This is a really comprehensive article by a current AZ DOC prisoner, which was originally published in this month's Prison Legal News - subscribe every prisoner you know to that resource for only $30/year. Joe Watson once worked for the Phoenix New Times, where Stephen Lemons has also featured this article in his blog this week. He gives Joe a pretty hard time about unrelated stuff, though.
I'm making Joe's piece even longer by inserting narratives of prisoner deaths from aproject we did last year for Prisoners' Justice Day, which we didn't observe this year. The art and stories were not part of PLN's version of this article.
Joe - this is not only well-written, but it took a hell of a lot of courage. Be strong and be well, my friend. Let us know how things go for you...
AZ Department of Corrections Central Office
Phoenix, AZ (July 2013)
Arizona Prison System Plagued by Politics, Privatization and Prisoner Deaths
AUGUST 2013
by Joe Watson
By the
time Jan Brewer replaced Janet Napolitano as Arizona’s governor in
2009, it had been 22 years since the Arizona Department of Corrections
(ADC) built the first prison in the United States designed exclusively
for permanent lockdown – a prison that became the prototype for supermax
facilities across the country.
Even before Brewer assumed the
governorship and brought Charles L. Ryan out of retirement to run the
ADC, Arizona’s prisons were known to be ruthless and inhumane. Few other
prison systems can claim the dubious distinction of leaving a mentally
ill prisoner in an outdoor cage for hours in scorching summer heat until
she literally baked to death. [See: PLN, Feb. 2010, p.32].
Yet
by playing politics, contracting with for-profit prison healthcare
companies and kowtowing to private prison firms, Governor Brewer and ADC
Director Ryan have taken a prison system already infamous for its
draconian conditions and unfettered incompetence and made it deadlier
and even more vindictive and profit-driven than ever before.
The
ADC, with a $1.1 billion budget in 2012, will soon open a new
maximum-security facility with 500 solitary confinement cells at a
prison complex in Buckeye, at a cost of $50 million. In doing so, state
officials ignored warnings by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
Amnesty International, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and
other human rights groups about the lasting, negative effects of
long-term isolation.
On June 11, 2013, Prison Legal News sent
copies of PLN’s October 2012 cover story on solitary confinement to
members of the Arizona legislative Joint Committee on Capital Review,
noting that “budget expenditures are a zero-sum game and money spent on
prison beds is money not spent on health care, education, affordable
housing, infrastructure and other services for the state’s citizens.”
PLN observed that solitary confinement has an adverse impact both in
terms of fiscal costs and higher recidivism rates for prisoners released
after being held in solitary.
“These conditions are gratuitously
cruel,” David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project,
said of the ADC’s Secure Management Units (SMUs), where prisoners are
held in solitary confinement. “There [is] no penological nor security
justification for those kinds of conditions.”
Nelson Douglas Johnson III strangled himself in an isolation cell at the AZ DOC (AKA "solitary confinement"). His sister remembers him here at the Maricopa County Courthouse on the Day of the Dead Prisoner (November 1, 2012)
But ADC
Director Ryan testified before the Joint Committee on Capital Review
that “there are no solitary confinement cells in Arizona prisons,”
apparently based on his own peculiar notion of what constitutes solitary
confinement. The Committee duly approved the 500-bed maximum-security
facility, which is scheduled to open in October 2014.
“Director
Ryan saying that ADC’s maximum-security units aren’t solitary
confinement is like the CIA claiming waterboarding is not torture,”
observed Caroline Isaacs, program director for the AFSC’s office in
Tucson. “Whatever you want to call them, the conditions in these
facilities are harmful to people’s physical and mental health.”
Since
Governor Brewer took office, the suicide rate in Arizona’s prison
system has increased while drug overdoses, homicides and untreated
medical conditions are responsible for other prisoner deaths. The ADC
reported that 81 prisoners died in 2012 while 36 deaths occurred in the
first half of 2013; most of the deaths were described as being due to
“apparent natural causes” or “unknown causes.”
Even after being
sued by the ACLU for failing to provide adequate medical treatment to
the state’s more than 40,000 prisoners, the ADC has continued to
contract prisoner healthcare to a for-profit company with a reputation
for neglect and incompetence.
And to punctuate Arizona’s
merciless criminal justice system under Governor Brewer’s leadership,
she has granted only a handful of commutations and has not issued a
single pardon – a dismal record that is unlikely to change during the
remainder of her tenure.
Outside AZ Department of Corrections' Central Office
(Phoenix, July 2013)
With Brewer as governor and Ryan as
director of Arizona’s prison system, conditions for the state’s
prisoners have steadily deteriorated – though private prison companies
have profited handsomely.
Calls to Privatize More Prisons
To
replace Dora Schriro – the state's prison chief under former Governor
Napolitano before they both left for positions with the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security – Brewer appointed Charles Ryan, who had retired as
the ADC’s director in 2003. Since his return, Ryan has parroted
Brewer’s calls for expanding prison privatization in Arizona.
