Background: Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities on behalf of inmates with serious mental health needs filed a class-action lawsuit in June 2005 alleging inadequate mental health treatment for prisoners held statewide by the S.C. Department of Corrections. The lawsuit does not seek financial damages; rather, it asks the court to require the department to design and maintain a program that provides adequate treatment of inmates with mental illness. South Carolina houses some 23,000 inmates, with more than 3,000 inmates with serious mental illness diagnoses (S.C. Department of Corrections data as of June 30, 2011).
MentalHealth4Inmates.org was created to provide information about the case, including the trial in February 2012