San Juan, PR – Although more than 5,000 incarcerated people in Puerto Rico require mental health services, details about the personnel and forensic psychiatric hospitalization services available to them remain unknown.
The Administration of Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services (ASSMCA, in Spanish) has not provided the information requested by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI). Consequently, CPI filed a legal action against the agency on Wednesday under the Transparency and Expedited Procedure for Access to Public Information Act.
Since July 7, 2025, CPI journalist Amanda Pérez Pintado has requested essential data from ASSMCA’s communications director, Julissa Pérez Rentas, to understand the situation of those awaiting forensic mental health services. Pérez Pintado sought information from 2021 to 2025, including the total number of people on the waiting list, their location, demographic profile, the number of available and occupied beds, and the specialized personnel in these institutions.
“It is crucial to know how mental health services are managed for people that the judicial system has determined need treatment in forensic psychiatric hospitals. The public has the right to know how many people are waiting, how long they have been there, and whether the State has the capacity to responsibly care for them,” said Carla Minet, executive director of CPI.
The requested information is essential to assess the State’s management of mental health services and its compliance with providing services to incarcerated people.
“It is regrettable to have to resort to the courts to obtain this information, despite repeated follow-ups and the time given to the agency to produce the data,” said Pérez Pintado. “Puerto Rico has the right to know how the State is addressing the mental health crisis affecting the country.”
Pérez Pintado has previously investigated the insensitive and irregular handling of people with mental health conditions in the Department of Correction and Rehabilitation’s penitentiary institutions, where services have been provided by the private company Physician Correctional.
CPI is represented in this case by the Legal Assistance Clinic of the Inter American University School of Law, led by attorneys Luis José Torres Asencio, Steven P. Lausell Recurt, and Judith W. Berkan Barnett.
This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.
