The Marshall Project: Surviving Rape in Prison videos

These come from the Marshall Project: they offer good advice for people of all genders facing jail or prison time. Trigger warning: descriptions of sexual and physical violence - which comes with ideas on how to avoid being victimized in prison. 

AZ DOC tries to wriggle out of fine for allowing rape of teacher....

EDIT 05/18/2019

#CHUCKCHUCK #DARTHryan #DarkSideRyan  #FireChuckRyan" 

#DELIBERATEindifferenceKILLS

@dougducey

Arizona Corrections Department appealing workplace safety fine in prison teacher rape case

• Article by: BOB CHRISTIE , Associated Press
• Updated: February 6, 2015 - 3:50 PM       STARTRIBUNE

PHOENIX — The Arizona Department of Corrections does not believe it should have to pay a $14,000 fine that state workplace safety regulators levied against the agency for failing to protect a teacher who was raped by an inmate in a sex offender unit.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show the department filed an appeal last week to overturn the fine issued by Industrial Commission of Arizona. A prisons spokesman said the agency believes there is a basis for the appeal, but he did not elaborate.

Arizona has faced intense criticism over the attack. Prison officials sent out only a vague press release that referred to an assault on an employee after the January 2014 rape. The details of the assault came to light only after The Associated Press obtained documents under a public records request and interviewed people familiar with the case.

The attack raised questions about prison security because the teacher was put into a room full of sex offenders with no guards nearby and no closed-circuit cameras. She had only a radio to call for help.
The state found itself facing more scrutiny this week after lawyers for the attorney general's office argued in court that the woman's lawsuit should be thrown out. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard wrote that the teacher routinely worked in classrooms and there is always a risk of assault when working with prisoners.

A federal judge on Thursday refused to dismiss the teacher's civil rights lawsuit, writing that the lawsuit raised plausible allegations that the warden and other top officials created a dangerous environment that led to the rape.

The workplace-safety investigation was launched last July after the AP story provided the first detailed account of the incident.

Authorities have said inmate Jacob Harvey, who was less than a year into a 30-year sentence for a home-invasion and rape, lingered after other inmates left the room on Jan. 30, 2014, then repeatedly stabbed the teacher with a pen before raping her.

Harvey remains in prison, and he is awaiting trial on new charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
The appeal of the $14,000 fine levied in January by the state Industrial Commission seeks a hearing before an administrative law judge.

The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health recommended a fine of $9,000 for two violations of workplace-safety rules. But commissioners boosted that to $14,000 at a hearing last month, with one commissioner saying the violations showed the rape "should never have occurred in that facility."

Commissioner Joseph Hennelly Jr. even suggested the department could be hit with an additional $25,000 fine, but he was told state laws didn't allow it in this case.

A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said the department believes there are a significant number of factual inaccuracies in the worker safety agency's report that it plans to contest.

"The 2014 assault on the ADC teacher was a cowardly and despicable crime, for which the inmate is rightfully facing prosecution," spokesman Doug Nick said in an email. "The safety and well-being of all ADC staff is the department's paramount priority, and the victim has our full assistance and support."
Scott Zwillinger, the teacher's lawyer, criticized the Corrections Department for appealing the workplace safety citations.

"They refuse to acknowledge when they have issues. They refuse to be introspective and look and evaluate and make changes," Zwillinger said Friday. "So rather than accept what seems a relatively obvious conclusion and to correct these matters, all they simply do is deny and fight on."

State prison officials have since installed cameras in prison classrooms, increased patrols and issued pepper spray to civilian workers. They have said issuing pepper spray had been planned before the rape.

In minutes of the Jan. 8, 2015, meeting of the Industrial Commission where the fines were levied, commissioners repeatedly questioned how the teacher could have been placed in a room filled with sex offenders unattended. Commission Chairman David Parker said he understands there are situations where prisoners can end up alone with civilian staff.

"But something went wrong here, and this is different," he said.

Chuck Ryan's legacy: Gangs and rapists rule the AZ DOC.

#CHUCKCHUCK #DARTHryan #DarkSideRyan  #FireChuckRyan" 

#DELIBERATEindifferenceKILLS

hope @dougducey has the balls to deal with this guy Ryan...

As many folks who follow this site are aware, a prison teacher was stabbed and raped at the AZ DOC a year ago; the court hasn't dismissed her case yet, thank god. Hopefully her suit will be a small vindication to those of you who haven't been able to hold the AZ DOC's feet to the fire on this issue - and a great use to those of you who are currently litigating on these issues, as well. This remark from the victim about who bears responsibility for the high level of violence in AZ prisons bears paying attention to, especially if you've lost someone to it:


"The attack raised questions about prison security after reports showed she was put into a room full of inmates with no guards nearby.