At
the time of his reappointment, five of the state’s 15 prison complexes
were already operated by private companies: two by Utah-based Management
& Training Corporation (MTC), including a medium-security facility
in Kingman, and three by Florida-based GEO Group, the nation’s
second-largest for-profit prison firm. Collectively those complexes
house over 6,000 prisoners, or 15% of the state’s prison population.
Around
the same time, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the
American Legislative Exchange Council were collaborating with then-state
Senator Russell Pearce to draft a xenophobic anti-immigration bill,
SB1070, which was introduced in the state legislature in December 2009
and enacted into law the following year. [See: PLN, Nov. 2010, p.1].
SB1070
was expected to increase the number of people arrested due to
immigration-related violations; this would potentially benefit CCA,
which operates immigration detention facilities in Arizona.
Connecting the dots with AFSC-Tucson
Evo DeConcini Courthouse, Tucson (July 2013)
Within
Brewer’s first year in office, she and Ryan called for privatization of
the state’s entire prison system. The legislature obliged but CCA, GEO
Group and other for-profit prison companies shied away from wholesale
privatization. [See: PLN, Sept. 2010, p.42]. Therefore, in January 2010,
shortly after Senator Pearce introduced SB1070, Ryan proposed a more
modest addition of 5,000 new private prison beds to be opened within
three years. To justify the estimated $585 million cost, the ADC used a
combination of deceptive data and the anticipated impact of SB1070 to
project a need for an additional 8,500 prison beds by 2017.
Not
only were the projections wrong, the department never bothered to
compare the costs and quality of services of privately-operated prison
complexes with those run by the ADC, in violation of state law.
According to the Arizona Republic, “Arizona statutes require [the ADC]
to carry out a biannual performance study for every contract. The study
analyzes costs, the security and safety of each prison, how inmates are
managed and controlled, inmate discipline, programs, health and food
services, staff training, administration and other factors and then
compares these factors to other facilities.”
The ADC had not
conducted a private prison performance study since a state statute
requiring such studies was enacted in 1987. Undeterred, prison officials
proceeded with a request for proposals for 5,000 new private prison
beds.
Deadly Private Prison Escape
Governor Brewer and ADC
Director Ryan’s efforts to expand prison privatization in Arizona went
mostly unchallenged until July 30, 2010, when prisoners John Charles
McCluskey, Daniel Renwick and Tracy Province – with the help of
McCluskey’s cousin, Casslyn Mae Welch – escaped from a medium-security
prison in Kingman operated by MTC. Over the following three weeks the
escapees kidnapped a pair of truck drivers, had a shootout with police
and evaded authorities during a multistate manhunt throughout the
western U.S.
While on the run, McCluskey murdered two retirees,
Gary and Linda Haas, in the back of their camper off an old ranch road
in New Mexico. He and Welch then doused the bodies with an accelerant
and torched the camper.
Five days after the escape, a team of
state investigators fanned out across the Kingman prison complex to
determine how it happened. They discovered that MTC staff had ignored a
malfunctioning alarm – which had been going off hundreds of times a day
for over two years – that sounded when the escapees cut through a fence.
The
ADC also discovered eight burned-out perimeter lights, more broken
security equipment and, according to the Republic, “a lax, high-turnover
culture in which MTC’s green, undertrained staff and rookie supervisors
ignored alarms, left long gaps between patrols of the perimeter, left
doors leading out of some buildings open and unwatched, didn’t alert the
state or local police until hours after the escape, and failed in all
manner of basic security practices.”
A report issued by state
prison officials cited those and other problems at the MTC-run facility.
[See: PLN, March 2011, p.24]. The ADC’s on-site monitor at Kingman, who
was later fired, admitted that he had failed to address security
problems and had never even read the state’s contract with MTC.
McCluskey,
Province and Welch were ultimately captured and charged with the Haas’
murders (Renwick was arrested after he split from the group a few days
after the escape). Province pleaded guilty and received five life
sentences, Welch pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing, Renwick was
sentenced to 60 years and capital murder charges against McCluskey
remain pending.
Following the escape and nationwide manhunt, Ryan
and the ADC did damage control and made cosmetic changes to prison
security statewide. Ryan temporarily suspended all prisoner transfers to
Kingman and moved 238 supposedly high-risk prisoners out of the
facility, and the complex’s population dropped to 80% of capacity.
This
presumably would result in financial losses for MTC but the company
threatened to sue, citing its contract that guaranteed a minimum 97% bed
occupancy, and state officials ended up paying over $3 million to MTC
for empty prison beds. The company continues to operate the Kingman
facility.
“It’s disgusting but not surprising,” said Caroline
Isaacs. “Arizona is strapped for cash, and we don’t have the political
will or the legal muscle to go up against a corporation like that, so
they can operate with something close to impunity.” She added, “We’re so
desperate because of prison overcrowding. These companies have got the
state over a barrel. When things go wrong, is [ADC Director] Ryan really
going to cancel the contract? Probably not, and they know that.”
In
2011, once the escape had faded from the headlines, Brewer and Ryan
reintroduced their plan to privatize an additional 5,000 prison beds –
even though the ADC’s daily prisoner count had fallen in the previous
year due to fewer felony arrests in Maricopa County (the state’s
population center) and fewer probation violations statewide, among other
factors.
