This actually played out some years ago (mid-1990’s IIRC) in San Luis Obispo County, CA. There is a city there named Atascadero. There is a prison hospital there (it looks like a prison from the outside) for the criminally insane, called Atascadero State Hospital. How appropriate. “Atascadero” == Spanish for “a place where you get stuck”.
In CA, convicted sex offenders can be held indefinitely even after they finish their sentences. They get “evaluated” before they are released, and if they are thought to be still a danger to the community, they are transferred to some mental hospital, to be held and “treated” until they are safe, which can be indefinitely. ASH was the place (or one of the places) chosen to house such a program.
From the start, inmates held there complained that it was worse than being back in prison where they started. Regular prisoners had prison jobs, which included things like tractor work plowing the weeds along highways, and other useful work that was more interesting than rotting in a prison cell. They were allowed razors to shave themselves, real metal utensils to eat with, and other such amenities. I believe this was all so because they were in a “low security” prison situation, for the non-insane.
All that changed when they got to ASH. No more prison jobs, and certainly not outside the walls. No shaving, no metal utensils. (I don’t know if they had barbers to shave them, or if they were allowed electric shavers.) All sorts of restrictions on their lives and behavior, beyond what they had in regular prison, because they were in now in a looney bin.
IIRC, their complaints eventually led to changes at ASH. There had to be a new separate program for them, distinct from the regular insane inmates, where they were housed separately, treated separately, and had their own separate set of rules appropriate for their situation.
That character still scares me 30 years after seeing the movie.