Dismantling California's Division of Juvenile Justice

Here's what they're doing with juvenile corrections in California. Governor Brewer has been wanting to dismantle the AZ Department of Juvenile Corrections and privatize more services, too. I'm all for abolishing the entire criminal justice system and staring anew, but I don't think we have the same motives or ultimate vision in mind. 

I think the worry that youth will be tried as adults more often - absent state prisons for children - is legitimate, but can be addressed with legislation restricting juvenile transfers. We already know that youth tried as adults are more, not less likely, to re-offend, and we have an idea of what types of evidence-based practice can reduce juvenile delinquency.

In any event, this is worth following. In the meantime, don't be surprised to hear more soon about the AZ Department of Juvenile Corrections downsizing, consolidating resources, increasing privatization of services, and ultimately being dissolved. I think that's precisely what Director Flanagan was hired to do.

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Fight ahead over bold California move to close state-run youth prisons
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
Susan Ferriss January 28, 2012

This story was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity
 
California, often a trendsetter, could make history if it approves Gov. Jerry Brown’s bid to close all state-run youth prisons and eliminate its state Division of Juvenile Justice.

Much depends, though, on whether the state’s politically influential prison guards, probation officers and district attorneys can be convinced — or forced by legislators — to agree to Brown’s proposal. That won’t be an easy sell, due to both public-safety arguments and sure-to-surface haggling over just who pays to house juvenile offenders.

Vowing to restructure government more efficiently, Brown, a Democrat, wants to close the last three of 11 youth prisons that have long been attacked by critics as “expensive failures.” If the state phases out the last three of its aging detention centers, all future young offenders would be held, schooled and treated by California’s 58 counties.

This is the second time since taking office last year that Brown has proposed closing the state juvenile division, which is part of its corrections system. The division’s responsibility has already been slashed dramatically from 10,000 wards in the mid-1990s to about 1,100 in state custody today. Their numbers may be few, but the cost for keeping those youth in state custody runs about $200,000-a-year for every ward.

A host of agendas

The drop in numbers of youths in state custody is due in part to a decline in juvenile crime in California, but also to state legislation in 2007 that blocked counties from sending nonviolent youth offenders to state-run detention centers.

It was a move driven, some argue, largely by California’s massive budget deficits and the desire to lower ballooning incarceration costs. But the decision also dovetailed with an emerging national philosophy favoring locally-based rehabilitation programs over state-run facilities that have been plagued with records of neglect, danger and sexual abuse.

Behind the policy debate: never-ending negotiations over money. The 2007 initiative included millions in state money to counties to devise and provide more effective treatment closer to wards’ home areas and families. Last year, after wrangling with Brown, legislators approved a deal requiring counties to begin paying $125,000 for each ward they sent to the state, if the state’s revenues didn’t improve.

Sure enough, revenues didn’t improve, and now the counties are balking at having to pay the $125,000 per ward they owe. And Brown isn’t collecting. Instead he has resurrected his idea to shut down the state facilities, and give counties even less than he offered before.

Many, but not all, juvenile justice reformers nationwide are cheering Brown’s announcement this month.
“The same phenomenon is happening on the two coasts,” said Bart Lubow, director of programs for high-risk youth at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He noted that New York State, too, is shifting care for juveniles more to local custody for cost-control and quality reasons.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget proposal this year includes a deal for New York City to keep most of its offenders locally. Mayor Michael Bloomberg complained in 2010 that it cost New York City $62 million in 2009 to satisfy a requirement that it pay half the state’s costs for jailing, on daily average, fewer than 600 youth offenders from the city.

The state-run jails were far from New York City wards’ families, the mayor argued, and had dubious records, like California’s, with recidivism rates of about 80 percent.

Lubow of the Annie E. Casey Foundation said that if Brown is able to pull off the feat of closing all state facilities, other states will have a model to follow. “California is at the leading edge of a national trend,” he said, “to abandon centralized facilities that are scandal-prone and ineffective.”

What’s best for juvenile offenders?

As it was last year, Brown’s idea is embedded in his proposed 2012-13 state budget announced this month. It will be hashed over publicly and privately before legislators make a decision by a June 15 deadline.

Most legislators in California are Democrats, as Brown is, but they are always under pressure not to appear soft on crime. They are also mindful that California’s correctional workers’ union is a big player in state politics and a heavy donor to campaigns.

This time, given that only three state juvenile facilities remain, legislators are perhaps under more pressure not to overburden counties, which are already coping with fallout from last year’s budget deal.

That deal was considered historic because after years of waffling, legislators authorized a significant shift of certain low-level adult felons to county responsibility. The aim was to cut state costs and satisfy federal court orders to clear California’s overcrowded prisons.

Mark Varela, legislative chairman for the Chief Probation Officers of California, said his group continues to oppose closing the last three state juvenile detention centers, although, individually, there are some probation chiefs in California who favor it and say they are ready.

Varela said opponents’ “concern is that the youth in DJJ [the Division of Juvenile Justice] represent offenders with a high degree of sophistication,“ who could have a “negative impact” on lower-level offenders who might not easily be separated from them in local facilities.

By mixing the populations, Varela said, the more violent youths, some of them incarcerated for murder or sex offenses, could endanger or influence others and undermine their progress.

Hardball in Sacramento

District attorneys, too, are expected to fight Brown’s proposal; indeed, the California District Attorneys Association has already shown it can play hardball on the issue.

In hearings and official letters last year, the association argued that if California youth prisons were no longer on option, it was “inevitable” that for public safety, prosecutors would likely try many more juveniles as adults and send them to adult state prison. District attorneys also argued that if counties had to pay the state $125,000 per ward, more youths would also likely be prosecuted as adults.

Books Not Bars, a prison rights group that backs Brown’s proposal, is preparing to counter the prosecutors’ threat.

The group has crafted a draft bill designed to force counties to pay for minors they send to state prison, Jennifer Kim, a Books Not Bars leader, told the Center for Public Integrity. “We are currently shopping it around the Legislature,” Kim said.

Kim said the bill calls for counties to pay the state the going adult rate — about $52,500 a year — for each minor put in adult prison based on the discretion of a prosecutor.

That’s not as much as the $200,000 a year it costs the state for each ward in existing youth prisons, Kim said. But she said it could help dissuade counties from trying to avoid keeping young offenders by putting them in adult prison.

Kim said that while legislators might be vulnerable to soft-on-crime accusations, they also are under fire after years of chopping education severely, closing parks and stripping down other services. They need to justify, Kim said, spending millions on a system that fails to reform most of its wards, and has a record of documented abuses.

“California could be its own country,” Kim said. “It’s so big. And we can’t figure out how to handle about 1,000 kids? That’s smaller than the high school I went to.”

Like the district attorneys association, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is also opposed to Brown’s idea.

“We’re very disappointed with the proposal. We feel it is an immense disservice to youth offenders,” JeVaughn Baker, spokesman for the correctional workers’ union, told the Center for Public Integrity.

Baker said that instead of a complete closure, the union favors trying to reduce costs per ward, and continuing improvements at the state-run juvenile prisons, which have been operating for a number of years under court decree to improve conditions.

However, Baker said, the union also is willing to talk about a compromise and “wants to be part of the solution.” A meeting is planned in mid-February among union representatives to discuss more steps toward continuing reforms to the state facilities, he said.

