DOJ to Ohio: Abuse of Solitary Confinement harming mentally ill youth.

This practice is far too common with kids in Arizona, as well...

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Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

 

Justice Department Seeks Temporary Restraining Order to Stop Ohio Department of Youth Services from Excessively Secluding Boys with Mental Health Needs

 

Today, the Justice Department sought a federal court order temporarily restraining the Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS) from unlawfully secluding boys with mental health needs in its juvenile correctional facilities.  The requested order would require DYS to abide by safeguards in its use of seclusion until a final ruling on the claims that DYS’ seclusion practices violate the constitutional rights of boys in DYS custody.  In conjunction with its request for a temporary restraining order, the department sought to expand its existing complaint regarding the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility, to include claims of unlawful seclusion at all of the DYS facilities.

 

The department’s request for a restraining order detailed the state’s excessive use of seclusion, including the following information:  

·          In the second half of 2013, the state imposed a total of almost 60,000 hours of seclusion on 229 boys with mental health needs;

·          One boy spent 1,964 hours in seclusion over six months; the state gave another boy 21 straight days of seclusion;

·          Ten boys at one facility spent over 10 percent of their time in custody in seclusion;

·          While secluded, several boys were on suicide watch, had suicidal thoughts or hurt themselves.  

“The Ohio Department of Youth Services must stop violating the rights of youth in its custody through unlawful seclusion,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.  “The way in which Ohio uses seclusion to punish youth with mental health needs, victimizes one of the most vulnerable groups in our society.”

 

“Ohio’s juvenile correctional facilities must comply with the Eighth and 14^th Amendments,” said U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart for the Southern District of Ohio.  “We will remain vigilant in protecting the constitutional rights of all our citizens, particularly young people and those with mental illness.”

 

“The facts in this case reveal a serious disregard for the rights of young people with mental health needs in Ohio’s custody,” said U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach for the Northern District of Ohio.  “The Ohio Department of Youth Services has a responsibility to ensure the health and safety of these young people, including providing appropriate mental health treatment, so that they can overcome challenging behaviors and return to the community to become successful adults.”

 

Following an investigation under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), the Justice Department issued findings in May 2007 detailing significant constitutional deficiencies regarding use of physical force, grievance investigation and processing and use of seclusion.  In June 2008, the department entered into a consent decree with the state to correct these deficiencies at the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility.  However, the recent discovery that DYS continued to unlawfully seclude boys with mental health needs at Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility and had moved boys to other DYS facilities also using unlawful seclusion prompted the department today to seek a temporary restraining order and an order allowing it to add the remaining DYS facilities to its complaint.

 

This case is being litigated by attorneys from the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio.  Copies of both motions and additional information about the Civil Rights Division will be available on its website.

DOC Director Ryan's Noble legacy of public service...

UPDATE 05/19/19

#DARTHryan   #DarkSideRyan 

#DELIBERATEindifferenceKILLS,   #CHUCKCHUCK

(I frankly doubt that @dougducey has the balls to   #FireChuckRyan")

The Art Attack above was in front of the AZ DOC's HQ on June 26, 2012.  Thought it fit well with this interesting piece from ALTERNET in 2004 re: Charles Ryan and the Good Old Boys he travels with...the pack from the days when he and Jan Brewer first became pals, I imagine.  He got a commendation of some kind from the Bush Justice department ofr his service in Iraq, it's only fair to say. That must be something to be proud of, eh?
 
For those who missed it, by the way, I'm not the only one who says "It's time for Chuck Ryan to go!" Today the AZ House Minority Leader called on him to resign, too.

Brewer knew exactly what kind of prison administrator Ryan would be when she hired him for the job, and he's apparently been keeping her pretty happy as her chief disciplinarian since they took office. My bet is that Jan Brewer will stand by her man till this blows over - or at least long enough to make us think that while she can be bought by private prison companies, she won't be "bullied" into making wise decisions by Anarchists, Quakers, Democrats, or the grieving loved ones of her dead prisoners...

-----------------from ALTERNET---------------

Uncle Sam Wants You Anyway

Did the Justice Department intentionally contract the roughest, toughest prison officials; regardless of their histories; to reform Iraqi jails?

May 23, 2004  |   Dan Frosch

If you're an American ex-prison official whose tenure was tainted by federal investigations, state hearings, inmate deaths, allegations of torture, civil rights lawsuits, even an outcry from Amnesty International, despair not. There's a job for you in Iraq. 

In what appears to be an emerging pattern of ill-advised hires, the Justice Department has sent a virtual who's-who of prison tough guys to Iraq over the past year – their collective track record on human rights essentially one enormous red flag – and paid them to reconstitute that country's detention system. 

Already, two of the Justice Department's 'corrections advisors' are making headlines: Lane McCotter, former director of the Utah Department of Corrections, and John Armstrong, his Connecticut counterpart, both resigned after inmate abuse scandals occurred under their respective watches. 

McCotter stepped down from his Utah post in 1997 following the case of a schizophrenic inmate who died shortly after being strapped to a restraining chair for 16 hours. McCotter later became an executive of a private prison company whose Santa Fe jail was investigated by the Justice Department in 2003 for healthcare, sanitary and safety deficiencies. 

Armstrong left Connecticut's top corrections job last year amidst the fall-out from an ACLU lawsuit over his decision to transfer inmates to a notorious Virginia prison (two Connecticut inmates died in custody there), and a state human rights commission hearing which took him to task for failing to deal with sexual harassment of female guards. Armstrong also attracted the ire of Amnesty International, which called for an investigation into the state's York Correctional Institution for women in November, 2000, after the group received complaints from inmates and former employees alleging sexual abuse by guards. 

The Justice Department's hiring of McCotter and Armstrong could be relegated to an eyebrow-raising turn of events; two occasions do not necessarily constitute a trend. However, there are signs that the hirings were not necessarily a mind-boggling oversight attributable to the chaos of the occupation's early days, but perhaps indicative of a decision to contract the roughest, toughest prison people around regardless of their histories. 