ADC officials downplayed their blatantly exaggerated
earlier prison population estimates and instead projected 3,800 more
prisoners entering the state’s prison system by June 2015, though they
failed to provide hard data to support those projections. The plan to
privatize more prison beds was met with bipartisan, if not broad,
criticism.
“The fact we’re moving forward with this outdated plan
is mind-boggling to me,” said Democratic state Rep. Chad Campbell,
Arizona’s House minority leader. “I don’t think there’s a need for it,”
agreed state Rep. Cecil Ash, a Republican who had unsuccessfully pushed
for sentencing reforms in the previous legislative session.
Regardless, Brewer and Ryan pressed ahead and four private prison companies responded to the ADC’s request for proposals.
In
the summer of 2011, ADC officials and representatives from CCA, GEO
Group, MTC and LaSalle Corrections – the companies bidding on the
5,000-bed contract – went on a tour around the state, holding town
hall-style meetings in communities from Winslow to Eloy to Coolidge. At
each meeting the companies deflected criticism about escapes and costs,
focusing instead on the promise of jobs and trotting out business
leaders and loyal employees.
“I work with wonderful people,” said
Linda Gibson, an antique shop owner who is also employed by CCA, during
a public meeting in Eloy, where CCA operates a facility that houses
prisoners from other states. “We have a lot of single mothers who work
at CCA, making good money, who have homes they wouldn’t have if it
wasn’t for CCA.”
Some communities, however, rejected the private
prison dog-and-pony show, with GEO Group’s proposal to build a facility
in the City of Goodyear, outside Phoenix, running into a “buzz saw” of
opposition according to the Arizona Republic. Mayor Thomas Schoaf of
nearby Litchfield Park called the proposal “a slap in the face to our
residents” and “a threat to the public welfare of our communities.”
Prisoners Driven to Suicide
Meanwhile,
an April 2012 report from Amnesty International, titled “Cruel
Isolation,” examined Arizona’s draconian Special Management Units at the
Arizona State Prison Complex (ASPC) in Eyman and other maximum-security
ADC facilities. Citing prisoner advocates, current and former prison
staff and the ADC’s own written policies, the report found that the ADC,
which houses over 2,900 prisoners in maximum-security facilities, was
“in violation of international law.”
Amnesty concluded that “the
cumulative effects of the conditions [in SMUs], particularly when
imposed for a prolonged or indefinite period, constitutes cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment.” Even those prisoners considered
especially dangerous, Amnesty argued, should be treated “with humanity
and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person,” pursuant to
international standards related to the treatment of prisoners.
“Amnesty
International recognizes that it may sometimes be necessary to
segregate prisoners for disciplinary or security purposes. However, all
measures must be consistent with international standards for humane
treatment,” Amnesty stated. “Article 10 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, which the USA has ratified, provides that
‘all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity
and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person,’ a
standard which the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee, the
treaty monitoring body, has stressed is a ‘fundamental and universally
applicable rule.’”
But according to Amnesty’s report, the ADC’s
Special Management Units – intended for prisoners who pose the greatest
physical threat to prison employees and the public – are too often
filled with mentally ill, nonviolent and vulnerable offenders.
Most
prisoners held in SMUs have little to no human interaction. With just
one or two hours out of their windowless cells each day, they must
choose to either bathe themselves or spend their limited out-of-cell
time in a small cage with 20-foot walls and a sliver of sky, which the
ADC contends is sufficient “outdoor recreation.” SMU prisoners cannot
participate in work, rehabilitative or educational programs. If they
protest their living conditions, guards ignore them or sometimes
deliberately deny them food.
It is little surprise then, but no
less tragic, that Arizona’s prison suicide rate, according to a U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics report released in December 2012, is higher
than the national average. Meanwhile, Amnesty found that at least 14 of
43 suicides recorded in Arizona prisons between October 2005 and April
2011 – almost 33% – occurred in SMUs, even though those units housed
less than 9% of the state’s total prison population.
“High rates
of suicide in solitary units is a widespread problem; that’s why many
states no longer house mentally ill inmates in solitary,” said Craig
Haney, a psychologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz. “The
severity of the conditions in those units ... most mentally healthy
people who go in are adversely affected. People can become so
despairing, so desperate that they take their own lives.”
According
to the ADC’s critics, prisoner suicides are likely underreported. And
of those that state prison officials publicly disclose, they do not
specify whether a suicide occurred in an SMU or other solitary
confinement unit.
A major deficiency in the SMUs is a lack of
treatment for seriously mentally ill prisoners. Amnesty International
found that “one prisoner diagnosed with [serious mental illness] spent
two years in SMU without once seeing a psychiatrist despite his repeated
requests and referrals by staff.” Another prisoner had completed a
seven-day mental health treatment program, Amnesty reported, “after
which he was returned to isolation in SMU where he hanged himself the
following day.”
Approximately 10,000 state prisoners require
ongoing mental health services, according to the ADC, including
prisoners in SMUs and general population units.
As part of an
investigative series into the state’s prison system, the Arizona
Republic found there were 470 attempts of self-harm or suicide by ADC
prisoners statewide over an 11-month period ending in May 2012.