The correctional workers’ union contributed heavily to Brown’s election, and continues to have a seat at the table when it comes to prison reforms. But with California reeling from waves of budget cuts, it doesn’t have the clout it used to at the state Capitol and has had to accept changes that cut jobs, said Barry Krisberg, an expert on incarceration policy at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

Krisberg, who is also an appointed monitor reporting on improvements at state-run youth facilities, predicted a tough sell for Brown’s proposal at the Capitol. “I’m hearing there is not much enthusiasm in the Legislature for this,” he said.

Krisberg also has his own doubts that the state government should completely phase out its ability to take custody of minors.

He fears that some counties aren’t bluffing when they argue that they are not suited to handle high-level young offenders.

Krisberg said a total closure “would be the most radical juvenile justice reform in history.” He’d rather see the division shifted to the state’s Department of Education, possibly, and out of the prison system.

He also noted that county systems for youth offenders are not scandal-free. The Los Angeles County Probation Department is under federal order to rein in use of force, including pepper spray, as well as neglect of wards with mental health problems and suicidal tendencies.

In December, a federal report found that the Los Angeles probation department still fell short of improvements it was ordered to make.

Krisberg said that in the end, he’d prefer to see California keep a few hundred beds for juveniles at the state level and enact strong policies and provide adequate funding for monitoring and improving local treatment.
Because many high-level wards are adults by the time they’ve served their sentences, what they critically need, Krisberg said, is help from the state with post-incarceration re-entry to society, including housing, access to mental-health medication and job placement.

Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan group in San Francisco, is a friend of Krisberg, but differs with him on this issue, arguing for a shutdown of state facilities that he says are relics of a failed rehabilitation model.

Besides, Macallair said, the majority of the state’s wards come from only about a dozen counties, out of 58, that have grown reliant on the state, and need to be pushed to develop a better infrastructure locally for rehabilitation. His group’s research, Macallair said, shows that despite claims to the contrary, California’s counties have enough room and the ability to appropriately separate juveniles.

Meanwhile, he said, “you’ve got a state system that’s really hanging by a thumbnail.”

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization focused on investigative journalism.

Re-entry for youth with disabilities.

For the full report on re-entry programs for youth with disabilities in the juvenile justice system, go here.

------------from Education Week-------------

After Jail, Youth With Disabilities Need Special Support to Stay Out

By Nirvi Shah 

December 30, 2011 

Education Week

 

When young people with disabilities end up in the juvenile justice system, they're less likely to return to youth prisons after their sentence is up if they have jobs or go to school quickly after being released, a new paper says.

However, comprehensive programs that help these youth go from prison to the outside world are scarce, says this piece from Project Forum at the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. And juveniles with disabilities have a high recidivism rate—more than the 55 percent rate for youth without disabilities.

The report looks closely at the practices in four states—Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, and Oregon—when it comes to supporting all juveniles, including those with disabilities, who are leaving the justice system.

Some common practices the report found in states with programs intended to reduce recidivism for these young people include: a continuum of supports for youth that begins in prison and keeps going once they leave; transition facilitators or coordinators who are dedicated to working with these youth; and programs for reentering society that are comprehensive, addressing education, employment, social and behavioral skills, mental health, substance-abuse issues, housing, and transportation. Another common theme in the report? Budget problems often keep these programs from going long-term.

Here are some details of individual state's programs:

•Before youths' release, Arizona's Department of Juvenile Corrections assigns them a transition coordinator who establishes a relationship and supports them after they leave. Four of these coordinators travel the state and work with parole officers, the state director of special education, and school districts to ensure these juveniles are enrolled in the right programs at the end of their sentences. These coordinators even go to students' IEP meetings.

•Georgia's "Think Exit at Entry" program provides educational planning, progress reviews, transition facilitators, and other supports to youth in the juvenile justice system, including those with disabilities. The program has been scaled back since a federal grant expired in 2007, although some parts of it have kept going because of the partnerships already established among state agencies.

•Hawaii's Olomana School serves students in the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility, and youth participate in regular meetings about their behavior and school work. Because the state runs all schools in Hawaii, transferring records back to schools when students are released is seamless—and transfer of records is critical to a successful reentry for students with disabilities, the report says.

•Oregon's Project STAY OUT—Strategies Teaching Adolescent Young Offenders to Use Transition Skills—is specifically for youth with an IEP, 504 plan, or mental health diagnosis. Youth work on self-determination skills, social skills, finding work, and other goals. One study found that 66 percent of STAY OUT participants were either employed or in school during the first six months after their release from juvenile justice programs, the very things that are likely to keep them from returning.

Flanagan: The closing of Catalina.

An editorial to the AZ Daily Star from the Director of the Department of Juvenile Corrections...

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Catalina facility's closure, move ultimately will serve troubled youths better

http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/article_55d36874-9747-52a1-8e25-4fd9143a5c21.html

Charles Flanagan

"The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."

- Alfred North Whitehead

While the vast majority of Arizona's youths never have problems with criminal conduct, some do. There are many factors that can often derail these young people on the path to adulthood, leading them toward self-destructive behavior. The Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections believes that rehabilitation, treatment, education and positive enforcement are the most effective avenues for getting our young people back on the right track to live happy, safe and productive lives. I firmly believe in the agency's vision: "Safer Communities Through Successful Youth."

As the new director for the department, one of my goals is to provide troubled youths with the best resources possible in order to turn their lives around. As part of this charge, I am making some changes to more effectively serve the entire state and provide the widest possible range of services to each of the youths in our custody so that we can successfully reintegrate them into our shared communities. Most prominent among these changes is the planned closure of Catalina Mountain School in Pima County.

By the end of September, the 70-74 youths currently at Catalina Mountain will be transferred to the Department's Adobe Mountain/Black Canyon complex in Maricopa County. This relocation will accomplish several goals. It allows the department to close its most outdated unit (Catalina Mountain was built in 1967); takes advantage of efficiencies by consolidating youths and services at a single complex; and makes available the state's full range of programs and treatment options to every child in the state's custody and care.

The goal of this plan is to provide a concentration of all resources and services on a single campus, making available specialized treatment for substance abuse, mental health concerns and sex offenders. Currently, specialized treatment for mental health issues and sex offenders is not available at Catalina Mountain School, which also houses only male youths. Consolidation also will allow the department to add a Skills-4-Work program to the Adobe Mountain School, enabling youths to learn trades associated with culinary arts, cosmetology, building trades, sewing, fire science, working with wildlife and other technical careers.

The consolidation of youths, staff and programs to a single complex will result in estimated cost savings to the state of nearly $1.5 million in fiscal 2012 and $3.8 million in fiscal 2013. In fact, we anticipate a savings of approximately $100 per youth, per day, by combining operations rather than maintaining the Catalina Mountain School.

I understand this closure and relocation will result in disruption for some department staffers and families of youths in custody. The department's goal is to employ or facilitate the employment of the majority of Catalina Mountain School employees. The concentration of staff at one facility will enhance coverage for youths in crisis and provide a larger, more professionally diverse staff with expertise in a range of areas.

Additionally, the department will make available video visitation in Tucson for families of youths from Southeastern Arizona who are relocated to the Adobe Mountain/Black Canyon complex. The department also will maintain the area's parole services, private-sector service providers and community service activities, and is exploring the establishment of halfway houses.

The Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections takes seriously its mission to positively impact the thought process and behavior pattern of youths in its custody. I believe the consolidation of services and programs to our Adobe Mountain/Black Canyon complex will help us perform that mission more effectively and efficiently.

By joining together in this effort, we have the tremendous opportunity to provide a positive outcome for troubled youths.

Charles Flanagan is director of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections.

