Incarceration

Under state law, whenever there is reason to doubt that individuals with mental disabilities is competent to stand trial, the court must order an evaluation by one of the state mental hospitals to determine competency and treat these individuals.  If competency is restored, the criminal case may proceed; if it is not restored, the criminal charges are dismissed.

Alison Holcomb, ACLU-WA criminal justice director, has been tapped to serve as the national director of the ACLU Campaign to End Mass Incarceration. Bolstered by a $50 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, the campaign seeks to reform state-level criminal justice policies that have increased incarceration rates dramatically during a period of declining crime and have exacerbated racial disparities.

People with mental health disabilities are experiencing lengthy delays in receiving court-ordered competency evaluation and restoration services in criminal cases. The ACLU of Washington, Disability Rights Washington, and allies are seeking an injunction to protect their due process rights.  They should not be warehoused in jail while their conditions deteriorate. 

On July 25, Huy and a coalition anchored by the National Congress of American Indians, Native American Rights Fund and American Civil Liberties Union, decried the United States’ violations of American indigenous prisoners’ religious freedoms, to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Today, the ACLU of Washington (ACLU) and Columbia Legal Services (CLS) voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit after successfully getting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release hunger striking detainees from solitary confinement at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington.  The ACLU and CLS had filed this lawsuit on April 2, 2014 to prohibit ICE from retaliating against detainees at the NWDC who engage in First Amendment protected activities by placing them in solitary confinement.

Federal immigration authorities have released hunger strikers from solitary confinement at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The action came after the ACLU-WA and Columbia Legal Services sued U.S. Immigration and Enforcement for retaliating against hunger strikers. 

The ACLU-WA and Columbia Legal Services are seeking a court order to prohibit federal immigration authorities from punishing  hunger strikers by confining them isolation cells at the NW Detention Center.