In
one earlier incident, Anthony Lester, 26, a mentally ill prisoner who
had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bled to death in his two-man cell
at ASPC-Tucson in July 2010 after slashing his neck, wrist and groin
with a razor blade. Prison staff stood by and watched him die without
providing medical assistance. One of the guards, Orlando Pope, said he
didn’t help because he had never been trained on how to apply pressure
to a wound.
“When Tony was on his meds, he was our Tony,” said
Lester’s aunt, Patti Jones. “If he’d had access to care, he would have
lived.” Lester had been on suicide watch, but was removed two days
before he killed himself. A guard had mistakenly given him shaving
razors.
Just before the ADC provided suicide prevention training
to 8,806 prison employees in March 2012, Lester’s family filed a
wrongful death claim against the state, seeking $3 million. Pope and
four other guards received unpaid suspensions for failing to properly
respond while Lester was bleeding to death.
More recent suicides
in Arizona state prisons – three in one month – include the May 10, 2013
suicide of death row prisoner Milo Stanley, 50, who hung himself; Paul
Henderson, 22, who died from “an apparent suicide” on May 1, 2013; and
prisoner Joaquin Tamayo, 41, serving a five-year sentence, who killed
himself on April 22, 2013. All three deaths occurred at ASPC-Eyman. On
February 12, 2013, ADC prisoner Christina Black, 52, serving a life
sentence for murder, committed suicide at the Perryville prison complex
in Goodyear.
Other Deaths Due to Violence, “Gratuitous Cruelty”
Suicides,
whether in SMUs or other units, aren’t the only cause of unnecessary
deaths in Arizona’s prison system. Other prisoners have overdosed on
drugs, been killed by fellow prisoners or died because they received
inadequate medical care.
“Arizona’s prison system has two death
rows,” the Arizona Republic proclaimed in its investigative series. “One
is made up of the 126 inmates officially sentenced to death ... [and]
the other death row, the unofficial one, reaches into every prison in
Arizona’s sprawling correctional system. No judge or jury condemned
anyone in this group to death. They die as victims of prison violence,
neglect and mistreatment.”
Between 2010 and mid-2012, 37 Arizona
prisoners died on Arizona’s “other death row” – more than five times the
number of condemned prisoners executed during the same time period, the
Republic reported. The ADC conducts its own investigations into
prisoners’ deaths rather than an outside agency, and typically releases
scanty information.
According to Carl ToersBijns, a retired
former ADC deputy warden who worked at ASPC-Eyman, the lack of full
disclosure with respect to prisoners’ deaths is intentional.
“The
cleanup starts the moment the incident is reported: eliminating flag
words, eliminating individuals who may be relevant to the situation, cut
back the witness list,” ToersBijns said. “By the time it’s finalized,
the incident report is so clean and sterile you won’t know what happened
because it’s already been filtered. The direction is given ... was it
deliberate, accidental, suicide, homicide? They try to fix and create a
summary for that report that they can defend.
“A lot of drug
overdoses are [reported as] suicides,” ToersBijns continued. “A lot of
‘natural deaths’ are people who have been suffering medical conditions
but finally just expired. It’s not reflected on those reports and never
will be reflected in the news reports. Only the ones who were there know
what happened.”
But the Republic did manage to identify some of
the causes of the 37 deaths, by filing public records requests. At least
seven prisoners died after overdosing on heroin, for example.
“Nobody
ever told me he could die in prison of illegal drugs,” stated Cynthia
Krakoff, whose 36-year-old son, Carlo, died from a heroin overdose at a
Tucson prison on July 31, 2011. “If they can’t clean up the prisons,
they need to find a different way to treat the drug addicts.”
Unfortunately,
substance abuse treatment programs in Arizona prisons are lacking.
While around 75% of ADC prisoners report having drug and/or alcohol
problems, only 1 in 13 of those prisoners received substance abuse
treatment in fiscal year 2011.
Other deaths were due to
homicides. Seven prisoners were killed by fellow prisoners between 2010
and mid-2012, including Eduardo Martinez, who was beaten to death by
gang members at ASPC-Yuma in December 2011. He had been serving time for
writing bad checks. Christian Frost, 38, was killed at ASPC-Tucson on
February 22, 2013, while ASPC-Lewis prisoner John Jones, 63, was
murdered on June 17, 2013. An investigation into Jones’ death by the
ADC’s Criminal Investigation Unit is reportedly pending.
According
to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from 2001-2010,
Arizona has a prison homicide rate 25% higher than the national average.
With
respect to deaths due to substandard medical care, on March 6, 2012 the
ACLU – joined by the Berkeley, California-based Prison Law Office, the
Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms of Perkins Coie LLP
and Jones Day – filed suit against the ADC for unconstitutionally
denying prisoners adequate medical and mental health treatment. [See:
PLN, Sept. 2012, p.34].
The federal lawsuit, which seeks
declaratory and injunctive relief and calls for the state to improve
prison healthcare and address conditions in SMUs, alleges that Arizona
prisoners have suffered “serious, preventable injuries, disfigurements
and death.”