AzDJC's Flanagan closes Catalina Mountain School

Sorry to be so slow with this, folks...I'm still on hiatus. I'll comment on all this later.

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Tucson's Catalina Mountain School for troubled youths to close

AZ Daily Star

July 12, 2011

The state will close the Catalina Mountain School on North Oracle Road by Oct. 1, the director of the Department of Juvenile Corrections said Thursday.

Director Charles Flanagan said it isn't sound fiscal or correctional practice to operate the Tucson school plus two others just north of Phoenix.

Catalina Mountain School will stop admitting kids "in about a week," Flanagan said.

He told employees about the closure at a meeting early Thursday afternoon.

The shutdown will save the state nearly $1.5 million this fiscal year and $3.8 million in 2013, he said.

The 74 males at the 124-bed Tucson school will be moved to Black Canyon and Adobe Mountain, which are operated as one facility.

The Tucson school is the one closing for several reasons, he said, including:

• All girls and juveniles who are sex offenders or need mental-health treatment are already sent to the Phoenix facilities.

• Tucson doesn't have as many career-training programs, and fewer options for moving and managing boys who have behavioral problems during their incarceration.

• Youths now at Catalina Mountain will have better access to programs for substance dependence. Flanagan said 90 percent of the kids have substance use histories and roughly 60 percent are substance-dependent.

a "huge loss"

Pima County Juvenile Court officials were surprised by the announcement.

While the court does not send a lot of children to the facility, officials said the move could be a detriment to youths who won't have direct access to family and friends.

Judge Karen Adam, who presides over Pima County Juvenile Court, described the facility's closure as a "huge loss."

It's important to place youths in their community because they can receive visits from friends and family, and it's easier for them to reintegrate to society, Adam said.

Juvenile Court Director Rik Schmidt echoed Adam's concerns.

Flanagan, the state's Juvenile Corrections director, agreed that a downside to the closure is that some kids will be farther away from family.

However, he said, only 15 percent of the youths receive family visits at least once every two weeks. Only 30 percent of the boys at Catalina Mountain are ever visited by relatives, he added.

Juvenile Corrections will set up a video visitation system to ease the burden of families driving to Maricopa County.

The department will move its parole office to central Tucson.

About a quarter of the boys at Catalina Mountain are from Pima County, with 15 percent from Cochise. Many of the rest will actually be closer to their homes once they move. They were sent to Tucson to keep the head count up.

The average stay in the state juvenile system is about seven months, but it is about three months at Catalina Mountain.

Most are in the system for property crimes.

There are between 30 and 40 Pima County juveniles in the state's three facilities, said Pima County's Schmidt. The number committed there has decreased over the years. In 2010, Pima's Juvenile Court sent 61 juveniles to state facilities. About five years ago, it sent more than 100, he said.

employee, volunteer losses

Besides the relocation of the detained youths, the loss of employees and 119 volunteers are the other downsides to Catalina Mountain's closure, Flanagan said.

"These people are committed to this profession," he said. "These are good, good people."

He said he hopes to find places for the volunteers in community corrections and parole services.

Some of the 124 Tucson employees will be offered the 68 jobs to be added at the Phoenix schools, he said. Transfer offers will be based on state employment rules, and he estimated about 30 will end up working in Phoenix.

Six employees will remain to provide security at the Tucson campus through the end of the department's lease next June 30.

The state owns the buildings on land leased from the state Land Department. That department will decide whether to sell the property or lease it to someone else.

The Phoenix schools have about 330 youths and about 270 vacant beds.

In the last fiscal year, it cost $132,218 to house a child at Catalina Mountain, compared with $95,765 at the Phoenix schools.

"That's still too high in our estimation," Flanagan said of Phoenix, although he said there is no national standard for juvenile costs because state laws differ. Arizona juvenile corrections houses kids up to age 18, while in some states it's longer.

DID YOU KNOW?

Catalina Mountain School, at 14500 N. Oracle Road, was built in the late 1960s, and is the oldest of the state's three juvenile centers, said Department of Juvenile Corrections Director Charles Flanagan.

New AZ Juvenile Corrections Director: Charles Flanagan

I seldom ever re-write blog posts, but sometimes new information or insight calls for a re-evaluation of my positions or strategies. In this case, time and reflection has compelled me to re-evaluate both. This is therefore a rewrite - the older version is gone.

Last week, Governor Jan Brewer announced the retirement of the current director of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, Michael Branham. This alone concerned me, as I knew he'd been resisting her desire to privatize the whole department. What concerned me more, however, is the naming of his replacement: current Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Charles Flanagan - the one man for whom I've had more animosity towards than his boss, Chuck Ryan.

My feelings about Deputy Director Flanagan are rooted in experiences I've had or been privy to behind the scenes that aren't necessary to detail here. What matters is that under his watch the homicide and suicide rates in the state prisons have skyrocketed. The ACLU is investigating the ADC's abuse and neglect of seriously mentally ill prisoners - all too often managed with solitary confinement, which has been shown to be especially harmful to the mental health of prisoners with pre-existing psychiatric disorders.


As an example of both the effects of solitary and the cruel mentality of the state: one young man I know of, Mark, set himself on fire in desperation after begging for a year to have a cellie or be re-classified to a different yard (out of SMU-I, which is where he was when he set himself on fire), the experience of exile and isolation was so tortuous for him. Characteristic of this administration, despite being burned over 80% of his body - arguably punishment enough for an apparent suicide attempt - the state prosecuted him for arson and gave him more time. Is it any wonder that the level of despair and violence has risen so high in there, when the most vulnerable and impaired prisoners are so brutally treated by the ADC as a matter of course?






Such responses to mentally ill prisoners already traumatized by the conditions of their confinement not only shows an institutional culture void of compassion, but also a lack of competency and creativity. Charles Flanagan may have only been in his current position for the past 2 1/2 years, but one of the cases made for his appointment as the new ADJC director is that he's been helping build the ADC into what it is all this time - he's a career soldier there. If he wants credit for that - as if it's something worth claiming - then he needs to take responsibility for where things have gone awry, too - the pattern of abuse and neglect emerging at the state prisons under this administration has been festering for decades under bureaucrats like Chuck Ryan and his mentor, Terry Stewart.


The degree to which Charles Flanagan is part of the same good old boys network at the ADC or part of the resistance to it has yet to be seen. Former ASPC-Eyman Deputy Warden Carl Toersbijns - who I respect immensely, for an officer of the law in this state - keeps trying to convince me that Flanagan is one of the "good guys". My own verdict came in on him long ago - but with new testimony and a look at the old evidence, I'm willing to give his case another look. I want the judiciary in this state to do the same more often for our prisoners with wrongful conviction claims, so I'll try to lead by example.

Still, a good many people have died while Deputy Director Flanagan has helped whitewash the festering conditions inside his prisons over the past couple of years. That's not for me to forgive - that's for those victims and survivors of prison violence and neglect to wrestle with. My job, as I see it, is to amplify their voices, their protest, their resistance to what's happened and continues to happen to Arizona's state prisoners under the current regime, not to give those already in power even more by giving them "equal" space or consideration in my blogs. They already have the benefit of the doubt from everyone else - I'm often the only one to present the other side.

So, while I'm open to Carl's version of the deputy director's role in things under Chuck Ryan, I'm not cutting Flanagan a break. He's responsible by his own claim to leadership there for where the ADC is now at this point in history. I just recognize that I'm not in a position myself to judge accurately what he's done behind the scenes on behalf of prisoners to counter the damage his boss' leadership through the years has done - that is, I'm not absolutely sure if he's part of the problem or part of the solution.

