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SC corrections officers get mental health training

Program comes after a judge ruled that the corrections department doesn’t properly care for mentally ill inmates

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By C1 Staff

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Federal Bureau of Prisons is putting the first batch of corrections officers through a new program intended to help them handle mentally ill inmates.

WLTX reports that the program comes after a judge ruled that the corrections department doesn’t properly care for mentally ill inmates.

Lt. Efrem Jennings says what he learned has already come into use. He learned things like how to talk and use “intervention, as far as talking to the inmates” and “calming them down.”

More than 21,000 inmates are housed in the state’s prisons and about 3,100 of them are identified as mentally ill.

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