The complaint cites a prisoner who was ignored for
two years until he died due to liver cancer. A pregnant prisoner was
told by prison staff that her medical symptoms were “all in your head”;
she was then left alone in her cell, where she miscarried. One prisoner
was punished for administering CPR to another prisoner suffering a heart
attack while guards stood by and refused to summon medical assistance.
“In
recent years,” the lawsuit claims, “Defendants ignored repeated
warnings of the inadequacies of the healthcare system and of the
dangerous conditions in their isolation units that they received from
inmate grievances, reports from outside groups, and complaints from
prison personnel, including their own staff.”
The lawsuit also
describes a prisoner who was denied treatment for a cancerous growth on
his penis over a two-year period. His penis was eventually amputated,
but not before the cancer had spread to his stomach. Another prisoner
had most of his lip and mouth removed after waiting seven months for
medical care.
“In two decades of prison litigation, this is one
of the most broken systems I’ve seen,” said ACLU National Prison Project
director David Fathi. “The indifference to the needs of desperately ill
people is shocking. And the gratuitous cruelty we see in Arizona’s SMUs
is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in other states’ supermax prisons.”
On
March 5, 2013, the district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for
class certification in the lawsuit. The court certified a class
consisting of “All prisoners who are now, or will in the future be,
subjected to the medical, mental health, and dental care policies and
practices of the ADC,” and a subclass of “All prisoners who are now, or
will in the future be, subjected by the ADC to isolation, defined as
confinement in a cell for 22 hours or more each day” or confinement in
specified maximum-security units, including SMUs.
The case remains pending. See: Parsons v. Ryan, U.S.D.C. (D. Ariz.), Case No. 2:12-cv-00601-PHX-NVW.
Privatizing the Healthcare Problem
Given
the ADC's known deficiencies in providing adequate medical and mental
health care to prisoners, and having been criticized by human rights
groups, targeted by the news media and hit with a class-action lawsuit,
one would expect the ADC to make efforts to at least modestly improve
its dysfunctional medical system.
Instead, in April 2012, state
prison officials awarded Wexford Health Sources – a for-profit company
with a history of incompetence and medical neglect – a three-year, $349
million contract to provide healthcare to Arizona prisoners. The Wexford
contract went into effect in June 2012. [See: PLN, May 2012, p.36].
Less
than four months later the company had made quite a first impression.
On August 27, 2012, a vocational nurse employed by Wexford exposed more
than 100 prisoners at ASPC-Lewis to hepatitis C by contaminating the
prison’s insulin supply.
Wexford's PHX HQ (Summer 2012)
Nurse Nwadiuto Jane Nwaohia, who was
already under investigation by Arizona’s Board of Nursing for
undisclosed reasons, administered a routine dose of insulin to a
diabetic prisoner who had hepatitis C, then inserted the same needle
into another vial to draw more insulin for the same prisoner. The vial
was placed among other vials of insulin in a medication refrigerator and
used later that day to dispense insulin to 103 diabetic prisoners.
Medical
staff quickly discovered the contamination and destroyed all the vials
of insulin, and Nwaohia, according to a Wexford statement, was suspended
for violating “basic infection-control protocols while administering
medication that day.”
However, Wexford didn’t notify the state or Maricopa County officials until eight days after the incident.
“It’s
extremely disturbing that something like this could happen. It calls
for a thorough investigation to determine all of the surrounding causes
of the mistake or the negligence,” said Don Specter, director of the
Prison Law Office.
Wexford tried to deflect responsibility for
the insulin contamination by blaming a local staffing agency for
assigning Nwaohia to the prison complex. But Ken Kopczynski, executive
director of the Private Corrections Working Group, which opposes prison
privatization, criticized state officials who contracted prisoner
healthcare to Wexford and then failed to maintain proper oversight.
“This is a problem with privatization,” Kopczynski noted. “[The ADC is] just accepting who Wexford will hire.”
State
prison officials threatened to fine Wexford a paltry $10,000 after the
hepatitis C contamination incident, which followed other disturbing
incidents.
A prisoner at ASPC-Florence attempted to commit
suicide on August 23, 2012 after not receiving his psychotropic
medication for an entire month. According to the ADC, Wexford’s failure
to provide the medication to the prisoner, who was found hanging from a
sheet in his cell, was a “significant, non-compliance issue.”
Ten
days earlier, ADC mental health contract monitor Ben Shaw had issued a
memo that described significant shortages among Wexford’s mental health
staff.
“Wexford’s current level of psychiatry staffing is grossly
insufficient to meet [its] contractual requirement,” he wrote.
“Further, this staffing level is so limited that patient safety and
orderly operation of ADOC facilities may be significantly
compromised.... Wexford currently has 14.85 psychiatry FTE’s [full time
employees] allocated to address the clinical needs of 8,891 patients who
are prescribed psychotropic medications. Wexford now employs a total of
5.95 FTE psychiatry providers (approximately 33% of their allocation)
[with] 8.9 FTE’s vacant (leaving a vacancy rate of 66%).”
Also in
August 2012, a Wexford nurse at the women’s prison in Perryville
administered medication to a prisoner by having her “lick the powdered
medication from her own hand” rather than putting the meds in a cup of
water, in violation of policy. Further, a number of prisoners at the
facility, the state learned, “may not have been receiving their
medications as prescribed due to expired prescription[s] and
inappropriate renewals or refills.”