In either case, Charles Flanagan's going to be part of this whole system injustice for some time to come, since the ADJC feeds so many of its kids to the ADC when they're done "correcting" them. In light of that, I invited him to have a dialogue with me; that, after a year or so of having ADC General Counsel Karyn Klausner run interference between us because I simmered with rage at the thought of him (I can only imagine how he feels about me). He promptly and graciously accepted. We'll talk after he settles into his new job - assuming I'm not sidelined over my graffiti by then.

In the meantime, those of you who have questions for him about his term in the adult system or his vision for criminalized youth, please shoot them to me between now and July 1. I can't promise that they'll be answered, but I'll make sure that they're publicly asked. Let your friends and loved ones inside know the invitation extends to them as well, and have them write to me at:

Arizona Prison Watch
PO Box 20494
Phoenix, AZ 85036

I'd love to get some prisoner feedback to share with the community out here about this new appointment; put the word out that it would mean a lot to me what the guys who have seen Flanagan rise through the ranks have to say about his integrity and competency as a CO and administrator.

Anyone interested in following juvenile justice issues in Arizona and helping to maintain a new blog, Arizona Juvenile Prison Watch, please contact me as well.

Thanks.

Truth-in-Sentencing, Arizona: one in ten youth will be sexually abused the first year in juvenile prison.

This is profoundly tragic. This kid was in state prison for shoplifting and drug use - that's a real problem, given who the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections touts as their main customers: "the worst of the worst young criminals in the state." I have yet to see any of the real bad guys get abused in prison, but we shrug off reports like this one as if they're freak accidents and only the criminals we love to hate get hurt badly. Thank god the judge let the kid go home after all this.

Judges should be ordered to read aloud at sentencing the risks they expose each child to if they plan to lock them up - beginning with the one in every ten kids who will be sexually abused the first year they're in the system. Then when a child is raped or suicides in custody, the judge should be held civilly liable for the risk they knowingly, explicitly subjected them to as part of their punishment.

The judiciary can't possibly think that juvenile detention centers are really therapeutic rehabilitation facilites to send children to - which is why the AzDJC calls places like Adobe Mountain "Safe Schools", instead of what they are: child prisons. It makes the prospect of committing a child there more palatable to the well-intended. They're really prison prep schools, though, and come complete with gangs, drugs, and sexual abuse - as well as child-size prison uniforms, stark cells, handcuffs and shackles.

We just pack a bunch of naive, emotionally impaired kids in with a few real disturbed thugs to justify keeping those places open at all, then indoctrinate them into a culture that leaves them few options for roles and self-image to choose from outside of the criminal justice paradigm populated by distinctly-defined "criminals", "victims", and cops.

Most children who have been criminalized and institutionalized are also survivors of abuse already, and grow up with unresolved trauma issues that lead to self-medicating with drugs - and then prison again. It is not uncommon for their involvement with the juvenile justice system to be the greater source of trauma than their adolescent participation in crime was, though.

This kid, for one, was hardly safe - and the truth is that when this kind of thing happens it hardly ever hits the press, so the public is lulled into thinking that violence in the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections is not the rule. Prisons RUN on violence and the threat of it to coerce compliance, though, people. They are authoritarian police institutions - do not send children there and expect them to come out healthy. If they do, they are the exception to the rule, not the other way around.

Sentencing practices should be closely monitored for all critical outcomes - not only recidivism, but suicide, homicide, further victimization, sexual exploitation: once we start treating kids like criminals, we seem to stop caring about all other aspects of their lives but whether or not they remain criminals...nurturing little but prison culture, stigmatization, and a negative self-image in the process.

Don't believe them for a minute when they tell you they have to be like that because of the serious pathology of their youth - the worst are still out getting away with it. The kids the AzDJC really have the most of are the ones who got caught and were too poor to swing their own attorneys - a good many of whom were low-level, non-violent drug offenders who just kept relapsing on probation, and everyone knows that a bunch of the kids we throw into juvie should have gone through mental health treatment, not the criminal justice system - and would have but for the lack of funds for public mental health services in this state. Those kids couldn't get into a residential treatment program unless they were first criminalized (that must be a violation of the Olmstead Act) - and then they ended up in prison instead.

So, this article is for those who still believe that "criminals deserve what they get in prison." Folks who really believe that do these kids the greatest harm through their deliberate indifference to their suffering - as do the bureaucrats who do damage control by distorting the gravity of their plight behind the best of bars. When the AzDJC faced the threat of privatization last year, they and the officers' unions chose to appeal not to our collective sense of responsibility to help these kids, but to our fear of them instead, arguing that private companies can't safely handle the highly dangerous young criminals they have in their care. Public safety would be compromised, they argued - never mind how it would affect the welfare of our criminalized youth. I even heard one guy refer to the escape at Kingman (as if the lack of state oversight had no bearing on the outcome) - suggesting that young state prisoners would be busting out and killing everyone if they could.

But the murderers and sociopaths they have in custody aren't the ones getting screwed - it's the kids like this one below and Presley Austin who represent the incoming tide...AzDJC Director Mike Branham should be the one out in front on this telling the public how bad these places are for such youth, that there's no way to make the prison system "work" for most of them, and that we should be directing our resources into other kinds of services for them before they hit the child prisons.

The problem with committing our children so readily to the care of the state, is that it tends to place its own survival over the best interests of the people its machinery was constructed to serve in the first place. Mike could have embraced an abolitionist vision and steered the entire agency towards dissolution, redirecting resources back to their prisoners' home communities to decide how best to teach their youth the nuances of justice, and to cultivate a better sense of social responsibility than our current reliance on these archaic institutions has done thus far.

Thank you, Judge Aragón, for exercising compassion and taking responsibility for correcting your orders. Someone should fire that prosecutor - especially if he's the one who coaxed the judge to send that kid up river in the first place. He was some kind of dangerous, alright...

Why can't these places keep their prisoners safe?

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Release is ordered for boy, 16, after attacks in custody
Kim Smith / Arizona Daily Star
March 5, 2011


A Pima County Juvenile Court judge who sent a 16-year-old boy to the Catalina Mountain School last December ordered his release Friday after learning the boy may have been repeatedly stabbed with a pen one week last month and sodomized the next.

Judge Gus Aragón ordered the boy placed on probation until his 18th birthday in March 2012, said Assistant Pima County Public Defender Terri Pones.

"I am ecstatic," Pones said following the hearing.

According to court documents filed by Pones, Aragón sent the boy to the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections in December after the drug-addicted boy repeatedly violated probation.

The boy had been adjudicated delinquent for stealing candy and soft drinks from a Marana park concession stand, Pones said. He also has drug convictions.

On Feb. 3, a teacher overheard the teenager's roommate tell another roommate the teenager had been stabbed in the throat, arm and rib cage with a pen two days prior, according to the documents. The teenager told his mother and corrections officials he was afraid of retaliation and he'd overheard other teens talking about assaulting him again.

The boy and his mother were assured he would be housed by himself, staff would supervise him on a more individual basis and someone would always be "shadowing him," Pones said in the court documents.

On Feb. 15, the teenager was taken to Northwest Medical Center after being sodomized by a roommate and forced to perform a sexual act, Pones said.

After being discharged from the hospital, the teenager was sent to Adobe Mountain in Phoenix for his safety, making it difficult for his family to visit him, Pones said.

Because of the assault, Pones said the boy's "treatment needs have now far exceeded" those he had in December and he ought to be released so he can receive treatment in the community.