AlterNet has learned that two more corrections advisors sent by the Justice Department to Iraq, former Arizona Department of Corrections director Terry Stewart and his top deputy Chuck Ryan, have controversial pasts as well. 

In 1995, the year Stewart was appointed to head the Arizona DOC, the Justice Department began an 18-month investigation of alleged sexual abuse of female inmates. A subsequent report found "an unconstitutional pattern of practice of sexual misconduct"; documented the cases of 14 female inmates who were raped, sodomized or assaulted by guards; and criticized DOC officials for not dealing with the problem. 

In response, Stewart wrote a letter to then Attorney General Janet Reno claiming the report represented isolated incidents, but in 1997, the Justice Department sued Arizona for failing to protect its female inmates from guards and DOC staff. The suit named Stewart as one of the defendants and accused him and other DOC officials of knowing about the abuses but doing nothing. (Eventually, despite never admitting any wrongdoing, the DOC agreed to further protect female inmates from sexual abuse and the suit was dismissed.) 

Stewart could not be reached for comment before we first published this story, but he later sent us an e-mail saying he was not the director when the alleged abuses occurred and that he "fashioned the mutually agreed upon corrective measures" which led to the Justice Department suit being dismissed.

Ryan, a 25-year Arizona DOC veteran, became Stewart's deputy director in 1996 and was seen by some as an integral part of his regime, which also drew criticism for the long-term, intense segregation of high-risk inmates, and for a failed effort to build a private prison exclusively for the state's foreign inmates, who happened to be overwhelmingly Mexican. 

Dan Pochoda, a New York civil rights lawyer, was assigned by the federal government to monitor the conditions in the Arizona prison system just prior to Stewart's taking the reigns. "Even in the spectrum of corrections administrators, they are uniquely hard line, and in my opinion, acknowledged proponents of conditions that are damaging on a human level," he said of Stewart and Ryan. 

"There was an absolute brutality in the way the Stewart regime saw the correctional purpose," added Caroline Isaacs, criminal justice program coordinator for the Arizona American Friends Service Committee, which advocates for prison reform. "The prison system was taken from a place that cared at least a little about rehabilitation to a dictate that was all about control and security and nothing more." 

In a May 20 Justice Department press release, Stewart was listed as one of the corrections advisors who was sent to Iraq. In a subsequent interview for an online magazine, The Corrections Connection, Stewart, Lane McCotter and Gary DeLand – another former Utah Corrections official – discuss their trip there. 

DeLand told me that Chuck Ryan was part of a second shift of corrections advisors, along with John Armstrong, that came to Iraq to replace Stewart, McCotter and himself after they'd left. A Feb. 3 Asia Times story, referring to Ryan as the Coalition Provisional Authority's deputy director of prisons, confirmed what DeLand told me. Ryan could not be reached for comment. 

And while it's unlikely any of the corrections advisors in question were part of the unfolding abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, their presence in Iraq is causing a gathering storm. Over the past two weeks, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has written two letters to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding answers to why and how McCotter and Armstrong were hired and calling for an investigation into the role of civilian contractors in Iraqi prisons. 

So far, the feds have been tight-lipped. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo would not return phone calls, and a Defense Department spokesman refused comment. In an email, Coalition Provisional Authority press officer Shane Wolfe noted the corrections advisors were not interrogating any inmates but training police and correctional officers and assessing the needs of Iraqi civilian prisons. 

Meanwhile, as more information is unveiled, prison reformists are increasingly aghast at why an agency responsible for keeping America's correctional system humane has been hiring people whose own prisons, they allege, were anything but. 

A May 21 New York Times story quoted an anonymous senior Justice Department official as saying its contractors "were all vetted in the normal process" and came highly recommended. Such a revelation, coupled with the resumes of McCotter, Armstrong, Stewart and Ryan, suggests that perhaps the Justice Department actually sought out perceived hard-nosed corrections types that they thought could bring order to an Iraqi detention system in shambles. 

"It makes you wonder what kind of criteria they were using," said Brooklyn-based prison reform consultant Judy Greene. "It's hard to imagine the Justice Department were looking for candidates with a proven track record of tolerating or condoning abusive treatment of prisoners, but that's what they got." 

Dan Frosch is a freelance journalist based in New York City. He's been on staff at the San Gabriel Valley Weekly section of the Los Angeles Times, The Source magazine, the Pacific Palisadian Post and most recently the Santa Fe Reporter.

AZ LEG Leader Chad Campbell: Time for DOC Director Ryan's resignation.

Central Office, AZ Department of Corrections (PHOENIX. November 2010)

  chalk art by Margaret J Plews                                                          photo: PJ STARR

(updated 2:46pm 7/23/2013) 

I don't necessarily expect Jan Brewer to care what the House Democrats think or to fire Good Old Boy Chuck Ryan, but the rest of the legislature should really be looking seriously at how badly he's mismanaged the AZ DOC - that's a billion dollars a year of state money he handles, after all - not to mention the public trust. 

of course, this isn't the first time anyone has questioned Chuck Ryan's leadership....

Resign, Director Ryan: Former Deputy Warden breaks the silence.

Brewer: Please sack Chuck Ryan.

The prisons of Chuck Ryan: Arizona's other death row.

Rep Campbell calls for DOC Oversight hearings; former DW Toersbijns weighs in

#CHUCKCHUCK #DARTHryan #DarkSideRyan  #FireChuckRyan" 

#DELIBERATEindifferenceKILLS

Still, the governor should care as well, though, since these are all her ghosts..

 The Ghosts of Jan Brewer

AZ State Capitol, Phoenix (April 3, 2013)

  and don't forget all the race riots and other disturbances, not mentioned below...

