More than two dozen psychiatric patients in New Jersey who were strip-searched will receive five-thousand dollars each. The state agreed to pay the money to settle a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of 26 patients at the Hagedorn Gero-Psychiatric Center in Glen Gardner. Under the settlement, the state also agreed to new procedures on searching patients. The new rules say patients can be searched for their own safety or the safety of others. Searches can't be used as punishment. The patients were strip-searched in 1999 after a staff member thought she smelled smoke. The searches continued for two to three weeks.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment