A day before a trial scheduled in federal court, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the state Department of Human Services announced Tuesday that they have reached a tentative settlement agreement over an ACLU lawsuit that alleges the department is failing to treat hundreds of mentally ill defendants across Pennsylvania.

Representatives of the ACLU and the department said they expected the agreement would be approved on Wednesday morning by a federal judge.

"We are pleased we have reached a tentative settlement with the ACLU and details of which will be discussed tomorrow pending approval of the agreement," said Kait Gillis, press secretary for the Department of Human Services.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has scheduled a press conference to discuss the proposed settlement at 10:30 am at its Harrisburg office.

The organization filed its lawsuit in October, alleging that criminal defendants in Pennsylvania who are found incompetent to stand trial routinely wait months and sometimes years in county prisons before the Department of Human Services transfers them to state-run psychiatric hospitals for treatment designed to restore them to competency.



The ACLU's lawsuit argues that those delays violate the constitutional rights of those defendants to due process and their rights to adequate mental health treatment under federal law. Federal courts have ruled in recent years that a defendant committed to a state hospital shouldn't wait longer than a week to be transferred.

The issues raised by the ACLU's lawsuit were explored in August as part of PennLive's Patients to Prisoners series. PennLive found that defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial were waiting an average of 297 days for transfers to Norristown State Hospital, near Philadelphia.