In any case, this is the day - the whole week - that the families of prisoners should be contacting their legislators, and the legislators responsible for the prisons your loved ones are in. Watch KPNX / CHannel 12 PHX tonight at 6 and 10pm. Then tomorrow please contact your legislators or those of the prison your loved one is in tomorrow with your own story. Forward that email to KPNX CH 12 news at connect@ad.gannett.com with your thank you to them for their coverage.

If you don't mind forwarding a copy to me as well, I'm at arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com

Find your own AZ legislators here.

Find the prisoners'  AZ legislators here.

 

----From the website of the AZ House Democrats---------

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Campbell calls for immediate resignation of Arizona DOC Director Charles Ryan

STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX –

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix (District 24), is calling for the immediate resignation of Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan.

“Director Ryan has exhibited a pattern of mismanagement and a lack of leadership resulting in an unsafe corrections system in our state,” Campbell said. “Under his direction, our corrections system has wasted tax dollars, jeopardized people’s lives and damaged the state’s credibility.”

Campbell’s action follows the recent death of an inmate in a Buckeye prison.  Suicide and homicide rates occurring within Arizona prisons have earned the facilities negative attention in the past.

“We’ve seen reports that Arizona’s prison suicide rate was 60 percent higher than the national average between the years of 2010 and 2012,” Campbell said. “In addition to this, the attempt to cover up what happened to an inmate allowed to bleed to death in front of prison guards is a gruesome consequence of Ryan’s negligence.”

Campbell said he believes Ryan has failed to properly supervise private prison contracts. He points to the inmate escape from Kingman as an example.

“In 2010, three inmates convicted of violent crimes including murder and armed robbery, escaped a privately operated state prison in Kingman,” Campbell said. “Following this incident, Ryan admitted that the DOC didn’t properly monitor this facility. This is a community safety issue.”

Campbell said private prisons cost more than state-run prisons and that the DOC has failed to hold the private prison companies accountable for the terms of their contracts with the state. He also said the state awards contracts in a manner that is not transparent and seems indicative of cronyism. An example of this occurred earlier this year, when the DOC terminated a contract with Wexford Health Sources, a private company that provided healthcare for inmates statewide.

“The Department of Corrections contracted with a company that has a controversial record of service. In fact, one of Wexford’s employees exposed more than 100 people to hepatitis C in a prison in Buckeye,” Campbell said. “The DOC terminates that contract and replaces Wexford with Corizon, another company surrounded by controversy that also happens to have ties to people who are close to the governor. This situation reeks of patronage.”

Campbell thinks using tax dollars on mismanaged facilities is unacceptable.

“We are wasting taxpayer money on mismanaged facilities,” Campbell said. “That is especially true with the for-profit, private prisons. They are not saving the state money.”

Last year, Republicans repealed a state law in the budget requiring a comparison of state and private prisons every two years to ensure that private prisons were providing the same quality of services as state prisons at a lower cost. Department of Corrections Per Capita Cost Reports compiled over five years consistently show that the state is losing money on private prisons, and security audits show serious safety flaws in all of Arizona’s for-profit prisons, including malfunctioning cameras and alarm systems.

 “For years, Ryan has showed that he is incapable of properly handling his position. Arizonans deserve better. He should resign immediately,” Campbell said.

Reasons to call for Director Ryan’s resignation

1.       Security failures. A recent audit by the State Auditor General found disturbing security violations at state prisons, including broken perimeter alarm systems that staff ignored and a failure to keep an inventory of keys.

2.       Personnel problems.  News reports have indicated that there is low morale at state prisons and that employee turnover is very high. The Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association submitted a letter of “no confidence” regarding Director Charles Ryan.

3.       Criminal behavior.  The Arizona Department of Corrections Inspector General has documented hundreds of acts of criminal conduct by DOC employees, including DUI and domestic violence.

4.       Pattern of mismanagement and lack of leadership. One examples of mismanagement is the awarding of the medical care contract to Wexford, then rescinding that contract and re-awarding it to Corizon. Both companies have faced controversy and accusations of poor medical services.

5.       Conflict of interest.  The Department of Corrections has close ties to the private prison industry as well as private health care providers.  One example is Chuck Coughlin’s relationship with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which has a contract with the state to provide private prisons. Coughlin has a well-known relationship with the governor, who appointed Director Ryan to his position. Another example is Director Ryan’s ties to Terry Stewart who works with Advanced Correctional Management, which lobbies for private prison expansion, as well as Stewart’s work with Corizon, which was eventually awarded the statewide contract to provide health care to inmates.

6.       High suicide rates. Suicide rates at state prisons were 60 percent higher than the national average between 2010 and 2012.

7.       Poor medical care. Inmate medical care has been severely neglected. Egregious examples of inmates being given grossly inadequate health care have been outlined in the class action lawsuit against DOC.

8.       Abuse and neglect of inmates. There has been a pattern of abuse and neglect of inmates, including Marcia Powell who died after being left outside in the sun for many hours and Tony Lester who was allowed to bleed to death in prison while correctional officers watched and did nothing to help him.

9.       Private prison problems.  In addition to the conflict of interest noted above, Director Ryan has also failed to properly manage private prison contracts and supervise the private prisons.  The inmates escaping from Kingman is one example of his failure to oversee the private prisons. Additionally, private prisons often cost more than state-run prisons, and DOC has failed to hold the private prison companies accountable for the terms of their contracts with the state.

CLASS ACTION: 'Parsons v Ryan' - Medical neglect and suicide at the AZ DOC

Join us to support 14 prisoners suing Charles Ryan, Director of the Department of Corrections and Richard Pratt, Director of Health Services for gross negligence, deliberate indifference, and unconstitutional conditions of confinement. 

CLASS ACTION Memorial Mural
Friday, Jan 25, 7:30-9:30am 
Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Courthouse 
401 W. Washington St. PHOENIX

We will make a chalk mural outside the Sandra Day O'Connor court house in solidarity with these 14 prisoners who are fighting to change the criminal neglect of health care of Arizona prisoners. The mural will remember those who have been lost under this administration.

These are the stories of those still fighting for their lives:

Victor Parsons has ADHD and bipolar disorder. In June 2010, his medication was abruptly discontinued without explanation. When he began to experience psychotic symptoms, he submitted a request for treatment. His medication was restarted abruptly without titrating, placing him at high risk for severe side effects. When his tooth filling fell out, they gave him a temporary filing which fell out weeks later. Each time he was seen, he was given a temporary filing again, forcing him to restart the process.

Shawn Jensen had an elevated score on a Prostrate Antigen Test and a nodule on his prostrate in November 2006. The prison doctor ordered a prostrate biopsy in 2007, but Shawn did not receive the biopsy until 2009. By that time, he had Stage 2 prostrate cancer, an aggressive form. He experienced delays of two months in getting medication prescribed by his urologist. He was not taken for surgery until July 2010, and as a result, suffered permanent injuries.

Stephen Schwartz was assaulted by another inmate in February 2010. He suffered eye injuries and extensive facial fractures, but was not referred to an opthamologist until January 2011, almost a year later. He filed numerous health care grievances for his pain, but waited months to learn whether pain medications would be approved. He was also diagnosed with bipolar and major depressive disorder, but has received inadequate mental health care while on suicide watch.

Dustin Brislan has bipolar disorder, schizo-affective disorder, and borderline personality disorder, with a designation of SMI (Serious Mental Illness). He engages in severe self-injurious behavior, including cutting, head banging, and self-starvation. As a result of his mental illness, he experiences depression, hallucinations, sucidal ideation, and paranoia. Despite the severity of his condition, the Dpt of Corrections has failed to provide him with minimally adequate mental health care. He has had medications delayed, has not been regularly monitored by a psychiatrist, and has been on suicide watch for excessive lengths of time without adequate supervision, where he committed repeated acts of self-harm.

Sonia Rodriguez is also designated as SMI, and experiences depression, anxiety and hallucinations. The Dpt of Corrections has failed to provide therapeutic treatment and has kept her in cruel and inhumane confinement in Perryville's and on suicide watch. The harsh conditions and extreme isolation of the Special Management Unit (SMU) and on suicide watch. On multiple occasions, her medicine has been abruptly changed without explanation. As a result, she has severe side effects, including uncontrolled shaking, difficulty sleeping, and worsening of her mental health symptoms.

Christina Verduzco is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. She experiences auditory and visual hallucinations, anxiety, paranoia, and self-harm by cutting herself. She is confined in Perryville SMU and placed on suicide watch on several occasions. While on suicide watch, Christina is forced to wear a smock that barely comes up to the top of her thighs. The lights are kept on 24 hours a day, and she is subjected to 'safety checks' every 10-30 minutes a day where correctional officers wake her if she is asleep. She has minimal human contact, cannot go outside, cannot brush her teeth or bathe regularly. Outside of suicide watch, her experience is similar: extended isolation, limited exercise, and limited therapeutic treatment. Christina has asthma, but has been pepper sprayed repeatedly by correctional officers. After being sprayed, she has been dragged out of her cell, hosed down, and thrown back into her cell.

Jackie Thomas is diagnosed with depression and seizure disorders. Although Jackie did not have suicidal ideation when he first arrived at the SMU, his mental and medical health conditions have deteriorated during his isolation in the SMU. He was placed on suicide watch many times, where he received minimal mental health care. He has experienced many failures of his medical treatment, including improper cessation and initiation of psychtropic medications, failure to administer prescribed medication, repeated use of ineffective medications with severe side effects, lack of informed consent, and long delays in follow up and psychiatric evaluation.

Jeremy Smith has depression, aggravated by interruptions in his mental health treatment and prolonged isolation in the SMU. His medications have been abruptly discontinued without explanation and restarted at inappropriate times and after lengthy delays. Jeremy has also been prescribed powerful medications not indicated for depression.

Robert Gamez suffered a childhood head injury and was diagnosed with borderline IQ, possible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and possible frontal lobe dysfunction, symptoms of which include major depression, panic and anxiety. Although his symptoms are consistent with frontal lobe dysfunction, the Dpt of Corrections never conducted follow-up tests to confirm his diagnosis. He has experienced multiple interruptions in care, received improper medications, and was not given psychological services for his pronounced mental health deterioration during his prolonged isolation in SMU. In August 2009, Robert began experiencing intense paranoia, anxiety, panic, and psychosis, asking to be taken off his medication and out of isolation. Despite his severe condition, he was not seen for five months.

Maryanne Chisholm has been diagnosed with hypertension but was not referred to a cardiologist for eight months, despite experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath. She has bipolar disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and depressive disorder. Maryanne has experienced significant delays in psychiatric care, medications, and follow-up, which has contributed to worsening symptoms. In April 2011, she had a nervous breakdown and requested an adjustment of medication; she was not seen for a month. Her mental health condition is exacerbated by guard harrassment. She has been subject to repeated and frequent room searches, and her art supplies, which she relies on to manage metal health symptoms, were confiscated.

Desiree Licci has a family and personal history of cancer. In 2010, she observed multiple masses growing on her breasts, mouth, and arms. In December 2010, Desiree requested testing. In April 2011, the prison doctor referred her to an oncologist. However, she was not seen for a CT scan until September 2011. In the interim, she began experiencing diarrhea, nausea, exhaustion, weight loss, and pain. Desiree did not receive an MRI until December 2011 and it was not properly administered. She had to submit a grievance and wait another month until a proper MRI was done, confirming multiple masses on both ovaries.