Authorities said Harvey had lingered behind after others left the room, then repeatedly stabbed the victim with a pen before raping her.

In a September interview with the AP, the woman said she primarily blamed Corrections Director Charles Ryan for putting her in danger. She said rampant understaffing meant no one checked on her while she was in the classroom."

Surviving the violence is a serious issue at the AZ DOC, as far as prisoners and the parents of prisoners, are concerned, too - like those of Neil Early, mudered at ASP-Kingman last month. Prisons are run by state and gang violence, and are thus inherently unsafe institutions to live or work in. But Arizona's are also grossly short-staffed (presumably so we can divert more money to the pocketbooks of out-of-state profiteers), so employees and prisoners alike are often left to fend for themselves. With plenty of blind spots to allow the prison heroin traffic to readily flourish (which sedates the masses, you see), the most vulnerable are easy prey.

That explains, in brief, why one union for AZ correctional officers, the Arizona Corrections  Association, has asked Judicial Watch to intervene due to the high incidence of assaults on officers under Ryan's tenure. In fact, Here's the AZCPOA 2011 letter of no confidence in Charles Ryan's leadership.  Note how the AZCPOA letter in that second link makes references to documents being routinely falsified and officers being punished for reporting security concerns.


Here is a list of links to other AzPW posts about prison safety, specifically for those of you helping someone fight the AZ DOC for protection from gangs, bad debts, racists, homophobes, or certain death out on the GP yards.

• AZ DOC Protective Custody Battles: Surviving the Fight 
•  
• AZ DOC Protective Custody Battles: Letter to the Endangered Prisoner
•  
• AZ DOC Prisoners and activists call on DOJ to investigate violence, gangs, prison rape

Follow the links above, and hold Chuck Ryan accountable for your loved one's safety by addressing him here: CRYAN@azcorrections.gov. Be sure you put your legislators in the cc line - they fund his department, even though the governor is his boss. Don't bother with Ryan's subordinates, unless they are actually helping you. Send all your communications about the danger your loved one faces to his in-box, and insist on confirmation that it's been received.

Meanwhile, if you cant print and send them the things they need yourself, tell prisoners to write to Phoenix ABC at PO Box 7241 / Tempe, AZ 85281. They should ask for info about the issue they're dealing with: folks at the ABC will send self-help articles about their rights, copies of relevant policy, etc. PHX ABC may also be reached via email at collective@phoenixabc.org. Or find them on Facebook here.

Finally, here is the list of attorneys I'd send you to if you needed help suing the AZ DOC. None of them asked to advertise with me, by the way - I put this together for you, not for them: 

-------------from the AP/East Valley Tribune-------------

Arizona wants lawsuit filed by raped prison teacher tossed

Posted: Monday, February 2, 2015 12:42 am

Associated Press |East Valley Tribune

PHOENIX (AP) — Lawyers for the state of Arizona will urge a judge on Monday to dismiss a civil-rights violations lawsuit filed by a Department of Corrections teacher who was raped by a convicted sex offender in a prison classroom.

The lawsuit blames corrections employees for failing to establish proper security and the department's health care provider for improperly assessing prisoner Jacob Harvey's mental health. That allowed the then-20-year-old convicted rapist to be classified as a relatively low-risk offender and gain access to the classroom on Jan. 30, 2014.

A federal judge will hear arguments on the state's request to dismiss the case Monday. A deputy attorney general wrote that the teacher routinely worked in classrooms at the Eyman prison complex in Florence, and there is always a risk of assault when working with prisoners. He wrote the case should be dismissed because the teacher can't show the defendants had actual knowledge of or willfully ignored impending harm.
"By being placed in a classroom at the complex, the officers were not placing plaintiff in any type of situation that she would not normally face," deputy attorney general Jonathan Weisbard wrote.

The victim's lawyer says there is nothing normal about his client being placed unguarded in a classroom with convicted sex offenders.

"To the contrary, the complaint alleges in substantial detail (and plaintiff will prove) that there is nothing 'normal' or 'routine' about a teacher being left alone in a room for nearly ninety minutes with six or seven sex offenders and special needs inmates, including at least two who were convicted of violent sexual crimes," attorney Scott Zwillinger wrote.

