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Coalinga State Hospital

Coalinga State Hospital is a state mental hospital in Coalinga, California.

The facility opened on September 5th, 2005 and is California’s newest state hospital, the first to be constructed in the state in more than 50 years. The hospital is home to fifty mentally ill offenders from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), with the rest of the patients made up of men committed under the sexually violent predator (SVP) laws (first Megan's Law and later Jessica's Law), where the men are deemed too likely to reoffend to be released and are housed indefinitely at the hospital until they engage in and complete rigorous sex offender treatment and agree to rigid conditional parole requirements.

About the Facility

The state began construction on Coalinga State Hospital in the fall of 2001. According to the hospital's official Web site, CSH is comprised of 1.2 million gross square feet (gsf) of floor space. This includes 900,000 gsf for clinical services and programs, 158,000 gsf for support services, 75,000 gsf for administration, and 67,000 gsf for plant operations.

The hospital is located at the edge of the Coastal Mountain Range in the heart of California just outside the City of Coalinga, nestled up against the adjacent Pleasant Valley State Prison. Coalinga is located ten miles west of Interstate 5. It is four hours north of Los Angeles, two hours south of San Francisco, and about one hour southwest of Fresno, California's sixth largest city. The beach communities of Monterey, Morro Bay, and Pismo Beach are within easy driving distance as are the National Parks of Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park , Pinnacles National Monument and Yosemite National Park.

The hospital uses a five-phase treatment program for SVPs that was developed when SVPs were still mostly all treated at Atascadero State Hospital. The rigorous program focuses on helping SVPs manage their impulses, take responsibility for their actions, and see their crimes and victims from a realistic perspective.

Many Patients Refuse Treatment

Patients are committed to Coalinga State Hospital within six months of the end of their prison terms. Currently, California law allows SVPs to be committed to the hospital indefinitely (under Jessica's Law). Because treatment is optional, many patients refuse treatment, which is intensive, requires admission of guilt, and is invasive in terms of privacy.