Joseph Hefner's vision rapidly deteriorated after a Dpt of Corrections nurse gave him expired eye drops. In 2006 and 2008, Joseph did not receive timely doctor-prescribed eye medication following eye surgery. Although he has submitted numerous health care requests for eye pain and his doctor has referred him to the opthamologist, he has been waiting to see an opthamologist for over three years.

Joshua Polson has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, mood disorder, and psychosis. He has a family history of suicide and has attempted suicide three times. Nonetheless, he is in isolation, where he has minimal human contact, which results in increased suicidal ideation. He has experienced repeated gaps in his medication and sporadic monitoring of his medication levels. Additionally, he has chronic ear infections, and permanent hearing loss in his right ear following significant delays in care. After losing hearing in his right ear, Joshua submitted health care requests for pain in his left ear, but was not seen for over a month.

Charlotte Wells has a history of heart disease and high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack prior to being incarcerated. She arrived in custody complaining of chronic chest pains, and continued to experience dizziness and high blood pressure, but was not seen by a cardiologist until she was hospitalized for a blocked artery four months later. Charlotte was not seen by a doctor or returned to the hospital thereafter, despite her history and the high risk of heart attack following the placement of a stent. Additionally, Charlotte experienced broken fillings in two of her teeth in 2010. She complained of pain and requested fillings be repaired, but was told the only option was to have the teeth pulled, or wait months to have the filling approved. She did this, and endured pain for several months before her fillings were replaced; however, when she got the filling, the dentist cracked an adjacent tooth.

The hearing will be in Judge Neil Wake's courtroom at 3 pm. The mural will take place the morning of the hearing, at 7:30 - 9:30 am.

Arpaio's deaths in custody: settling Deborah Braillard.

This is hardly justice for what the MCSO did to this woman and her family, and to the many who never manage to hold them responsible for abuse, neglect, and the conditions of confinement. I want to know what happens to the employees most culpable for her death...including Arpaio - does this mean the county (read: the taxpayers)  covers the civil liability, and the people who actually killed her get off scott free? I never even heard anything about personnel being disciplined in this case...

Veteran's Day Phoenix, 2012.

------------------------------

Maricopa County OKs $3.25M settlement in inmate death

http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20121120mcso-inmate-death-settlement.html

By JJ HensleyThe Republic | azcentral.comTue Nov 20, 2012 10:00 AM

Maricopa County on Tuesday approved paying $3.25 million to settle a lawsuit over the 2005 death of a diabetic inmate.

County supervisors, by a 3-1 vote, approved the on-again, off-again settlement involving Deborah Braillard.

The settlement was scheduled to be approved in mid-October, but the vote was postponed after an anti-Sheriff Joe Arpaio protest disrupted a meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors as the settlement was being considered. At a subsequent meeting, the supervisors deadlocked 2-2, killing the deal and setting the stage for the case to go back to trial.

The county already had spent $2.2 million defending the case.

The lawsuit was filed in 2006 by Braillard’s family after the 46-year-old woman died of complications of diabetes after being booked into the Fourth Avenue Jail on Jan.1, 2005. The lawsuit targets Maricopa County, the Sheriff’s Office and Correctional Health Services, a taxpayer-funded agency that treats county-jail inmates.

Jail health-care workers had noted Braillard’s condition in prior bookings but failed to do so when she was booked on suspicion of drug possession. When she became incoherent while in custody, employees attributed her symptoms to drug withdrawal. The symptoms were, in fact, caused by her diabetes, which went untreated.

In September, a Pinal County Superior Court judge issued a pretrial ruling saying there was sufficient evidence in the case to allow Braillard’s family to be awarded punitive damages if they prevail in the lawsuit, potentially exposing Maricopa County to more legal liability.

But after plaintiffs’ testimonies were completed, and while defense testimonies were under way, the two sides reached the $3.25 million settlement agreement."

 ------------

 And this was what the court had to say about the MCSO jail that killed this poor woman. Not enough has really changed since then, unfortunately... 

Federal Judge Found a Litany of Inhumane Problems in Joe Arpaio's Jails

Phoenix New Times 
October 17, 2008
By John Dickerson

In his ruling Thursday against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, U.S. District Judge Neil Wake cited a litany of unconstitutional problems in county jails: inadequate medical care, poor food, chronic overcrowding, and indifference to inmate health concerns.

Jail medical personnel's prescribing of a Soviet-era drug that causes tremors, spasms and "potentially permanent and disfiguring involuntary movements around the face" was another jail deficiency mentioned in Wake's 83-page "conclusion of law."

The judge's decision in the landmark Graves v. Arpaio case (formerly Hart v. Arpaio and Hart v. Hill) came after he reviewed three weeks of court testimony and thousands of pages of records. Many of the same complaints the judge listed were outlined last December in New Times' story “Inhumanity Has a Price.”
Sadly, the long list of violations in the ruling involved hundreds of inmates who endured cruel and unusual conditions under Joe Arpaio's watch. Some died as a result.

Wake noted that the "Eighth Amendment provides inmates with a right to safe conditions of confinement, including an adequate level of personal security.”

Specifically, failure to ensure this constitutional right led to inmate Robert Cotton's beating death, and to inmate Jeremy Flanders' near death following a jail assault.

Another problem spotlighted by Wake was that Arpaio’s jails do “not consistently ensure that all pretrial detainees actually receive all prescribed medications as ordered.” Another was that the jails' "inadequate medical records may create a risk of unnecessary pain and suffering."

These particular deficiencies cost Deborah Braillard her life when she was denied insulin for her diabetes.
Asked for a comment about the ruling, sheriff's spokesman Paul Chagolla responded, not surprisingly, with an accusation against New Times: "Yellow Journalist: You must be gleaning information from reputable reporters." We're not sure what that means, since New Times was the first to report on Wake's ruling Wednesday.

The sheriff did issue a press release about the ruling, amazingly claiming that it was a victory for him. "This judgment reinforces the excellent work being performed by the detention staff, and we all are always committed to improving the jail system wherever possible,” Arpaio was quoted as saying.