David Berkman, Pima County's chief criminal deputy attorney, said prosecutors asked Aragón to schedule a hearing on the allegations once the corrections department completed its investigation, but he declined to do so.

"It appears he accepted what they said," Berkman said.

Prosecutors objected to the boy's release, Berkman said, and may ask for another hearing on the matter, depending upon the results of the investigation.

Laura E. Dillingham, director of communications for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, said the investigation is ongoing.

Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241 or kimsmith@azstarnet.com

Bullying and suicide at Adobe Mountain School: Update.

I was sure I'd already posted this update, but it appears not. So, here it is for the record, and for anyone who still hasn't seen it yet. I've also updated some links in the side column to include relevant resources.

Our condolences to the families of both the child and the staff member from Adobe Mountain who died last month.

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

Suicide at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections

By Amy Silverman

published: June 17, 2010

Current and former staff at Adobe Mountain School in North Phoenix tell New Times the May 25 death of a boy in custody was a suicide — breaking a seven-year, suicide-free streak for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections.

And a former ADJC inmate who roomed briefly with the boy who died says he's not at all surprised that his acquaintance took his own life, given both his behavior and the conditions in which he was placed.

Last week, an ADJC spokeswoman said the agency was not commenting on the case beyond what little was said the day after the boy's death, but she said that Director Michael Branham may release more information in the next few days.

New Times is not releasing the name of the boy who died because ADJC has not confirmed whether his family has been informed. The 17-year-old boy who knew him is also not named in this story because he still is on parole and fears that giving his name would hurt his chances with work and school. Juvenile court records are not public.

According to a staff member in the Adobe Mountain housing unit Crossroads, the boy was found dead by the unit's morning staff with a plastic bag over his head and a blanket over that. The staff member and other Adobe Mountain personnel say the boy had been dead for quite some time, leading to questions about whether department policy requiring frequent welfare checks was followed.

The former roommate describes the deceased boy as overweight with "hair to his nose," lots of bumps and cuts on his arms, and a high-pitched voice. Staffers say the boy was moved to Crossroads, a unit for violent kids, from Triumph, the mental health unit, after he assaulted a teacher.

That could have led to his suicide, the former inmate says.

"I have a very strong reason why [he] had killed himself. Because he was moved to unit Crossroads. You can't put a kid who was in Triumph into an assault unit . . . There are kids who will bully you. They will beat you up," he says.

The former inmate, who was released from ADJC late last year, says it was clear that the boy was seriously mentally ill — something more aggressive kids tend to make fun of.

"You kind of look down upon Triumph because it's a mental health unit; you're like, these kids are retards."

The former inmate recalls that he first encountered the boy last July.

"When I first seen him, I seen him in the cafeteria," he says. "He would freak out and hit the floor and start screaming . . . The staff would restrain him, and he would say, 'Yeah, hurt me.' It was weird. I just thought he was kind of crazy."

Kids threaten suicide all the time, the former inmate says (he admits he did, too, so he could get a break from school), but he says he knew this kid meant it. The two were roommates for a week.

"Me and him used to talk; we would talk. He would tell me things about his mom and things when he was little. His dad lost his job, and then his mom didn't have a job, and his brother was the only one working. He would tell me, like, he couldn't deal with life."

The former inmate says cutting was common when he was at Adobe Mountain. Not at Durango, the county juvenile facility, where he'd been previously — there, you couldn't find anything to cut with. But kids at Adobe Mountain had easy access, he says, to staples and pieces of Plexiglas. The boy made bloody streaks on his arms with a paper clip, the former inmate says.

And one day, "I came back to my room — I was in the Boy Scouts in there; I had come back to the unit — my room was all trashed. Everything was thrown everywhere."

The boy was sitting with his head on his knees, crying. The former inmate called for staff, and the boy told them to "fuck off," and they took him to Separation, the solitary confinement unit.

After that, the boy was placed with a new roommate.

But the former inmate kept watching.

"There are a lot of blind spots in the units that the cameras don't catch," he says, so staff never saw the boy getting hit in the bathroom while he was trying to brush his teeth or getting "punked" for his snack.

"I could see how stressful he was already and how scared he was . . . All he wanted to do was get away from everything."

Anyone watching the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections knew it was only a matter of time before tragedy struck. Trouble is, no one's really watching.

The agency is under-funded and overwhelmed. Its own officials estimate that as many as 30 percent of its inmates are seriously mentally ill, and last year, New Times wrote extensively about suicidal behavior among the teenage population.

This is not a new challenge. In the past three decades, ADJC has twice been under federal scrutiny for human rights abuses. Most recently, in 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation under CRIPA, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, after a New Times investigative series and a string of suicides drew attention to an agency few in the state even know exists.

Lately, ADJC has been in daily headlines, as Governor Jan Brewer and the state Legislature tried to move financial responsibility for these kids (most of whom are not violent — the most violent juvenile offenders wind up in adult court) to the counties. That didn't happen; the counties and state are still negotiating about what will take place next year.

One thing's for sure: Someone had better increase funding for mental health treatment for these kids.

The federal government washed its hands of Arizona years ago, wrapping up its investigation and subsequent oversight. In early 2009, the Arizona Republic reported on the findings of a state audit, which found that there had been no successful suicide attempts at an ADJC facility since 2003.

But no one bothered to report how close some of the calls were. That was the subject of New Times' December story.

The May 25 death is under joint investigation by the Department of Public Safety, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, and the Department of Juvenile Corrections, ADJC spokeswoman Laura Dillingham told New Times on May 26.

Dillingham refused to respond to questions regarding whether the incident was possibly a suicide. She said department policy calls for welfare checks every 15 minutes through the night and said the checks were, in fact, completed in this situation. She said the children's faces cannot be kept covered, raising questions about whether the checks were done correctly.

Several days before the boy's death, a youth corrections officer at Adobe Mountain School took his own life. Staff report that the agency tried to keep the news "hush, hush" and did not offer counseling to the kids, who ultimately heard through the grapevine what had happened. It's unknown whether the officer's death had anything to do with the boy's death.

Following the boy's death, Dillingham said, counseling was provided to staff and inmates at Adobe Mountain.

Bullying and suicide: The damage sticks and stones can do.

May 2010 at Adobe Mountain: PHX New Times

Sorry folks: this is from almost two weeks ago. I've been caught up in my own personal and family crises since the night of the 19th; unless someone was covering this for me, we didn't post this from the New Times - Amy Silverman does pretty good work. 

I'll look for follow-up, and post updated info on the ADJC as soon as I can. I probably won't come in for a landing myself until sometime next week. Once I'm settled, I'll be more on top of things again.

 Folks particularly interested in Juvenile Corrections should check out Juvenile Prison Watch - it's new, can use some more research and development; we'd love to have a few family members work collectively on maintaining it. Contact myself or the International Prison Watch staff listed on their websites for more info.

- Peg

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

Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections Death Was Suicide, Inside Sources Say

By Amy Silverman,

Wednesday, May. 26 2010 @ 12:19PM

Staff at Adobe Mountain School in Phoenix are reporting that the death of a youth yesterday was a suicide.


And they wonder if the incident is tied to the "hush, hush" suicide earlier this month of a corrections officer from the same facility.


The boy was found in his cell at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections' Adobe Mountain at 6:30 am May 25, according to Laura Dillingham, spokeswoman for the department.



She would not reveal any other details. Next of kin has not been contacted yet, she said, adding that an investigation is under way by the Department of Public Safety, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and the Department of Juvenile Corrections.