The woman, who is not being identified by The Associated Press because she's a sexual assault victim, also is suing prison health care provider Corizon Health Inc. Lawyers for Corizon also are asking that the case be dismissed and deny wrongdoing.

A claim the woman made against the state before filing the lawsuit sought $4 million.

The attack raised questions about prison security after reports showed she was put into a room full of inmates with no guards nearby.

Authorities said Harvey had lingered behind after others left the room, then repeatedly stabbed the victim with a pen before raping her.

In a September interview with the AP, the woman said she primarily blamed Corrections Director Charles Ryan for putting her in danger. She said rampant understaffing meant no one checked on her while she was in the classroom.

"Safety's got to come before everything, and there's just this attitude that we have the number of staff we need because we say we do," she said.

A prison spokesman called the rape "a cowardly and despicable crime, for which the inmate is rightfully facing prosecution" and said safety is always paramount.

Harvey is awaiting trial on rape, assault, kidnapping and other charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Transgender prisoner raped at CCA Eloy Detention Ctr, punished with solitary confinement.

from the transgender law center:

 

ICE Retaliates Against Marichuy, Places Her in Solitary Confinement #freemarichuy

Transgender Law Center
August 11, 2014

ICE Retaliates Against Transgender Woman Raped in Eloy Detention Center by Placing Her in Solitary Confinement Against Her Will; Family and Supporters Continue to Call for Marichuy’s Immediate Release as Her Mental Health Worsens
 
Marichuy Leal Gamino, a transgender woman raped in the privately-run Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, was placed in solitary confinement for two days by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Marichuy (legal name: Jesus Leal Gamino, A# 047-283-870) was placed in segregation against her will and as calls for her release escalated with support from over 60 LGBT and immigrant rights organizations nationwide and solidarity actions in Los Angeles and New York.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO FREE MARICHUY

According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, using confinement to protect a threatened population is a punitive measure. Solitary confinement is known to cause severe psychological symptoms, including depression, insomnia, racing thoughts, and hallucinations. For Marichuy, these symptoms were compounded by post-traumatic stress due to her recent assault. On August 4, after two weeks of living in the same detention facility where she was assaulted, she reported feeling suicidal.

Karolina Lopez, a transgender woman formerly detained in Eloy, explains, “What’s happening to Marichuy is not so different from what I went through, or what I saw other trans women in Eloy experience. I was harassed by two men, then placed in solitary confinement. Officials said it was for my own security, but they treated me like I had done something wrong. I almost went crazy, I still have fear of small spaces, and of officials. If ICE actually cares about Marichuy’s security, they should let her go.”

Since Marichuy was first detained in Eloy over a year ago, ICE has failed to provide even a minimum level of safety and dignity. Now, in response to the pressure of public attention, ICE has threatened to send Marichuy to yet another detention facility, further from her family and community in Arizona, instead of using its discretion to release her from detention.

Around the nation, LGBTQ and immigrant communities are calling for Marichuy’s immediate release. A petition to the national ICE headquarters has more than 3,500 signatures, calling on Director Andrew Lorenzen-Strait to free Marichuy as ICE has demonstrated they cannot keep her safe. Over 60 organizations around the country, including the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Detention Watch Network, have publicly called for Marichuy’s release back to her family and community, where she can begin to heal from the rape that took place under ICE’s watch.

 CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION TO FREE MARICHUY

Teacher victimized in AZ DOC prison rape files claim for $4 million.

Arizona teacher files $4M claim in prison rape

Craig Harris, The Republic | azcentral.com  
5:03 p.m. MST July 18, 2014

A teacher who was assaulted and raped after being left alone in a state prison classroom with convicted sex offenders earlier this year filed a $4 million claim Thursday against the Arizona Department of Corrections.

Department officials declined to comment, but prisons Director Charles Ryan has previously acknowledged that the woman was "brutally assaulted."

Inmate Jacob Harvey was indicted in May on charges of sexual assault, kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the Jan. 30 attack.

In the notice of claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, the woman's attorney alleges the teacher was in a room with seven sex offenders on the day of attack with no supervision from correctional officers. The claim says the state engaged in gross negligence and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon the woman.

The claim says the woman typically would teach inmates in the visitation room at the Meadows Unit, which houses sex offenders, at Eyman Prison in Florence. That area was monitored by security cameras and correctional staff.

Yet, on the day of the attack, because of a special event, she was sent to a classroom that wasn't monitored by security cameras and for 90 minutes "not a single corrections officer entered the classroom to perform a security check," the claim says.

