Inmate suicides bring attention to South Carolina’s treatment of mentally ill prisoners

A class-action lawsuit could soon change the way an estimated 3,500 inmates with severe mental illnesses are treated in South Carolina's prison system.

The case exposed numerous stories of mentally ill inmates being gassed, locked in solitary confinement for years at a time, denied effective treatment and caged naked, alone and cold in makeshift crisis cells littered with rotten food, feces and other filth. Prison officials have argued that these were extreme "outlier" cases, troubling but anecdotal evidence that wasn't representative of the system as a whole.

Some of the most vulnerable and integral cable sections and rods on the new $6.5 billion Bay Bridge are rusting. A Sacramento Bee investigation found corroded cable strands and anchor rods inside supposedly sealed chambers that protect attachments for the main suspension span cable to the bridge deck girders. Experts said if corrosion worsens, it could lead to catastrophic damage well ahead of the planned 150-year service life of the bridge.

An 18-year-old high school student being held for federal immigration authorities in the Sherburne County jail was repeatedly sexually assaulted last month by his cellmate, a registered sex offender serving time in the jail as a “boarder” from the Minnesota Department of Corrections. The assault, detailed in a criminal complaint, occurred at the state’s largest jail for immigrant detainees and highlights an emerging nationwide pattern of sexual abuse at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.

California's $840-million medical prison — the largest in the nation — was built to provide care to more than 1,800 inmates.

When fully operational, it was supposed to help the state's prison system emerge from a decade of federal oversight brought on by the persistent neglect and poor medical treatment of inmates.

But since opening in July, the state-of-the-art California Health Care Facility has been beset by waste, mismanagement and miscommunication between the prison and medical staffs.

San Diego Opera officials seeking millions in government grants painted a picture of financial health over the past few years — a time during which financial troubles were well known inside the organization.

In a 2012 application to the city of San Diego the opera noted — as it did in each year the company sought funding — that the organization had a balanced budget for 25 years and that the opera was in “remarkably excellent fiscal health.”

Now preparing for shutdown with funds near complete depletion, the group's leaders say they knew of financial troubles internally for years.

About 4,300 of Colorado's 16,800 foster children — more than a quarter — were prescribed psychotropics in 2012, according to a University of Colorado analysis released to The Denver Post under open-records laws. Among teens in foster care, 37 percent were prescribed psychotropic drugs.

Several hundred Iowans have died in recent years from overdoses involving prescription painkillers. The U.S. has seen a surge of such deaths in the past decade as sales of prescription painkillers have exploded.

The issue of painkiller abuse has come into sharp focus in Iowa recently with the filing of criminal charges against several medical professionals.

One year later, the number of people hurt by the West explosion remains a mystery because a government survey of the injured has failed to account for scores of casualties.

Government health officials were initially slow to study the extent of the West injuries. When they did, they limited their survey to those treated at hospitals and urgent care clinics. They did not canvass private medical practices, where blast victims were also treated. Nor did they track problems that may have surfaced later, such as brain injuries, hearing loss and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Dallas Morning News, by calling a West clinic and contacting a few medical practices, found at least 40 people not included in the government’s official count.

The Utah Transit Authority doubled spending on controversial bonuses for managers last year, while it sought a sales-tax hike it says is needed to restore bus service cut during the recession.

The agency spent $1.74 million on such bonuses last year, twice the $870,368 doled out in 2012, according to UTA salary data analyzed by The Salt Lake Tribune.

When Broome County Executive Debbie Preston ran for re-election in 2012, about a dozen of her appointed county employees got a mandatory email assignment.

Employees were told in the note from Deputy Broome County Executive Bijoy Datta that they were required to participate in political activities to help get Preston elected, according to email messages obtained by the Press & Sun-Bulletin.