Dillingham refused to respond to questions regarding whether the incident was possibly a suicide.

Two current employees of Adobe Mountain and one former employee of ADJC have contacted New Times to say the boy likely took his own life.

According to the employees, one of whom works on the unit Crossroads, where the boy was living at the time, the boy was found with a plastic bag tied over his head and a blanket over that. He was reportedly dead for quite some time when the morning shift staff found him.

Dillingham said department policy calls for welfare checks every 15 minutes through the night, and said the checks were, in fact, done in this situation. She said the childrens' faces cannot be kept covered, raising questions about whether the checks were done correctly.

She also said that Adobe Mountain School is fully staffed. Employees strongly disagreed.
Until very recently, the employees said, the boy had been placed at Triumph, the mental-health unit at Adobe Mountain, where he'd been for at least a year. The Crossroads employee said the boy was moved to Crossroads -- Adobe's unit reserved for violent kids -- after he was involved in an assault.

The employee said it was well known that the boy had "suicidal ideations" and added that the boy reportedly told the school superintendent recently that he wanted to be moved from Crossroads and would "do something" if he was not. The employee said that Crossroads staff wasn't informed of that conversation until after the boy had died.

Within the last several days, a youth corrections officer at Adobe Mountain took his own life.

Dillingham confirmed this but refused to release details. She said the staff and kids have been receiving counseling since the officer's suicide, but employees said the event has been kept "hush, hush" and there has been no counseling, though word has gotten out. They also say that ADJC director Michael Branham came to the facility and told them not to fly the flags at half-staff, saying the man did not die honorably.

It is unknown whether that suicide led to the possible suicide yesterday, but experts stress the importance of providing immediate counseling in such situations. ADJC's statements emphasize the counseling they are providing in the wake of yesterday's youth death. The statements do not mention the older man's death.

In 2002 and 2003, there were three suicides at Adobe Mountain School. The suicides, along with an investigative series by Phoenix New Times, led to a federal investigation into conditions at the agency's facilities, including Adobe Mountain. Last year, New Times published a story about continuing problems -- including mental health issues -- at ADJC.

Contact info: AZ Adobe Mountain School

the only real news from another story by fox news:
Adobe Mountain School
2800 W. Pinnacle Peak Road
Phoenix, Arizona 85085
www.juvenile.state.az.us
 
school's hotline: 623-869-9050 with concerns if you have a family member there.

Youth Dies at State Adobe Mountain juvenile facility.

ADDENDUM: Some troubling comments about Adobe Mountain School were left at the end of this Fox News article about the young boy's death...

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

If there are folks out there who have information to share about their kids' experiences in the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, now would be a good time to share, and I think this is a good place to share it. Let other families know they aren't alone, let your kids know they've got someone watching their back out here, and let the state know you expect every single child home safe someday.

If this is a place you can feel safe doing that- anonymously or otherwise let me know (Peggy: prisonabolitionist@gmail.com ). In the meantime, as devastating as this news is, I have no information other than this. Try Middle Ground mid-day; I'm sure that if they don't demand an investigation by then they'll know who will.

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

Teenager found dead at Phoenix juvenile facility

May. 25, 2010 10:37 AM

Associated Press

via Azcentral.com

Police are investigating a teen's death at the Adobe Mountain juvenile correctional facility.

Police and fire crews responded to the north Phoenix school near Interstate 17 and Pinnacle Peak Road Tuesday morning for a report of a male teenager who was unresponsive.

Phoenix Fire Department spokesman Jonathan Jacobs told KNXV-TV the teen died in his sleep and had been there for a while.

Jacobs said he was discovered while people were waking up Tuesday.

A call into the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections School District has not been returned.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/05/25/20100525phoenix-teen-found-dead-at-juvenile-facility.html#ixzz0p1GVh8Xa

AZCOPS and Protect Arizona.

Okay all, I gave the cops and firemen a hard time for being on board Russ Pearce's campaign in my tax shift shuffle post, and owe them an apology. Here's what the AZCOPS are working on - it's from their website. I hope they don't mind the link; they appear to want the publicity. I was hoping to have a Juvenile Prison Watch for AZ up before the DJC was slated to close - still probably a couple of months away from that, so I'm glad to see someone staying on top of this.

I'm still way too ignorant to weigh in articulately about this - I know I don't support the plan to unravel that place this way, but I need some time to make an argument for a better vision of just how it should be unpacked (which is my ultimate goal, after all), because the place is still a nightmare for kids - and I'd think for people working in some of these facilities, too. I'm skeptical about the governor's agenda - it's not made in the best interests of youth - but I also don't think the legislative resistance is much more than show for certain constituencies - they know no one needs their votes on this anyway, so they can seem to be on the side of the working people once in awhile.

The real problem is that if the department unravels but we aren't dismantling the rest of the beast and really reworking juvenile "justice", then kids and resources will just get chewed up at the local level doing this same thing. That means men like Arpaio (and our ever-so-understanding county attorney's office) end up with discretion over who's criminalized and how critical resources for youth are distributed. All we'll have time to do anymore is react to abuse and neglect complaints and scramble to save our mentally ill kids from the adult prison system. Meanwhile, the private prison industry is proactively employing lobbyists who have much better access to power there than any of the rest of us do (just try approaching an important man at the Senate about violence against sex workers, and see what happens). They know those bodies are going have to go somewhere, and that the public - via our legislators - has decided we don't ever want some of them back again.

So, why not make a little cash off our families' suffering? make sure the laws and sentencing mandates are tight enough to boost the next quarters' earnings' report. I'll bet we see a lot more children being charged as adults, now, too. That's the most disturbing probability of all. Keep an eye on who fights the hardest to lock young children away for life without parole - it's not all just law enforcement; someone's making big bucks from that.

I haven't checked their site out yet www.protectarizona.org - just in and out of here today, so keep in mind that it's the cops' place when you drop in and take a look around. I don't imagine there are many abolitionists in the bunch at AZCOPS, but maybe we'll learn something from following what these folks have to say about the departmental closing as it unfolds. We may even find ourselves protesting on the same side of the street over some of these issues.

Wouldn't that be strange?

Don't forget your bandannas, if we are.

-----------

AZCOPS launches campaign to stop Governor from closing juvenile prisons

(Posted: Feb. 10, 2010)

This week, AZCOPS unveiled a new website that will serve as an online presence in a campaign to stop Gov. Jan Brewer from closing the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections in July.

PROTECT ARIZONA! (www.protectarizona.org) contains the truth about the Governor's plan to close juvenile correctional facilities and the impact on public safety. The website is one component of a media campaign to warn the public about the plan. Radio commercials and direct mail will also be used to communicate with citizens across the state...

Arizona DOC: Image is Job 1. Prisoners are expendable.

The Arizona State Legislature needs to be fired and most should be prosecuted for dereliction of duty, neglect of the civil rights of institutionalized persons, and anything else we can possibly convict them of. And ADC administrators. This year. I can think of a few judges to add to that list.  They carelessly sentence people to prison, won't let our loved ones home a few months early, and are well aware of the hazardous conditions they've condemned them to. This is criminal.  

How can Ryan seriously say they're doing enough for fire safety? This is BS. The unions should be up in arms, at least; what's their problem? Maybe since they aren't the ones locked in without the keys in case of fire, it's not as big a deal. 

