterville Developmental Center in Tulare County and Atascadero State Hospital (run by the Department of State Hospitals). All three reported relying on overtime and contract employees to help meet minimum staffing requirements. At SVSP, contract employees accounted for 10 percent of the 637-person workforce last year.

“CDCR is committed to providing adequate care.”

(Due to the high vacancy rate, there was actually a cost savings – more than $188 million at the prison since 2019 – but “the departments could not explain how they used the specific savings that we identified,” according to the audit.)

But more important than the cost is the care inmates receive. The audit reports that Salinas Valley State Prison has filled psychology positions at the required level only 23 percent of the time, clinical social workers 17 percent of the time, and other mental health positions 33 percent of the time since 2019-20.

“CDCR is committed to providing adequate health care for the incarcerated population, while ensuring fiscal responsibility,” CDCR Public Information Officer Kyle Buis says in a statement. “We thank the State Auditor for their work on this important issue.”

It’s understandably hard to fill positions in these settings, and the auditor has some recommendations, but they are far short of what’s needed to transform the idea of a prison as a workplace. The audit looks at rural environments and high cost of living, factors that contribute to recruitment challenges across the health care sector. The auditor suggests CDCR reconsider flexibility (with eight-, 10- or 12-hour shifts) and reassess its recruitment strategy.

But none of those things get at the reality of a tough environment. A former contract psychologist at SVSP, Dr. Beth Fischgrund, sued CDCR in Sacramento County Superior Court in 2020, claiming a pattern of workplace issues, including enduring threats from inmates (namely one who “said that he would like to cut her head off before walking out of his therapy session,” according to the suit). After she complained, she was terminated.

On Oct. 31, 2025, a jury awarded Fischgrund nearly $16.9 million in damages.

(In November, CDCR filed a notice of intent to seek a new trial.)

All of these reports, lawsuits, revelations and now an audit help reveal something we already knew, that the government is continuously failing to provide adequate medical and mental health care to people in its custody.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com