At the end of the teaching session, six of the inmates left the classroom, but Harvey remained behind. He stabbed the woman repeatedly with a pen, choked her, slammed her head into the floor, tore off her clothes and raped her, the claim states.

"The lack of basic security measures provided Harvey the opportunity to rape and assault (the victim) that he never should have had," the claim says.

The Arizona Republic does not publish names of sexual-abuse victims.

"They handed her a radio and said: 'If anyone acts out, let us know,'" said Scott Zwillinger, the woman's attorney. "The guy who raped her should have never been in a medium-custody unit."

The teacher told investigators she screamed for help, but none arrived. Afterward, Harvey tried to use her radio to call for help. It had apparently been changed to a channel the guards didn't use, so Harvey let her use a phone.

A medium-custody unit is the second-lowest classification for inmates held in the Department of Corrections.
Harvey is now in a maximum-custody unit.

Harvey, 20, was originally serving a sentence until 2041 after being convicted of sexual assault, kidnapping and dangerous crimes against children.

Zwillinger said Harvey was convicted of raping and beating a woman in front of her toddler during a home invasion.

The claim says the DOC failed to provide a safe environment for the teacher and created a situation "where a violent rapist was left alone wholly unsupervised in a classroom with a teacher who did not have sufficient training, expertise and equipment to manage the inmate and protect herself."

The claim says that if the state does not settle, the woman will file state and federal lawsuits, and that "it is likely a judgment will be obtained that, in total, will exceed 10 million dollars."

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

AZ DOC's Chuck Ryan takes rape seriously. Seriously?

Most readers are aware by now that a teacher at AZ DOC's supermax complex, ASPC-Eyman, was stabbed and raped in January after being left alone in a classroom with one of the sex offenders she was educating, on a sex offender unit, where teachers have routinely been left alone with students. Here's the more complete account of the incident by the AP just last month.

One might expect this to have happened sooner or with greater frequency, given the poor security measures taken at the state's "most secure" facility. Despite their charges, however, I suspect that most of the students would have come to this teacher's defense if they had been present when it happened - they not only value their educational opportunities and appreciate the people who offer them, they also know this whole incident will keep educators and other civilians away for years to come, now.  

Seems like any dummy in the Governor's office can take one good look and advise the AZ DOC director that Warden Credio is putting female staff and volunteers at risk by leaving them alone in classrooms full of sex offenders with no surveillance (or even pepper spray, until now), but in the aftermath of this rape report going national in June, the Arizona Occupational Safety and Health Administration has decided to conduct an investigation into staff safety at Eyman. I guess Arizona wants the nation to know that we take rape seriously here - we do if it happens to anyone other than a prisoner, at least. We refuse to abide by the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which should tell you something about how else we treat our prisoners.


Unfortunately, OSHA never investigates when prisoners are assaulted or injured on the job because prisoners are technically slaves of the state, or this might have been prevented. If ANYONE other than the DOC investigated prisoner assaults and deaths (and had authority to change things there), they would have most certainly required additional safety measures to be taken at Eyman and elsewhere. 


In fact, the whole system would be safer to work and be confined in than it is now if someone from outside of it - like the legislature or auditor general's office -took a good close look at how it's being run.  Makes you wonder where that billion dollar budget is being spent, since it clearly isn't going into facility repairs, surveillance cameras, security personnel, health care, psychiatric treatment, or substance abuse programs. (Hmm. I'd love to see DOC administrator's expense accounts and departmental credit cards...)

Needless to say, mainstream media has been rather critical of the AZ DOC over this, to which the director felt compelled to respond last week. It was such classic bureaucratic BS that I'm posting it below - along with the comment I left at the end of the article. Go to the source for the other remarks, including those by former Eyman Deputy Warden Carl Toersbijns...

--------------------- 

Prisons director: Actually, we do take rape seriously

AZCENTRAL.COM
Charles L. Ryan, AZ I See It 5:50 p.m. MST July 2, 2014

Regarding what I believe to be a misrepresentation of the Arizona Department of Corrections' response to an assault on one of its own employees, ("Is rape an acceptable risk for teachers? We think not," Editorial, Saturday):

On Jan. 30, a staff member at the Eyman corrections complex in Florence was brutally assaulted by an inmate. As the Department of Corrections reported in news releases that day and the following, a criminal investigation was immediately launched with the goal of pursuing prosecution of the inmate suspect to the fullest extent. In May, the inmate was indicted by a grand jury on charges including sexual assault, kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Contrary to The Republic editorial board's assertion of indifference, every assault against staff and inmates is reviewed extensively and thoroughly investigated. In fact, when I returned as director in January of 2009, I changed the previous policy and ordered that all physical actions taken by inmates against staff or other inmates be reported and investigated, whether an injury occurred or not. This sends the strong message that every assault is intolerable.

