JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s Department of Children and Families is being sued after several civil rights groups claim the agency is failing to transfer county inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial to state hospitals within the legal timeframe.
State law requires the transfer within 15 days of a court order, but data cited in the suit claims many patients wait more than 100 days on average.
The civil rights groups involved in the suit are the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Disability Rights Florida (DRF), Florida Justice Institute (FJI) and Terris and Pravlik & Millian, LLP (TPM).
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Kelly Knapp, a senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says this is a decades-long problem.
“They [people deemed unfit to stand trial] are stuck in county jails that are not equipped to provide the mental health treatment that they need,” Knapp said.
DCF data referenced in the suit found the average wait time for transfers was closer to 120 days — 105 days longer than required. The suit states that DCF attested that men wait on average 117 days, while women wait 125.
Additionally, the suit says that Disability Rights Florida (DRF) and its counsel interviewed at least 129 clients across 25 counties in Florida who were transferred to state hospitals operated by DCF.
Of the 129, the average amount of time 108 of them waited was 124 days. Seventy-nine of those waited 100 days, and 29 waited more than 150 days.
The suit says the longest wait time by someone interviewed by DRF was 246 days. The shortest was 51 days, which is still triple the 15-day timeframe permitted under state law.
Knapp says the longer those ordered to a state hospital have to wait, the worse their symptoms get.
“They become more psychotic, more delusional, more depressed, more manic, more suicidal, and more difficult to treat,” Knapp said.
The lawsuit mentions three cases out of Duval County, two of which resulted in person’s death.
The suit does not list the names of the people awaiting transfers, but through matching up dates, we were able to connect the two deadly cases mentioned to the deaths of 47-year-old Jema Schunke and 46-year-old Timmothy Elwin Wright.
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Both we’re held in Duval County Jail.
Schunke was found severely beaten by her cellmate back in August of 2025. At the time of her death, she had been waiting six weeks to be transferred to a state hospital.
Wright had also waited for six weeks when he died of hyponatremic dehydration, according to the suit, in July of 2024.
The suit says that during that time, he refused to eat, bathe or take his prescribed medication.
“The state is abandoning its constitutional and state law obligation to provide treatment and leaving county jails to do their best with what they’ve got,” Knapp said. “Which is not enough for people with serious mental health disabilities.”
And the waitlist for transfers just keeps growing.
A behavioral health gap analysis mentioned in the suit found that DCF would need an additional 1,600 forensic beds within five years to address the problem. Drop the occupancy rate to the industry standard of 85%, and that amount increases to just over 2,000 by 2029.
And according to the suit, DCF already has between 650 and 850 people waiting.
“These are people’s family members who, instead of being treated humanely and compassionately with the mental health treatment they need, are instead being put in the harshest conditions imaginable to suffer needlessly,” Knapp said.
Action News Jax reached out to DCF about these delays, and they told me they do not comment on pending litigation. We also asked the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office how many people in Duval County Jail are currently awaiting transfers, but did not receive an answer in time for this report.
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