There are good intentions there, but I will go to the issue of resourcing. This is going to be a very costly venture if we are going to be successful. There is the idea that we are going to include health care on a very regular basis. As you know, I have been advocating for there to be health care 24 hours a day in all facilities.
The more we can use therapeutic nurses and staff to help inmates with mental illness, the better. Along with that comes the security aspect of it, because we have to maintain security for the health care workers and other inmates who may be in the unit.
The bill is extremely ambitious. You are looking at trying to take inmates out of their cells for four hours a day. If you look at some of our administrative segregation units now, with up to 75 inmates, that task is virtually impossible within a 16-hour time frame unless you have the staff.
Also, that doesn't account for interruptions. We could have very volatile inmates who are self-harming, who are interrupting the programs of other inmates in the units.
The bill is very ambitious. The idea is not necessarily bad. We're not saying it's bad, but we're asking how you are going to deliver that from an operational standpoint to safely manage the institution. Right now, the way the bill sits, it's virtually impossible to do that without the proper resources.