Report 2016-131 Recommendation 20 Responses

Report 2016-131: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: It Must Increase Its Efforts to Prevent and Respond to Inmate Suicides (Release Date: August 2017)

Recommendation #20 To: Corrections and Rehabilitation, Department of

To ensure that suicide prevention teams exercise leadership at prisons, Corrections should immediately require them to use available information about critical factors—such as the number and nature of inmate self-harm incidents and the quality and compliance with the policy of risk evaluations and treatment plans—to identify systemic issues related to suicide prevention. Corrections should require the suicide prevention teams to assess lessons they can learn, create plans to resolve current issues, and prevent foreseeable problems in the future.

6-Month Agency Response

This item refers to SPRFIT. SPRFIT enhancements address making qualitative improvements to SPRFIT functions.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

In February 2018, Corrections released a detailed policy memo clarifying the requirements and responsibilities of its suicide prevention teams, which are teams that Corrections refers to as SPRFIT. That memo outlines a number of activities that address our recommendation, including accurately tracking self-harm incidents, monitoring compliance and review quality of five-day follow-ups and risk assessments, conducting root cause analysis of suicide attempts, and developing performance improvement plans.

60-Day Agency Response

This item refers to SPRFIT. SPRFIT enhancements address making qualitative improvements to SPRFIT functions. Those should be issued by November, 2017. SPRFIT audit and coding will also be updated.

A copy of the SPRFIT audit tool and results will be provided once complete.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2016-131

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.