On September 21, 2012 the ADC
issued a “Written Cure Notification” to Wexford that detailed a litany
of contract violations – including inadequate staffing levels, a
decrease in routine institutional care, incorrect or incomplete
medication prescriptions and refill procedures, inconsistent medical
records documentation, lack of responsiveness to incident urgency and
reporting requirements, and an unresponsive approach to prisoners’
grievances.
ADC officials ordered Wexford to fix the staffing
problems, properly distribute and document medication for prisoners and
communicate more effectively when problems arise. ADC Director Ryan
later said in a written statement that Wexford was being afforded a
chance to “improve communications and ensure [that] the healthcare needs
of the inmates incarcerated by the State of Arizona are being met.”
Wexford,
on the other hand, shifted blame back to the state. In a letter to Ryan
the company stated the ADC “must recognize that the system that was in
place” before Wexford’s contract began was “extremely weak.”
“This
is more proof that privatization is not saving us money, not providing
better services and is not any more efficient,” said Caroline Isaacs
with the AFSC. “While the state clearly had its problems, just inserting
another layer to the bureaucracy is no way to address the problems, and
it complicates the matter.”
Doris Marie Provine, a justice
studies professor at Arizona State University, noted that “When the
state locks someone up, it assumes responsibility to provide safe and
humane conditions of confinement. No amount of outsourcing will change
that.”
The ADC apparently thought otherwise; after terminating
its contract with Wexford in January 2013 due to “both parties
encountering unforeseeable challenges,” state prison officials instead
contracted with Corizon, another for-profit prison healthcare company
with a history of abuses and neglect. Corizon began providing medical
care to prisoners on March 4, 2013.
“Merely replacing one
for-profit prison contractor with another will only prolong the crisis
in Arizona’s prisons,” said Dan Pochoda, legal director of the ACLU of
Arizona. “There is no reason to think that anything will change under
Corizon, Inc.”
Shutting the Safety Valve of Justice
Unfortunately,
Arizona prisoners with life-threatening medical conditions who apply
for commutations of their sentences are largely out of luck, as Governor
Brewer apparently doesn’t like making clemency decisions. Or perhaps
she simply doesn’t like justifying them.
In April 2012, Brewer
replaced three of the five members of Arizona’s Board of Executive
Clemency – board chairman Duane Belcher; Marilyn Wilkens, who was
appointed in 2010; and Ellen Stenson, appointed by former Governor
Napolitano in 2007.
According to Belcher, Governor Brewer was
displeased by the board’s 2009 majority recommendation to grant clemency
to convicted murderer William Macumber, who had raised a strong claim
of innocence. Wilkens also indicated that Brewer was dissatisfied with
the way she had voted in a clemency case.
“It was expressed
clearly that there was dissatisfaction with my vote on a particular
issue, and that I had not voted the way they wished that I would have
voted,” she said. According to one source, that case was most likely the
clemency board’s January 26, 2012 unanimous recommendation to reduce
74-year-old Robert Flibotte’s 90-year sentence for possession of child
porn to five years plus lifetime supervision.
Governor Brewer overruled both clemency recommendations.
The
clemency board’s new members include Brian Livingston, a retired police
officer and executive director of the Arizona Police Association;
Melvin Thomas, a former Arizona warden who was employed by private
prison firm GEO Group after working for the ADC for 21 years; and new
board chairman Jesse Hernandez.
Hernandez had worked on some of
Arizona’s more recent high-profile conservative political campaigns,
including leading a Republican Latino group’s support for anti-immigrant
legislation SB1070. Hernandez was also chairman of a group that tried
to help state Senator Russell Pearce win his recall election in November
2011.
The replacement of the clemency board members didn’t go
smoothly, however. An attorney for death row prisoner Samuel Lopez
challenged Brewer’s appointment of the new board members in court,
claiming the committee that had conducted interviews and made
recommendations did not comply with the Open Meetings Law and other
state statutes, and that the new members had not received required
training before they began conducting hearings. Lopez’s attorney refused
to participate in an initial clemency hearing, saying the board wasn’t
authorized to act on clemency petitions. Lopez was executed on June 27,
2012.
Brewer’s three new clemency board members, as gatekeepers
to the clemency process, will help determine whether prisoners’
commutation and pardon petitions are sent to her office for
consideration.
“It’s clear to me now that they are trying in any
way they can to manipulate the outcome of clemency hearings,” said
Belcher. “If the cases don’t go before the governor, she doesn’t have to
say yes or no.”
Not that prisoners seeking clemency have much of a chance anyway.
Between
January 2009 and June 2013, Governor Brewer granted just 28
commutations due to prisoners’ life-threatening medical conditions and 6
for non-medical reasons. Her poor record on granting clemency petitions
mirrors that of prior Arizona governors, but she is the first governor
in at least 35 years to not issue a single pardon, denying all of the
board’s pardon recommendations. She has never commuted a death sentence.