Where in the hell is the 9.5% of the state budget that we put into Corrections in this state going to, anyway? It's not to the prisoners - they have to pay for even toothpaste and toilet paper themselves. It's clearly not to the upkeep of facilities. And it's not to the employees - they've been getting cut and trimmed all over the place. I wonder how much money they've invested in covering all this up...surely employees and prisoners have complained plenty. Do they just file those grievances as solved, or dismiss them as unsubstantiated? What are they doing with grievances they don't feel like dealing with?


Good job, Arizona Republic. And Middle Ground. What now? I think this warrants a public campaign and a federal investigation on a number of counts. The feds are way behind in this state...


As for our legislators - Listen to Sinema. The legislature will take it's share of responsibility for this. There is no excuse. You let our people go early now; the prisons are far  more dangerous to them than they are to the public. You may have gutted the rights of prisoners, but don't you mess with their families. They won't wait for you to kill their loved ones before they take you down. If you aren't proactive on the issues they've been bringing to you all this time, then you're complicit with those who would neglect and abuse the most vulnerable people in state custody. 

That's twisted. I'll do everything I can to help them, their family members and their friends remove you from power. With you will go the top layer of the ADC - hopefully before they do too much more damage. The Republican-controlled legislature is the one continuous player through all of this. That's where the responsibility is to fix it, too. Rest assured, if you don't we will replace you promptly.



-------

Fire risk mounts in Arizona prisons

Pleas for funds to fix safety problems ignored for years

by JJ Hensley and Casey Newton - Jan. 17, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

 

The potential for tragedy looms large at Arizona prisons, where each night more than 31,000 adult inmates and some 550 juveniles fall asleep in dangerous and deteriorating facilities.

For more than a decade, investigators have identified serious fire-safety issues at the state's prisons and juvenile correctional facilities. Fire-alarm systems are obsolete, broken or non-existent. Sprinklers and smoke-ventilation systems required by building codes have never been installed, even in rapidly deteriorating wooden structures used to house juveniles.

Where fire alarms are broken or non-existent, corrections officials employ 24-hour "fire watches" in which employees look for smoke as part of their duties. Intended to be used for a short time until systems could be repaired, fire watches in many facilities have endured for decades.

Today, every Arizona prison is on a perpetual fire watch.

Unsafe conditions put correctional officers, inmates and juvenile offenders in potentially lethal situations and leave taxpayers exposed to millions of dollars in liability should a fire claim lives.

Inspectors' reports paint nightmare scenarios of dorms silently filling up with smoke as juveniles sleep, staffers who can't unlock doors in time to evacuate inmates, and corrections officers who become trapped in their observation posts.

Twice in the past decade, the Department of Juvenile Corrections commissioned studies on how to eliminate unsafe conditions in its facilities. Over the past several years, corrections officials in both the juvenile and adult systems repeatedly requested millions in funding to bring the buildings up to code.

But lawmakers gave them nothing, even as they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating their own buildings. Earlier this year, to save money, the state quit inspecting its buildings - even as many prisons deteriorate at an alarming rate, reports show.

While such rampant fire-safety risks linger, lawmakers want to privatize operations in at least some of the prisons to help close the state's massive deficit.

Last year, Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1028, which would allow private vendors to operate one or more of Arizona's state prisons, with a 50-year contract and an upfront payment of $100 million. Two prison facilities were purchased in sale-leaseback agreements last week, though in those cases, the state retains control of the properties.

As the state tries to sell some of its facilities, safety experts warn that prisons with faulty sprinklers and alarms pose a serious danger to occupants.

"You could potentially end up with a fire that might result in hundreds of fatalities," said Robert Solomon, manager for building and life-safety codes at the Boston-based National Fire Protection Association. "It's a lot cheaper to deal with this issue now and find the money wherever you can. If you don't do that and something happens down the road, it's going to cost you a lot more."

Vast system

More than 40,000 inmates are in the Arizona prison system. Of those, 9,000 are serving their time in private prisons. The rest are held in 10 state-operated prisons, where they are overseen by more than 8,000 correctional officers, medical personnel and other staff.

The sprawling complexes are like small towns, with some supporting more than 5,000 inmates and a host of facilities to prepare food, clean laundry and perform maintenance.

The complexes include Army-surplus tents in use since the early 1980s, trailers formerly used by crews that installed the Alaskan pipeline, corrugated steel Quonset huts that date from World War II, houses converted into dorms at Fort Grant and a building in Florence constructed in 1930, in addition to a smattering of more modern facilities.

Many of those structures, particularly the tents and trailers, were brought in as temporary housing to ease overcrowding. Because they were never intended for long-term use, many lack the fire-suppression systems that come with permanent facilities.

In general, the prisons have equipment to cope with the smaller types of fires that happen most frequently, and prison officials rely on nearby fire departments for larger blazes.

While deadly fires in American detention facilities are rare, they do happen. Since 1975, 127 people have died in fires at jails and prisons, according to the fire association.

Safety records

The Republic reviewed hundreds of pages of fire-safety records for the 10 state-run facilities dating back more than 20 years. They included reports from fire marshals, Department of Administration inspectors, the state's loss-prevention division and architects.

Most prison buildings have not been inspected by an outside agency in more than five years. Despite requests for records from the state's risk-management division on what liabilities exist, administrators could produce only one 6-year-old document urging that action be taken.

Arizona law requires state buildings to be inspected at various intervals by multiple agencies, including the state fire marshal, the Department of Administration and the agency responsible for the building. Concerns raised during those inspections are forwarded to the Department of Administration, which puts together a capital-needs proposal and submits it to lawmakers.

The law says agencies "should give priority to fire and life safety projects."

In its proposed capital-improvement plan for 2010, which included pleas for $12 million to improve fire safety, the Department of Administration noted that "properly working fire alarms are a basic and mandatory requirement for office buildings and are particularly important in a secure corrections environment."

The plea was ignored, a year after lawmakers awarded the department $491,000 to replace fire-alarm systems in buildings around the Capitol Mall.

In theory, the state fire marshal could revoke the occupancy permit for a prison or juvenile facility. But the office has never moved to do so.

Numerous violations

Fire safety in any facility involves several basic elements: reducing hazards, detecting smoke and fires, suppressing fires through sprinklers and fire extinguishers, and evacuating occupants.

Investigators have found violations of each of those basic safety tenets in Arizona prisons, and in many cases they have not been corrected.

Fire-marshal reports, state-commissioned studies and reviews from the Department of Administration detail deficiencies back to the late 1980s, though inconsistent record keeping makes it difficult to determine which issues have been resolved. In one report, the inspector noted: "This is a fire trap and should be corrected. ... You've got more guts than me sitting on this time bomb."

That report, on the Tucson prison, came from a fire marshal's inspection in April 1988 that found deficient or non-existent warning or suppression systems.

Another fire marshal, visiting the same facility more than 20 years later, noted that many of the deficiencies remained.

Fire-marshal reports on state prisons from 2003 to 2009 showed deficiencies in many areas:

Reducing hazards. An inspection of Arizona State Prison Complex-Eyman in Florence found flammable material placed next to a transformer in a storage room. At Catalina Mountain School, a juvenile detention facility in Tucson, dryer vents were found to be non-removable and choked with lint - a potential hazard.

Maintenance conditions were so bad in a Tucson medical unit, the in-floor plumbing channel that houses waste lines and an electrical conduit became backed up with sewage for an entire year.

Prison officials say that hazards can be fixed for little or no money (??? FIX THEM already then!!!), and they often address (repress) the issues as soon as they are identified. Gaps in records make this difficult to verify independently.

