Newsom

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 10 RALPH COLEMAN, et al., No. 2:90-cv-0520 KJM DB P Plaintiff, v. ORDER GAVIN NEWSOM, et al., Defendants. 16 This order addresses the status of implementation of specific recommendations for suicide prevention, which the court ordered almost eight years ago. The court does not here consider ultimate questions concerning the adequacy and durability of defendants’ remediation of constitutional violations in suicide prevention practices. Nonetheless, with each order it issues relating in any way to suicide prevention, the court bears in mind the extremely troubling backdrop. For most of the past two decades, California’s annual inmate suicide rate has equaled or exceeded the national average for inmate suicides in the nation’s prisons. Total inmate suicides in California have ranged from a low of 15 in 2000 and 2021 to a high of 43 in 2005 and 2006; the total reached 38 as recently as 2019. In 2019 and the two preceding years,…