One
noteworthy exception to Brewer’s stingy clemency policy was her
decision to commute the life without parole sentence of ADC prisoner
Betty Smithey in August 2012, resulting in Smithey’s immediate release
after serving 49 years. [See: PLN, Dec. 2012, p.50].
In a state
where the prison population has increased eight-fold over the past 30
years; where budget cuts have created a two-year backlog for the
clemency board; and where more than 90% of Arizona’s 76,000 felony
criminal cases each year are settled by plea bargains driven by harsh
mandatory minimums, the clemency process is considered the criminal
justice system’s safety valve.
Yet Brewer continues to deny most
clemency applications, even those that apparently have merit. One
particularly egregious case involved William Macumber, who was convicted
of a double homicide in 1975 and sentenced to life.
Former state
judge and public defender Thomas O’Toole told the clemency board in
2009 that another man, Ernest Valenzuela, had confessed the killings to
him in 1967, but due to attorney-client privilege he didn’t disclose the
confession until after his client died in a prison fight. “There is no
doubt in my mind that Ernesto Valenzuela committed those crimes,”
O’Toole said. However, the judge over Macumber’s criminal case refused
to allow O’Toole to testify about his client’s confession, and the
Arizona Supreme Court agreed that the trial court could assert
attorney-client privilege on behalf of Valenzuela even though he was
deceased.
In 2009, based on O’Toole’s testimony and other
evidence in the case – including evidence suggesting that Macumber had
been framed by his ex-wife, who worked at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s
Office – the clemency board recommended that his sentence be commuted.
The
board, then chaired by Duane Belcher, found not only that Macumber had
served an excessive amount of time in prison and was not a threat to
society, but that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice, stating,
“the evidence that now exists certainly casts serious doubt on Mr.
Macumber’s conviction.”
Regardless, Governor Brewer denied the board’s recommendation without explanation.
“Sometimes
the law has a disproportionate impact and may be too rigid. That’s what
the pardon power is for,” said P.S. Ruckman, an Illinois political
science professor who runs a blog about clemency and pardons. “Brewer
has the power and discretion to have a larger sense of justice and to do
something about it. That’s her duty.”
But with Brewer failing in
that duty the Arizona courts stepped in, scheduling an evidentiary
hearing after Macumber filed a petition for post-conviction relief.
Prosecutors offered a plea deal rather than proceed with the hearing,
and on November 7, 2012, Macumber, now 77 years old, pleaded no contest
to second-degree murder and was released on time served – over Brewer’s
public objection. He had spent 37 years in prison.
Private Prison Contract Awarded
The
ADC's long-delayed performance study of the state’s private prisons was
finally released in December 2011, and predictably found, in a
self-serving manner, that the state’s private and publicly-operated
prisons were comparable in both cost and quality of services. Yet
according to the American Friends Service Committee, the ADC’s study
included “very little methodological information or supporting data,
suffers from inconsistent data collection procedures, and overlooks
important measures of prison safety.”
The AFSC had filed a
lawsuit challenging the state’s proposed 5,000-bed private prison
contract on September 12, 2011, seeking an injunction prohibiting the
ADC from awarding the contract, but the suit was dismissed due to lack
of standing. The organization also filed an unsuccessful administrative
challenge that served to delay the contracting process.
The ADC
canceled its contract proposal for 5,000 new private prison beds in
December 2011 and issued a revised proposal for 2,000 beds, which was
later reduced to 1,000.
Never mind that Arizona’s prison
population had declined over the previous year, which indicated that
additional prison beds were not needed. Never mind that, according to
the ADC’s own records, there were around 2,000 empty beds in the state’s
prison system at the time the ADC was soliciting a contract for 1,000
more private prison beds.
And never mind that a September 2010
report by the Arizona State Auditor’s office, based on ADC data, noted
that minimum- and medium-security private prisons in the state actually
cost more to operate than government-run prisons, when comparable costs
were taken into account. [See: PLN, July 2012, p.45].
In February
2012, the AFSC released a report titled “Private Prisons: The Public’s
Problem,” which provided a quality assessment of privately-operated
prisons in Arizona. The report found that the state did not need
additional prison beds and was wasting money on prison privatization;
that private prisons had “serious security flaws” and “serious staffing
problems,” and did not measure recidivism rates; and that private prison
companies were “buying influence” through lobbying and political
campaign contributions, and were not accountable to Arizona taxpayers.
Overall, the report revealed “widespread and persistent problems in
private facilities around safety, lack of accountability, and cost.”
On
August 31, 2012, the ADC announced that its 1,000-bed private prison
contract, worth $21.5 million annually, had been awarded to Corrections
Corporation of America. The contract, for an initial period of ten years
with options for two 5-year renewals, includes a 90% bed occupancy
guarantee.
In fairness, CCA had worked hard to win the contract.
The company employed a cadre of lobbyists, including Paul Senseman,
Governor Brewer’s one-time spokesman before leaving her administration
in 2011, who worked for a lobbying firm hired by CCA, Policy Development
Group. His wife, Kathryn Senseman, was also a CCA lobbyist.
Additionally, CCA hired lobbying firm HighGround Public Affairs
Consultants, a company founded by Chuck Coughlin, Brewer’s former
campaign manager and policy advisor. [See: PLN, July 2012, p.45].