Obviously, this incident at Eyman was a despicable and cowardly act — a fact clearly stated by this department when the documents from the criminal investigation were released to the news media.

But an Associated Press story published June 22 in The Arizona Republic indicated, "Prison officials dismissed the concerns. They say assault is a risk that comes with the job of overseeing violent inmates." This is not a department quote. It's the description by the AP reporter.

Department practice is quite the opposite. Staff and inmate safety is our highest priority — a fact reflected and borne out by ongoing training and assessment of security protocols. Significant focus is given to ensuring that all staff remain vigilant that any inmate, regardless of custody level or prior criminal history, can turn violent.

Such self-examination is ingrained in the daily work of the Department of Corrections. It results in decisions to create sector officers who conduct security checks on staff working in isolated areas; random physical, visual, radio and phone checks of such sectors; implementation of chemical-agent and hand-held radio training; addition of cameras where appropriate; and numerous other security measures that are constantly being reviewed.

Reporting on corrections can be tainted by sensationalism. Each assault in prison is thoroughly reviewed and investigated, and those responsible are held accountable administratively or criminally for their actions.

The safety of our staff and inmates has been, and always will be, my commitment and first priority.

Charles L. Ryan is director of the Arizona Department of Corrections.

Join the Conversation...

Peggy Plews · Top Commenter · Editor at Arizona Prison Watch

Violence against the staff at the AZ DOC - as well as a jump in the viciousness of attacks on more vulnerable prisoners such as transgender women and those with mental illness, has increased under this man's leadership, causing such concern among officers that one of the employee associations has asked Judicial Watch to investigate and local advocates have called on the US department of Justice. Those pleas for outside intervention were preceded in November 2010 with an open letter to Jan Brewer by the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association urging her to sack Chuck Ryan because, among other things:

"There exists, within ADOC administration, a well-known pattern of obstructing the disclosure of hazards in time to prevent accidents, injury, illness, and deaths. Tragically, in these instances, danger is not "imminent" - it is past, and too late to respond. Employees are routinely ordered to falsify documents and when they proactively seek to report identified hazards, they face punishment and retaliation. Obtaining an accurate account of the range and extent of violations will be difficult from records alone. It is unlikely that ADOC will disclose information without well-planned intervention by authorities. There is no evidence of any health and safety program existing, even on paper. There is no identifiable health and safety officer or other person bearing that responsibility and essential training is lacking to assure staff can perform certain assigned tasks safely and equipped with appropriate equipment e.g. cell extractions, transports, etc.

The entire department is devoid of any active programs for: Fire Prevention, Hazard Communication, Respiratory Protection, Medical Surveillance, Record keeping, Ventilation, Emergency Evacuation Procedures, Disaster Preparedness, Emergency Response, Training, or Education. Failure of ADOC administration to respond has resulted in secondary risks and complications - now endangering, not just the prison population and employees, but the public at large. Appropriate identification of risk requires your immediate intervention. Another day must not go by without initiating an investigation.

We as institutional line staff are expected to hold a very high standard within the institutions and community, we expect that our Director and his administrators to be held to the same standard of conduct and the same standard of punishment if those standards are violated..."

The Minority Leader for the Arizona House of Representatives, Chad Campbell, has called for Ryan's termination more than once, and the media has feasted on the tragedies generated by the privatization of prison health care under this director. Of course, I've been calling for him to go for some time now, having heard from hundreds of prisoners and their loved ones about highly racialized gang violence, the heroin epidemic, pervasive despair and hunger, and gross medical neglect behind bars these days. Arizona should be ashamed of itself for rivaling the horrendous conditions attributed to prisons in far more impoverished countries run by dictators.

I hope some of you out there who know what I'm talking about have the courage to speak out and demand a new director. If you bother to call the governor's office about that, be sure to call your legislators as well - they are as much to blame for all this as Brewer, for simply refusing to oversee the prisons and giving them a blank check to do as they please.

Please ask that the Governor re-visit the AZ DOC's determined non-compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, too - I just received a letter from a gay prisoner who was raped and denied protective custody yet again, and the AZ DOC thinks they dont have a problem. http://www.arizonaprisonwatch.org/2014/06/az-state-prisoners-and-activists-call.html

AZ state prisoners and activists call for DOJ Investigation into rape and gang violence in AZ DOC.

