Correctional treatment programs and mental-health units follow specified rules

The commissioner of corrections must ensure covered substance-use treatment programs follow community-treatment standards. This covers programs for people committed to the commissioner’s custody and programs for juveniles in state-operated juvenile correctional facilities with the required correctional-program certification. The programs must follow standards in Minnesota Rules, chapter 245G. If the commissioners of corrections and human services agree those standards cannot reasonably apply to correctional facilities, they must create equivalent alternative standards through an interagency agreement.

The commissioner of corrections must establish, staff, equip, maintain, and operate at least one mental-health unit in an adult correctional institution. The unit serves people incarcerated in state correctional institutions who become mentally ill. The unit must operate under rules and standards prescribed by the Department of Human Services.

Licensed mental-health professionals, courts, and correctional officials may or must move people between correctional mental-health units, general population, and hospitals under the stated procedures. These procedures apply to incarcerated people who are mentally ill or need short-term care, assessment, evaluation, stabilization, or long-term hospital care, including people whose sentences expire before recovery. A licensed mental-health professional may recommend transfer to the correctional mental-health unit for short-term care or related services. For long-term hospital care, the responsible official or professional must begin judicial-commitment proceedings, and the court may commit the person to the unit or another hospital after a hearing and record review. A unit director may provisionally discharge a patient to the institution’s general population while keeping the commitment in place, subject to return for treatment. When the director certifies that institutional care is no longer needed, the person must be discharged to the institution and the mental-health commitment also ends, subject to chapter 253B. If a committed person’s sentence expires before recovery and discharge, and further hospitalization is needed, the commissioner must transfer the person to a state hospital designated by the Direct Care and Treatment executive board.