Though his performance on his first state budget was less than stellar, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has made some significant improvements to state government in his first few months.

The latest was the settlement of a lawsuit related to the treatment of mentally ill state prison inmates.

Spitzer has agreed to improve conditions for mentally ill prisoners in exchange for dropping a suit filed in 2002 against the state. It was a lawsuit the administration of George Pataki never handled well.

Among the key changes under the deal struck are better suicide prevention assessments, limits on the use of cells in which inmates are deprived of most possessions and clothing, limits on punishing mentally ill prisoners who hurt themselves, and limits on diets that serve primarily to punish.

Spitzer is also curtailing the use of solitary confinement for mentally ill prisoners.

Advocates for mentally ill prisoners praised the agreement.

“This settlement is historic in scope,” said Sarah Kerr of the Legal Aid Society.

That agency helped bring the original case forward.

“This settlement provides relief to all prisoners with serious mental illness in any form of isolated confinement in any prison and much more,” she said.

These changes are long overdue, for both mentally ill inmates as well as the men and women charged with guarding them.

Many of the current practices, especially the use of solitary confinement, only serve to make the psychiatric state of mentally ill inmates even worse. As a result, they become more of a danger to others and themselves.

Most of all, a better system of handling mentally ill inmates goes to a core mission of the state's prison system as not only a punitive program, but also a corrective one.