QUEER PRISON WALLS

chalk art by Margie Diddams

Photography by Margaret Jean Plews

Phoenix City Hall (02/26/2103)

(EDITED to remove sensitive information on June 26, 2014) 


NOTE: This is my response to reading  Jan Brewer's May 1, 2014 letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder about Arizona's decision to refuse to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act. I actually finished and sent this on June 9, also posting it to the Daily Kos. 

I encourage all prisoners, former prisoners, and families of those presently in the custody of the AZ Department of Corrections to contact Attorney General Holder, as well, with your personal stories related to your safety or that of a loved one  in prison. Now is the time to strike - the feds need to be dragged into this by more than just me. They need to hear all of you calling them out to take some responsibility for neglecting this mess. It's not like this is the first time they have heard from me, anyway...

Please send me a copy of what you write so I can post it here, too.

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

chalk art on sidewalk: margaret jean plews

photograph: PJ Starr (phoenix 2011)

Margaret Jean Plews

ARIZONAPRISONWATCH.ORG

PO Box 20494

Phoenix, AZ 85036

480-580-6807

"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness, and our ability to tell our own stories..."

- Arundhati Roy

June 7, 2014

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General, US Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder;

I am writing to provide a citizen’s rebuttal of Governor Jan Brewer’s statements of May 1, 2014 in her letter to you regarding the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which grossly misrepresented conditions in the state prison system during her reign. I am also intending this letter to serve as a formal request for a CRIPA Investigation into the pervasive patterns and practices at the Arizona Department of Corrections that place prisoners at exceptionally high risk for sexual victimization and complications from unresolved trauma, especially women, the mentally and otherwise-impaired, and LGBT prisoners.

I am emailing this letter with relevant links embedded, but will also be snail- mailing a copy to you with supporting documents (as well as some of my artwork, memorializing the ghosts of Jan Brewer and Chuck Ryan).

By way of introduction, I am the author/editor of the blog ARIZONAPRISONWATCH.ORG, which I began writing five years ago after the death of prisoner Marcia Powell revealed disturbing practices and attitudes at the Arizona Department of Corrections. My particular concern was the mentally ill women at ASPC-Perryville, at first. I recognized in Marcia’s life story the same elements of the numerous women I had come to know and love in my many years working with people who were trying to survive while homeless, addicted and severely mentally ill in Ann Arbor. I also identified with her - I myself am a recovering alcoholic and addict, and could have landed in prison under draconian drug war and repeat-offender sentencing  had I been caught at any number of things earlier in my life, especially if it was in Arizona (what but a “repeat offender” is an addict, anyway?). I also have bi-polar disorder and a bad attitude when it comes to authority, and could have easily been in Marcia’s cage that day myself.

If you are unfamiliar with the case, Marcia was doing 27 months for a $20 blow job she agreed to give an undercover Phoenix cop one fateful day, and died  in a cage in the Arizona sun in May of 2009, at ASPC-Perryville. That was after an extended “suicide watch” in the 107 degree heat, during which time a prisoner is supposed to be checked on every 10 minutes.  After ignoring Marcia’s pleas for relief for four hours (one guard walked away offering no aid knowing she had even defecated on herself) -  officers eventually noticed she had collapsed from the elements with second degree burns on her body and her organs failing; her core temperature at the hospital still exceeded the ability of thermometers to read it, which only went as high as 108 degrees. Not realizing she had a legal guardian and an adoptive mother, Ryan pulled the plug on her life support before the stroke of midnight - she died shortly thereafter.

 chalk art by margaret j plews                                          photo by PJ Starr

AZ DOC Central Office, Phoenix

(Thanksgiving 2011)

DOC officers never expected that Marcia Powell would die out there because they had just left another woman in that cage for 20 hours 3 days earlier, and she didn’t die. See, Marcia’s death was horrific, but it’s not really shocking that it happened - the only wonder was that the DOC got away with punishing prisoners in the heat that way for so long.

That was less than five months into Charles Ryan’s tenure as Interim Director at the Arizona Department of Corrections, but he had begun disassembling the more rehabilitative and empowering programs his predecessor had implemented and imposing new policies immediately upon taking office. A former DW of Ryan’s alleged to the AZ Attorney General that the change the new director made about how to house cellies resulted in at least two homicides within the first 18 months of his rise to power there.  But Ryan had moved up through the ranks under the more brutal directors whose bullying style of management he appears to have emulated, and thus played a large role for decades in cultivating the policies and ethos at the AZ DOC that are so deeply hostile towards prisoners who exercise their right to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. That tendency to resolve issues with violence or the threat of it trickles down from admin to officers to prisoner, and eventually ignites the flames that can bring a prison to its knees.