The judge's order should change a number of things in Arpaio's jails. Among them: green baloney, filthy living conditions, and broken plumbing. The order specifically requires Arpaio to address severe overcrowding at the Fourth Avenue Jail, where as many as 35 inmates can be crammed into one cell -- without beds -- for as long as 72 hours.

Subjecting certain detainees to extreme temperatures will no longer be allowed under the order, which should mean that Tent City cannot be as widely used as it is now.

For a look at Wake's entire 83-page order, click here. Highlights from his voluminous list of unconstitutional jail problems are listed below:

Medical Care

* "Prison officials show deliberate indifference to serious medical needs if prisoners are unable to make their medical problems known to the medical staff. Access to the medical staff has no meaning if the medical staff is not competent to deal with the prisoners’ problems. The medical staff must be competent to examine prisoners and diagnose illnesses. It must be able to treat medical problems or refer prisoners to others who can.”

* “The Eighth Amendment prohibits deliberate indifference not only to an inmate’s current health problems, but also to conditions of confinement that are very likely to cause future serious illness and needless suffering...Budgetary constraints do not justify delay in treatment for a serious medical need.”

* “Pretrial detainees frequently are denied access to adequate medical, mental health, and dental care because they do not receive a timely in-person assessment of the urgency of their need for treatment.”

* "Inadequate medical records may create a risk of unnecessary pain and suffering in violation of the Eighth Amendment."

* “Thorazine is an antipsychotic medication with potentially severe and permanent side effects, including extremely painful involuntary muscle spasms of the neck, tongue, eyes or other muscles, a profound restlessness and constant movement of the feet and legs, drug-induced Parkinsonism (a resting tremor with some muscle rigidity), and tardive diskenesia (potentially permanent and disfiguring involuntary movements around the face). Although Correctional Health Services witnesses testified they would not prescribe thorazine as a first line of treatment, in fact, Correctional Health Services has prescribed thorazine for many psychotic, and even some not psychotic, pretrial detainees without justification for its use. Correctional Health Services psychiatrists sometimes prescribe thorazine as a sleep aid.”

* “Clinicians at the Maricopa County Jails often cannot provide a professional medical judgment because Correctional Health Services does not have a medical record and information system capable of timely providing health care professionals with the information they need to diagnose and treat pretrial detainees appropriately, including laboratory results and results of specialty consults.”

* “Correctional Health Services does not maintain a list of pretrial detainees with chronic diseases and cannot readily determine where they are housed and what medications have been prescribed for them.”
* "Systemic deficiencies in the screening process significantly impair continuity of care and result in failure to identify pretrial detainees with immediate medical needs."

Overcrowding

* At times, the court holding cells [at the Madison Street Jail] are so overcrowded that pretrial detainees do not have room to sit or adequate access to toilet and sink facilities. Overcrowding in the court holding cells causes sanitation problems and health risks to pretrial detainees. Overcrowding in the court holding cells at Madison violates pretrial detainees’ constitutional rights.

* “Often, substantially more than thirty-five pretrial detainees are held in one cell [in the Fourth Avenue Jail holding area]. At times, intake holding cells are so overcrowded that there is not room for all inmates to sit on benches, and at times there is not room for all inmates to sit anywhere, even on the floor. At times, inmates sleep on the concrete floor, and sometimes there is not enough room for inmates to sleep on the floor without coming into physical contact with other inmates. At times, the intake holding cells are too crowded for inmates to move to use the toilet and sink. Overcrowding in the 4th Avenue Intake holding cells violates pretrial detainees’ constitutional rights.”

* “From June 1, 2007, through May 31, 2008, 93,065 pretrial detainees were booked into [Fourth] Avenue Intake. Of these, 21,987 (24%) were in intake more than twenty-four hours, 1,910 were in intake more than forty-eight hours, and 358 inmates were in intake more than seventy-two hours."

* “Regardless of the length of time a pretrial detainee remains in the intake process, Defendant Arpaio does not provide the pretrial detainee with a bed and blanket unless the pretrial detainee is placed in an isolation cell. As previously found, intake holding cells often are overcrowded, without room for all inmates to sit, sleep, or move to use the toilet and sink. At times, the intake holding cells are extremely dirty, and the sinks and toilets unsanitary and inoperable.

At times, the intake holding cells do not have toilet paper, and pretrial detainees are not provided with toilet paper when they request it. At times, the intake holding cells do not have soap for pretrial detainees to wash their hands after using the toilet. During intake, inmates usually have no access to a shower until they receive their jail uniforms. Some inmates have not been permitted to take a shower in intake before putting on their jail uniforms. When inmates are brought into intake, usually little is known about their mental and physical conditions, sexual orientation, and security threat levels."

* "During intake, repeat offenders charged with serious violent crimes may be placed in holding cells with individuals charged with DUI or criminal speeding. There are no panic buttons or intercom systems in the intake holding cells. Pretrial detainees placed in intake holding cells usually can communicate with a detention officer only when the door is opened to move pretrial detainees in or out of a holding cell."

* "Although security cameras record activity within intake holding cells, detention officers do not continuously watch the security cameras. Security staff provide only minimal visual and audio supervision of the intake holding cells. Detention officers do not conduct routine security walks on a regular basis in the intake areas."

* "Detention officers do not continuously monitor the intake holding cells. The intake incident reports do not include every incident that occurs in the intake holding cells, even some that require pretrial detainees to receive medical treatment. Defendant Arpaio does not consistently take reasonable measures to guarantee the safety of the pretrial detainees during the intake process, which constitutes a current and ongoing violation of pretrial detainees’ constitutional rights."

"Overcrowding [in general] can violate the Eighth Amendment if it results in specific effects that form the basis for [a] violation, such as by causing increased violence, diluting constitutionally required services to the extent that they fall below the minimum [constitutional] standards, or by reaching a level “unfit for human habitation.”

