29-c-5 If You Are Transferred to a Hospital or Other Treatment Facility

• Library: A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (2020 Edition)

29-C-5. If You Are Transferred to a Hospital or Other Treatment Facility

If you are transferred or committed to a psychiatric facility, you maintain many of the same rights you had in prison, including the right to treatment and the right to adequate medical care. Similarly, if you are confined in a hospital or treatment facility prior to serving your criminal sentence in prison, you may be entitled to have your time spent there count toward your sentence.

(a) How Long Will I Be Held?

Generally, the time spent in commitment is left to the judgment of clinical mental health staff and prison officials, but it cannot be longer than your criminal sentence unless you are first granted significant due process protections.¹⁸⁶ Under New York State law, for example, the psychiatric hospital director may apply for a new commitment after your sentence expires.¹⁸⁷ If this happens in a state where there are requirements set up for a civil commitment proceeding, your criminal sentence is not relevant to any post-sentence confinement, and the State must provide the same procedural safeguards before committing or holding you for psychiatric care that it would if you were a non-prisoner.¹⁸⁸ This means that if the State determines you need further commitment and treatment after your prison sentence has ended, you will be treated as a non-prisoner. If the psychiatric hospital director successfully extends commitment past your term sentence, you have the right to another hearing before a jury to determine whether commitment to a civilian mental health facility is appropriate.¹⁸⁹

(b) What Happens to My Good-Time Credits?

In some states, a prisoner may lose the opportunity to earn good-time credits after a mental illness determination and hospitalization.¹⁹⁰ The reasoning that many courts give for this policy is that the goals of hospitalization differ from the goals of imprisonment. Hospitalization is meant to treat prisoners with mental illness,¹⁹¹ while incarceration is intended to punish and also rehabilitate.¹⁹² However, the Eighth Circuit found that there is a difference between meritorious credits (credits that are given at the State's discretion) and statutory good-time credits (credits that a state statute specifically grants for particular behavior). Unlike discretionary credits, statutory credits come...