The good governor talked about Arizona’s “long traditions” of protecting citizens in custody - wow, is she out of touch. She hasn’t read Prof. Mona Lynch’s “SUNBELT JUSTICE” yet, about the trailblazing role the state has played in implementing draconian sentencing and correctional practices over the past 3 decades - the increase in criminalization for politics and profit that the rest of the country has seen the folly of and begun to abandon.

Its actually because of this state’s long tradition of depriving prisoners both of their rights as well as the most basic tools they need in order to fight for them that the AZ DOC is in such shameful condition now. Arizona’s 1990 constitutional amendment excluding prisoners from the definition of crime victim (and related rights and resources), the Lewis v Casey decision in 1996 eliminating the right of prisoners to access a law library among other things, and the Clinton-era Prison Litigation Reform Act (heavily lobbied for by then DOC Director Terry Stewart) were collectively devastating.

I have volumes of letters that will lead you to both victims and perpetrators of countless civil rights abuses precisely because the grievance procedure on most yards is a sham and the DOC obstructs efforts by prisoners to file suit by creating obstacles - especially for illiterate, Spanish-speaking, and mentally ill or developmentally disabled prisoners. In fact, the DOC has NO POLICIES translated into Spanish, despite nearly 20% of their population being foreign nationals, mostly from Spanish-speaking countries. I’ve been recruiting people to do the translations myself, as this is not a concern of the DOC’s so long as no Spanish-speaking prisoners grieve the lack of Spanish-language policies.

This means that Spanish-speaking prisoners (and other non-English-speakers) apparently need to rely on the skills of untrained staff and fellow prisoners who happen to speak some dialect of Spanish when they need to speak to medical, for example, or appeal a disciplinary action, or grieve their housing assignment. Most just suffer their time in silence.

If prisoners could fight abuse and neglect more effectively themselves, the DOJ and ACLU wouldn’t have to do it for them, and you know it as well as I do, Mr Holder. So does the AZ DOC - they put an extraordinary amount of energy into preventing prisoners from learning to articulate their grievances and use persuasion, negotiation and civil law to effectively change their world. There’s a prisoner petition, of sorts, going around that expresses well the barriers they encounter on their way to the courts while trying to exhaust administrative remedies, and offers some proposed solutions, as I recall. It is worth a look by your people.

As a result of a disempowered prisoner population (and, some argue, extremely weak correctional officers unions in AZ), the state prisons are fire traps, and prisoners often complain they are in decaying facilities with mold growing freely in corners, rats and roaches competing for space with the people, feces and blood smeared on the wall in suicide watch cells, inoperable hot water heaters in the winter and non-existent air conditioning in the summer, and scarcely enough food in the sack-lunch “sedentary diets” given to those in detention, administrative segregation and maximum security to keep them from starving to death. More prisoners are fleeing the violence on the yards than are being punished for perpetrating it.

AZ DOC’s medical and psychiatric care is not just deplorable in its negligence, it’s outright abusive, and the DOC has as much to do with that as any of the other parties involved: Parsons v Ryan was filed before the system was even privatized, after all. When I started blogging on the prisons the only thing one could find about AZ DOC on the internet was pretty much what the state wanted you to see. Now you can easily Google “arizona prison health care” to see how much things got worse when Wexford and Corizon came in to feed off of the sick and dying; Director Ryan has lost control over the department’s squeaky clean public image, among other things. His own well-funded propaganda machine is failing him, as are all levels of management and administration, apparently.

 THE FIREHOUSE, Phoenix AZ

40-foot sidewalk mural memorializing the ghosts of jan brewer...

I met with director Ryan and his classification staff in December of 2013, along with Dianne Post from the NAACP here, the primary author of a lengthy letter to him about gay and trans prisoner safety based on my correspondents.  I don’t think he realized how much of what he and his people had to say was disturbing to the outside observer; some of the documents from that meeting - detailing how serious the need for safety is in the AZ DOC - are in the packet.