•  Detecting fires. At Safford, Eyman and Tucson, more than 90 percent of smoke detectors don't function. Many of them are beyond their 20-year life expectancy; others have lost their ability to communicate with the prison's main control room and alert staff members to danger. An inspector at Stafford noted that fire-alarm pull boxes were not connected to any alarms and were "of decorative value only."

Investigators at Adobe and Black Canyon juvenile facilities found that dormitory doors were improperly ventilated, which could allow them to cause smoke-inhalation injuries or even death before enough smoke escaped the room to trigger a fire alarm. That issue has since been resolved by modifying the doors, said Laura Dillingham, a spokeswoman for the prison.

•  Suppressing fires. In Tucson, fire sprinklers had been painted over. In Yuma, inspectors have found fire extinguishers that were expired; at Lewis, they found extinguishers that were overcharged.

In 2004, the state hired Arrington Watkins Architects to identify fire-safety issues at Catalina Mountain. The resulting report contained so many issues that the state's loss-prevention division recommended "extraordinary measures be taken by the agency to protect the lives of the detained youth and staff."

One of the recommended measures, which was subsequently ordered by the fire marshal, was installing a sprinkler system at the facility, which is built from wood. But sprinkler heads increase the risk of attempted suicide by hanging, Dillingham said in an interview.

Dillingham said staff members constantly circulate through the rooms where juveniles sleep, making it unlikely that a fire could break out and spread undetected. In November, a fire marshal wrote a letter to the Department of Juvenile Corrections saying Catalina Mountain could remain open without fire sprinklers only if it maintained high staffing ratios. Current ratios call for at least one youth corrections officer per 18 juveniles, though at certain times during the day the ratio is as high as one to five.

Staffing became more difficult earlier this month, when the department laid off 200 employees in response to a 7.5 percent budget cut.

The department has maintained the ratios by using supervisors to fill in for corrections officers, Dillingham said. But future cuts could bring staffing below the fire marshal's mandate.

•  Evacuating buildings. At Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis, a 2005 report identified trouble with a building's roof hatch. If the hatch became obstructed in an emergency, there would be no escape route for officers stationed on the second floor or the roof.

The locks and control system at Catalina Mountain do not meet building codes. Some doors cannot be opened remotely, and many do not have an emergency-release function. The problem remains unresolved.
"They are life-safety issues, and we obviously need to be attentive to them and take corrective action,"

Charles Ryan, director of the Department of Corrections, said in an interview.

Prison officials say the stopgap efforts they've put in place, including placing corrections officers on fire watches, is effective enough to ensure inmates' safety given budget limitations.

"We take safety very seriously," Dillingham said. Officials at juvenile corrections are "extremely confident" their facilities could be evacuated in the event of a fire without anyone being injured.

High stakes

To date, no one has died in an Arizona prison fire. Prisoners and their families can file lawsuits only if prisoners are actually harmed, making pre-emptive suits difficult.

But some prisoners have filed grievances with the Department of Corrections, according to Middle Ground, a Tempe-based prison-reform group.

Stephen Karban, an inmate at the state prison in Tucson, complained in a letter to the fire marshal that inmates in the Winchester Unit were being housed in meeting rooms where there were not sufficient exits.

"Please inform me how your agency, in good faith, can allow this potentially dangerous situation to continue uncorrected," Karban wrote.

In the event of a major fire, the state could be on the hook for millions of dollars in damages.

"Everyone will sue us," said Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. "And we will lose."

The liability varies from prison to prison depending on where inmates and staff are housed or stationed.

Maximum-security areas where movement is severely restricted are typically built of concrete and steel, leaving little flammable material aside from an inmate's belongings. Minimum-security areas are built from more-flammable materials, including canvas tents and wood-and-metal trailers, but those areas allow more freedom of movement so inmates could flee from potential harm.

Last month a fire broke out at Florence, in an area with nearly 700 inmates and 14 corrections officers, when an inmate was heating up a bag of beans with an immersion heater. The trailers are equipped with smoke detectors but no sprinklers. The inmates were able to get out of the trailer and alert staff, who put the fire out within seconds, said Director of Offender Operations Robert Patton.

The majority of prison fires are along those lines: easily extinguished blazes caused by carelessness or by inmates who intentionally set mattresses or some other material on fire.

Corrections officers can deal with most small fires themselves with fire extinguishers or sprinkler systems that douse flames confined to cells.

Department of Corrections said they do not track fires in their facilities.

In a three-year period, the Tucson Fire Department responded to 25 fires at the state prison in Tucson, among the worst in terms of working smoke detectors.

Phil Mele, the state's fire marshal, said it is a question of when - not if - a building will burn. But as long as property damage and injuries are kept to a minimum in the meantime, he said, replacing the warning systems is not a high priority.

"Am I comfortable having facilities that don't have fully operating systems? No," Mele said. "What's within my authority to do? It's within my authority to point out that they need to be corrected and need to be addressed, and it's up to others to do something with it."

Responses from the two unions representing corrections officers were mixed. Michael Duran of the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association said he had not heard any complaints from officers about fire-safety conditions, and Brenda Hewitt of the Arizona Corrections Association declined to comment, citing legal concerns.

Donna Hamm, executive director of Middle Ground, criticized the state for not acting to resolve fire-safety issues.

"It exposes the state of Arizona to monumental fiscal liability and, of course, incalculable human tragedy," Hamm said. "It's a travesty."

Corrective action

Since 2005, officials have requested more than $58 million from the Legislature to address chronic fire-prevention problems at the prisons. They asked for $12 million in 2010, hoping to repair fire alarms, install sprinklers and make other safety improvements.

"We make those requests year in, year out because the need is not going away," said Ryan, the Corrections Department director.

To date, their requests have been denied. Lawmakers say they that the state budget crisis prevents them from paying for renovations.

"We just don't have the money," said Rep. Bill Konopnicki, R-Safford, a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Konopnicki said he is concerned about building conditions at state prisons and state facilities overall.

"It's a public-safety issue," he said. (stop sending "the public" to prison for everything if you can't keep us safe!)

In the late 1990s, the fire marshal cut staff and eliminated the position that allowed the agency to inspect prisons about once a year. "We went from having a dedicated person to 'the opportunity for inspection when available,' " Mele said.

In boom years that followed, legislators were more likely to put funds toward needs that were more popular than increasing protections for prisoners and corrections officers.

The prisons now have internal staff members responsible for inspections, and records indicate that fire marshals visit at least part of each complex every few years, though neither the Corrections Department nor the Fire Marshal's Office could produce evidence of inspection at Douglas or Eyman after 2002.

Fire-safety problems are part of an overall pattern of neglect at the prisons, where many buildings are no longer in use because of damage. Leaking roofs, broken floor tiles and sagging foundations have rendered many structures uninhabitable. Some residential units at the juvenile facilities don't have bathrooms, much less sprinklers.

Now, with Arizona facing its worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, the prospects of fixing fire systems in the prisons are all but nil.

Future unknown

It's unclear how the prison system's myriad safety issues would affect the state's ability to privatize its prisons, transferring operational authority to a corporation.

A company could decline to bid on facilities with fire-safety issues. Or a company could ask the state to indemnify it against any lawsuits filed in the event of a fire. (don't let them. Don't you dare.)


Prison officials say that until the Legislature proceeds with a request for proposals, they don't know what a deal might look like. Corrections officials were to meet Dec. 17 with a legislative committee that would give them the authority to proceed with privatization. They planned to discuss a timeline for issuing a request for proposal.

Then Gov. Jan Brewer called a special session to deal with the state's budget crisis, and the meeting was canceled. It has not been rescheduled.