Sanitation

* “Rats and/or mice remain a chronic problem in Maricopa County Jails, which Defendant Arpaio has made some efforts to eradicate. Cells are not consistently cleaned and sanitized prior to occupancy by pretrial detainees thereby causing an unconstitutional health risk…There are, therefore, current and ongoing violations of pretrial detainees’ constitutional rights."

* “If a prison’s plumbing is in such disrepair that it deprives inmates of basic elements of hygiene and seriously threatens their physical and mental well-being, it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.”

Art of Resistance: Justice Day Action at the Phoenix Art Museum!

On August 10, 2012 a small handful of us in Arizona celebrated Prisoners' Justice Day, which is a day to remember those who have died in state custody.  Some of us in the "free world" descended upon the Phoenix Art Museum for a sunrise action, seizing the public space in front of their sign on Central and Coronado for our canvas. There, about 25 members of the community chalked a 100-foot wide community memorial to nearly 70 victims of prison violence, neglect or despair, recommitting in the process to our fight for the living as well.

Security at the Art Museum seemed slow to respond for their part and they were mean when they did - we'd covered at least 80 feet by the time the chief came out to find out what was going on (he's lucky I can't find his card now and name him...). Turns out he called the Phoenix Police to see if they could send someone out to stop me, but Sgt Schweikert told him it wouldn't do any good. So, unable to have me arrested for soiling "their" clean sidewalk with my free speech, the custodians of our community's art and culture had a city crew hover on stand-by to wash away the names of the dead - including those put down by their mothers - the moment we left the sidewalk. 

Literally.

I found that to be downright disrespectful of everything from the first amendment to the grief of the families who were with us that day, not to mention petty and intolerant. If we were there about sick children and cancer instead of dying prisoners and AIDS or Hep C, would they have been less cruel? We decided that they wouldn't render us invisible again that easily, and Facebook was flooded with photos of the morning's action, mostly of the names of the dead.

In addition to the mothers of Carlo Krakoff, Joseph Venegas, and Dana Seawright, and loved ones of current prisoners, we were joined by former prisoners, anarchists from my neighborhood, Occupiers I was arrested with, artists from the Firehouse Gallery, immigrant rights activists, and Haley from the Phoenix Harm Reduction Organization (PHRO - check them out!). A cross section of the community I live and work in - small wonder that the Phoenix Art Museum thought it was too good for us.

Below is a little something I made from the photos of the action, many of which were taken by my comrade from 4th Ave jail, Janet Higgins, who made a special effort to document the individual names. Please print it up and send it inside, if you correspond with any prisoners. Let them know they have not been forgotten...

Prisoners are still Persons: Solitary destroys the soul....

For those who missed it, an excellent and pointed editorial on solitary confinement by Colin Dayan, with links at the bottom to more the NY Times has done on the issue...

Here is also the link to the American Friends Service Committee 2007 project: "Buried Alive", about solitary confinement in Arizona.

And for those of you with loved ones in isolation/special management/control units, here's a manual to print up and send them: SURVIVAL IN SOLITARY

-----------from the New York Times------------

Opinions: Destroying the soul

New York Times (JULY 5, 2012)

Colin Dayan is Robert Penn Warren professor in the humanities at Vanderbilt University and the author of “The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons.”
 

We as a nation are guilty of the most horrific treatment of prisoners in the civilized world. In March, 400 prisoners in California’s Security Housing Units, as well as a number of prisoners’ rights organizations, petitioned the United Nations asking for help. Since then, the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison who have each spent between 10 and 28 years in solitary confinement . A class-action suit in Arizona challenges inadequate medical and mental health care that subjects prisoners to injury, amputation, disfigurement and death — especially in prolonged solitary confinement. 

Supermax detention is the harshest weapon in the U.S. punitive armory. Once, solitary confinement affected few prisoners for relatively short periods. Today, most prisoners can expect to face solitary, for longer periods and under conditions that make old-time solitary seem almost attractive. The contemporary state-of-the-art supermax is a clean, well-lighted place. There is no decay or dirt. And there is often no way out.

This is not the “hole” portrayed in movies. As a sign of professionalism and advanced technology, extreme isolation and sensory deprivation constitute the “treatment” in these units. Supermaxes modify inmates’ spatial and temporal framework, severely damaging their sense of themselves: a terrible violence against the spirit and a betrayal of our constitutional and moral responsibilities.

More than a decade ago, I began visiting the “Special Management Units” at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Eyman in Florence. I completed a series of interviews in an attempt to understand this new version of solitary confinement. Prisoners there are locked alone in their cells for 23 hours a day. Their food is delivered through a slot in the door of their 80-square-foot cell. They stare at unpainted concrete walls onto which nothing can be put. They look through doors of perforated steel, what one officer described to me as “irregular-shaped Swiss cheese.” Except for the occasional touch of a guard’s hand as they are handcuffed and chained when they leave their cells, they have no contact with another human being.

In this condition of enforced idleness, prisoners are not eligible for vocational programs. They have no educational opportunities; books and newspapers are severely limited; post and telephone communication virtually nonexistent. Locked in their cells for as many as 161 of the 168 hours in a week, they spend most of the brief time out of their cells in shackles, with perhaps as much as eight minutes to shower. An empty exercise room — a high-walled cage with a mesh screening overhead, also known as the “dog pen” — is available for “recreation.”

These are locales for perpetual incapacitation, where obligations to society, the duties of husband, father or lover are no longer recognized. An inmate wrote me, “People go crazy here in lockdown. People who weren’t violent become violent and do strange things. This is a city within a city, another world inside of a larger one where people could care less about what goes on in here. This is an alternate world of hate, pain, and mistreatment.”

