A settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit that will reduce the wait times for people awaiting competency evaluations and restoration services at Larned State Hospital, the largest psychiatric facility in Kansas.
The lawsuit represented four individuals who, at the time the case was filed, were on the waitlist for comprehensive mental health care treatments they desperately needed.
Because of the delay, their cases were stalled and they were being held in jail awaiting the assessment. Among them was G.W., a Native American man who was incarcerated for 31 months awaiting competency services for a sentence that, if he was convicted, would have been for just six months.
In the settlement, KDADS commits to increasing the number of treatment beds available at Larned State Hospital while addressing the chronic understaffing and underfunding that has contributed to the facility running at a limited capacity. By January 2025, KDADS will reopen 30 currently closed beds with best efforts to open 52 additional beds by January 2027.
“This settlement is more than a legal agreement; it’s a lifeline for those who have been lost in the system, a promise that their dignity and humanity will no longer be ignored,” said Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers’ Guild.
The Lawsuit
The settlement was reached in response to a class action lawsuit filed in May 2022 citing wait times as long as 13 months for competency evaluations and restoration treatment for people facing criminal charges.
The case was filed by The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, along with the NPAP and Stinson LLP, against the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services (KDADS), which runs the forensic unit at Larned State Hospital.
Competency evaluations are assessments conducted to determine whether a person has the mental capacity to understand and participate in a specific activity or decision-making process. In legal context, the evaluations determine whether someone is mentally competent to stand trial, enter a plea, or make legal decisions.
Recently, wait times for competency evaluations at the hospital have become so long that people may spend more time waiting in jail for an evaluation or treatment bed, pretrial, than they would face in prison if they were convicted, with approximately 148 people on the waiting list for competency evaluations.
“This is a huge step in the ongoing work to ensure our state’s detention practices do not criminalize mental health issues,” said Monica Bennett, ACLU of Kansas legal director. “Remaining in the jail environment is devastating and deeply harmful even for those whose mental health is not in question, and condemning Kansans to languish across the state in their county jails was contradictory to our values of justice.”
The backlog has been described as one of the most severe mental health crises in the state, as individuals may remain incarcerated longer than they would if convicted simply because the state cannot accommodate timely evaluations.