I am sorry to hear you are having to go through this with your son. The problem is that legally the state cannot force him to take medications unless he is committed to a state mental hospital. The prison system is certainly not the place for someone with mental disabilities, but the legal system has failed to recognize that in California and other states and this is a very hot moral and socio-legal debate for many years. The legal system merely is involved in punishment, they do not provide care or rehabilitation. The only thing you can do is get an attorney to argue that based on his mental condition his sentence needs to be served in a psychiatric prison facility and not a regular prison. You have ample documentation of his condition I am sure.

As far as the ACLU, while you say they told you they do not handle civil rights issues in prisons, that was just them being nice to you. The fact is that the prisons have no duty to provide more than basic medical care to inmates and many times providing medications that are not for life threatening conditions is not within that duty I am afraid and this is another part of the very hot legal debate over mental health issues in prisons.

Yes an attorney can help here and you need to either go to the public defender's office to get him representation or call the state bar for the pro bono attorneys in your area and they will file a motion in court to have him sentenced to a psychiatric facility and not a prison and this is going to be likely the best for him at this point based on the proof you have of his condition.

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