Situated on 40 acres of desert, Special Management Unit 2 is surrounded by two rings of 20-foot-high fence topped with razor wire, like a nuclear-waste storage facility. During my visits, I learned that those who have not violated prison rules — often jailhouse lawyers or political activists — are placed apart from other prisoners, sometimes for what is claimed to be their own protection; sometimes for what is alleged to be the administrative convenience of prison officials; sometimes for baseless, unproven and generally unprovable claims of gang membership.

We citizens are proud of our history. We are a nation of laws. But what kind of laws? Laws that permit solitary confinement, with cell doors, unit doors and shower doors operated remotely from a control center, with severely limited and often abusive physical contact. Has society’s current attention to the death penalty allowed us to forget the gradual destruction of mind and loss of personal dignity in solitary confinement, including such symptoms as hallucinations, paranoia and delusions?

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham came to believe that solitude was “torture in effect.” Other 19th-century observers, including Charles Dickens and Alexis de Tocqueville, used images of premature burial, the tomb and the shroud to represent the death-in-life of solitary confinement. Some 25,000 inmates are languishing in long-term isolation in America’s supermax prisons, with as many as 80,000 more in solitary confinement in other facilities.

A Senate Judiciary Committee panel heard testimony last month on solitary confinement. I hope that someone reminded lawmakers of Justice William Douglas’s words nearly 40 years ago: “Prisoners are still ‘persons.’ ” 

 

More on this debate:

 

The Post’s View: The harm of solitary confinement in prison

PostScript: Readers respond to solitary confinement and torture

The Post’s View: Prisoner isolation is torture, by any name

Anita Kumar: House kills study to reduce solitary confinement in prisons

Marty Atencio's family fights back and files suit.

Thanks JJ and the AZ Republic for keeping up with this tragic case...and to Marty's family for holding the real bad guys accountable...

Marty Atencio

Marty's memorial page here.

-----------from the Arizona Republic-------------

$20M claim alleges excessive force in AZ inmate's death

by JJ Hensley
Arizona Republic
June 8, 2012

The family of a man who died in December following an altercation with police and detention officers in a Maricopa County jail has filed a $20 million notice of claim against the city of Phoenix, the Sheriff's Office and the county agency responsible for health care in the jails.

The claim, filed Friday, alleges that excessive force, coupled with a series of failures by medical professionals to tend to Ernest "Marty" Atencio, contributed to the 44-year-old's death in December.

Atencio died four days after he was removed from a "safe cell" in the Fourth Avenue Jail.






The notice of claim (WARNING: Contains graphic images)

The Maricopa County medical examiner last week issued a report that concluded that Atencio died of cardiac arrest, acute psychosis, medical problems and "law-enforcement subdual," but the report did not list a manner of death.

Atencio's family believes that the manner of death was homicide, committed at the hands of sheriff's detention officers in an altercation that began when two Phoenix police officers began to struggle with Atencio after he refused to remove his left shoe. They wanted the shoe removed to be scanned as he prepared to enter the jail.

The Phoenix officers took Atencio to the ground, and surveillance footage shows the detention officers dragging Atencio into a safe cell, where the number of officers in the small cell obscured their actions from the camera.
A safe cell is a room designed to reduce inmates' ability to injure themselves or others.

The claim contends that at least one officer punched Atencio and that another officer shocked Atencio with a stun gun six times, with several of those strikes coming within inches of his heart.

The notice of claim is a necessary precursor to a lawsuit against a public entity. State law requires a claim to list a dollar amount for which it can be settled. Atencio's family set that amount at $5 million for Phoenix police and $15 million for the county agencies.

The Sheriff's Office is continuing to investigate the incident and declined comment.

A pair of Phoenix police officers contacted Atencio twice on the night he was detained.

During the first contact, outside a convenience store, officers noticed that Atencio was acting erratically and told him to go home. Moments later, the officers received a call about a man kicking at a woman's apartment door in the 2800 block of West Laurel Lane. The officers recognized Atencio as the man they had encountered outside the convenience store, and they arrested him after the woman requested prosecution.

When Atencio arrived at the Fourth Avenue Jail's intake area -- where inmates are screened for medical and mental-health concerns and the most serious are supposed to receive immediate attention -- officers recognized his signs of mental illness but failed to respond, according to the claim.

"She (mental-health professional Monica Scarpati) admitted that she did not complete a full assessment of Marty and sent him to an isolation cell," the claim states. "Ms. Scarpati and (Correctional Health Services nurse Bill McClean) fell below the applicable standard of care by, in RN McClean's words, 'accepting' Marty into the jail and not doing anything to make sure that Marty got the immediate medical attention that he so obviously needed and deserved."

According to the claim, as Atencio waited for further processing, other officers noticed his mental state and began mocking him. According to an interview with an inmate who was nearby at the time, one officer thought Atencio's mug shot could be featured on the Sheriff's Office website that posts booking photos.

"An MCSO lieutenant stated in an interview that the process of taking Marty's photo was, 'Ah, you know, it's kinda comical,'" according to the claim.

As Atencio prepared to leave the booking area, he became uncooperative with Phoenix officers but was not violent or combative, according to interviews with officers contained in the claim.

Surveillance video shows that when a Phoenix officer placed his arm around Atencio's neck and took him to the ground, nearby officers joined in the effort to subdue Atencio. His family called the events that followed a "jailers' riot."

The claim does not request any damages from the Medical Examiner's Office, but it does allege that the office attempted to shield the county from liability by failing to name a manner of death from one of the four descriptions: suicide, homicide, natural causes or accidental.

"The medical examiner's report is part science and part defensive doublespeak designed to deflect and limit the county's liability," the claim states. "The notion that Marty's manner of death is 'undetermined' is a farcical sleight of hand by the county. The cardiac arrest was induced by the 'law-enforcement subdual,' so it was obviously a 'homicide,' i.e., caused at the hands of other human beings."