“If
you place two of your lobbyists at the right and left hand of the
governor of the state and she has final say and oversight of the
Department of Corrections, I would say that’s a pretty smart business
strategy,” said Caroline Isaacs.
According to the AFSC, CCA had
also made at least $35,000 in campaign contributions to Arizona
candidates during the 2010 election cycle and donated $10,000 to
Brewer’s “Yes on 100” sales tax initiative. CCA’s other political
connections included former Arizona U.S. Senator Dennis DeConcini, who
serves on CCA’s board of directors; additionally, Governor Brewer had
appointed former CCA employee and lobbyist Mark Brnovich as chairman of
the state’s Commission on Privatization and Efficiency.
CCA will
open the first 500 contract beds at its prison complex in Eloy by
January 2014, and the remaining 500 beds should be on line a year later.
All of the beds are for medium-security prisoners.
The contract
also gives CCA an option to operate another 1,000 prison beds after 2015
provided that there is an increase in the state’s medium-security
prison population, which – based on the ADC’s classification system –
can be easily manipulated by arbitrarily increasing scores on prisoners’
security-risk assessments.
State Rep. Chad Campbell joined a
group of Democrats, clergy members and civil rights organizations in
asking Governor Brewer to rescind the state’s private prison contract.
Of course she declined.
“The bottom line is we need to protect
safety while protecting taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Campbell, “and
expansion of private prisons does neither.”
The AFSC was more
blunt, concluding in its February 2012 report that either “our state
leaders are so ideologically wedded to the idea of privatization that
they are unable or unwilling to face reality,” or that “they are
beholden to the for-profit prison industry and that this industry has
such unmitigated power in Arizona that it has simply hijacked the
democratic process.”
Conclusion
Governor Brewer and ADC
Director Ryan’s negative influence on Arizona’s prison system will
persist long after they depart from office unless criminal justice
advocates, human rights groups and Arizona voters take action.
There
have been some glimmers of hope, including an unprecedented recall
campaign against former state Senator Russell Pearce, the author of
SB1070, who was removed from office in November 2011. SB1070 was largely
struck down by the federal courts after the U.S. Justice Department
sued the state of Arizona, although the bill’s “show me your papers”
provision, which allows law enforcement officers to question people
about their citizenship status based on reasonable suspicion, was upheld
by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25, 2012. See: Arizona v. United
States, 132 S.Ct. 2492 (2012).
Also, in November 2012 the ADC
released video of the events surrounding the 2010 suicide of Anthony
Lester at ASPC-Tucson, resulting in public outrage. Prison officials had
fought for two years against the release of the video, which showed
multiple guards standing around for 23 minutes, doing nothing to help
Lester as he bled to death. Channel 12 News KPNX had to file suit in
state court to obtain the video footage; the court found the ADC had
wrongly refused a reporter’s request for the video and ordered the ADC
to pay $26,000 in attorney’s fees to the news station.
After
seeing the video, state Rep. Chad Campbell called for Ryan’s resignation
as ADC director. Predictably, that hasn’t happened.
The
class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Prison Law Office over
inadequate medical treatment in Arizona’s prison system remains pending
and hopefully will result in improved medical and mental health care,
although the state still contracts with Corizon.
Neither Brewer
nor Ryan is expected to be out of a job until at least January 2015,
when Arizona’s next governor is inaugurated. At least until then, the
state’s prison system will continue to suffer under their leadership.
More
prisoners will needlessly die due to suicide, violence and medical
neglect. The state’s prison system will expand its use of solitary
confinement. Private prison companies will continue to profit at the
expense of taxpayers. And prisoners’ clemency petitions will be largely
ignored by the clemency board’s new members appointed by Governor
Brewer.
All of this should matter to Arizonans.
“This
matters,” according to a June 9, 2012 Arizona Republic editorial,
“because tax dollars should buy secure prisons. It matters because
inmates who survive a brutal system are unlikely to become good
neighbors when they return to our communities. It matters because
assuring the basic needs and safety of prisoners says a great deal more
about us than it does about them.”
It matters, but apparently not to most Arizona lawmakers who presumably have the power to improve the state’s prison system.
Sources:
Arizona Republic; “Cruel Isolation: Amnesty International’s Concerns
About Conditions in Arizona Maximum Security Prison,” Amnesty
International (April 2012); Center for Media and Democracy;
www.prwatch.org; Rolling Stone; www.azfamily.com;
http://tucsoncitizen.com; www.kpho.com; Phoenix New Times; Huffington
Post; www.afsc.org; http://arizonaprisonwatch.blogspot.com;
www.thinkprogress.org; www.pardonpower.com; www.businessinsider.com;
http://azcapitoltimes.com; www.azcorrections.gov; www.kgun9.com
(40-foot long community-chalked mural for dead prisoners, from the roof)
SOS From Arizona's Other Death Row
firehouse gallery, phoenix
JULY 2012
At 6pm, we'll have the following:https://www.facebook.com/events/637501102963089/ 
Behind the Badge: A Theatrical Examination of Police and
Prison in America.
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