According to the DOC, 75% of detention cells are full of guys who are unacceptable to or just plain uncooperative with the racialized gangs running the yards - those are the prisoners I hear the most from. The guys pass my name and addy around the detention cells as they do the 805 dance from prison to prison, because I send them the info they need to fight the DOC - stuff like the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook. It costs me a few hundred bucks a month in printing and postage to keep up with the need for assistance...but, some people spend their time and money on their gardens or pets or kids - I just happen to be a little eccentric about helping the underdog.  I think its a worthy investment, helping people help themselves.

Those prisoners filling the detention cells while fleeing the violence are either seeking Protective Custody (PC) or being punished for refusing their General Population (GP) housing assignments (with “refusal to house” tickets ) after being denied PC. The guys complaining about the assaults extortion and murders, in fact, are overwhelmingly being denied PC and maxed out (ie their good time and privileges are lost and their classification scores zoom up) on major disciplinary tickets for not doing anything to hurt anyone, while the ones behind the extortion, assaults and murders, drug trade and other evils are still free to dominate the prison yards and dictate the culture - often empowered by corrupt officers who want the gangs to help keep the grievances down on the yard, or to keep the assaults just between prisoners, or who just want to line their pockets to buy a new gun or truck.

I have read the Does v Stewart proposed settlement, by the way, and am well-familiarized with DOC policy - I can assure you that both the Does v Stewart agreement and the DO805 policy are routinely being blatantly violated by administrative staff at Central Office. I can say that with certainty after receiving hundreds of letters from prisoners and half as many more calls from family members over getting folks into safe housing since last winter. I have ample evidence the DOC is denying PC to almost ALL prisoners who seek it without the aid of an attorney or the very expensive assistance of Donna Hamm from Middle Ground Prison Reform.

(She’s done a lot of good work, don’t get me wrong - she just costs a pretty penny.)

Interestingly, Ms. Hamm, who charges a flat fee of $2500 to advocate for PC housing for a prisoner, claims a 85- 90% success rate for her clients, while about that same percentage of all PC requests each month are denied, according to the DOC, leaving hundreds of guys in detention each month awaiting the PC verdict. That alone should raise red flags that the DOC isn’t really using any real criteria when they decide who goes to PC and who goes back to the hole in the next GP yard to try again(or get killed), other than that prisoner’s or their family’s ability to litigate them.

And they don’t do the mental health checks they’re required to do on each guy who is turned down for PC to make sure he doesn’t kill himself out of terror. They can’t possibly meet that demand - Corizon isnt even meeting its minimum mental health care mandates.  Thus, I believe guys are still probably killing themselves in the wake of PC denials, like Rosario Rodriguez-Boroquez did in the fall of 2010. A rape victim in the hole on the same MAX unit in Florence followed in his footsteps a week later. That second prisoner might have been saved had the DOC debriefed affected prisoners, they way they do with staff after suicides, homicides and traumatic deaths of prisoners or staff; correctional “best practices” would suggest they should.

Over the course of the past 12 months I’ve corresponded with approximately 35 gay and transgender prisoners alone, some of whom the Navajo Nation’s Human Rights Commission and the NAACP of Maricopa County  have already contacted the DOJ about (and have heard nothing back). In the fall of 2013 a collective of concerned community members convened to study the data from my queer correspondents and draft a letter to Charles Ryan with concerns about the LGBT population being routinely denied PC by his staff when they seek it, even after reporting to the DOC that they had been sexually assaulted or exploited, extorted or beaten because of their sexual orientation or gender identity (the AZ DOC houses transgender women on GP yards in all-male prisons, FYI). In fact, right now there are several gay and transgender prisoners still in GP who have been trying to get into PC for up to and over a year now, unsuccessfully.

Most recently, one gay prisoner who I had intervened personally for to advocate that he receive PC was denied PC and subsequently raped by his cellie, only to be denied PC again and placed in another GP yard. He had initially sought PC because his crime was widely publicized and the media indicated that his male lover was an accomplice - he was  marked man on the yards, no matter what prison they put him in, and they knew it. That was not only deliberate indifference to his safety, I believe endangering that vulnerable prisoner -repeatedly -  was an act of malice and spite in retaliation for my criticisms of the DOC’s staff who make those decisions. And that, sir, is a federal crime, I believe, for a state agent to do. Mr Ryan cannot be trusted to hold those staff responsible for harming that victim, the only party to his rape - to my knowledge - who sits in a detention cell tonight. My correspondence with Director Ryan and his staff about that case is enclosed in the packet.

Even though the victim in the above case had to be taken to a hospital and rape kit was done, there’s no reason to think the perpetrator will actually be held responsible or that further rapes will be discouraged by how this one will be handled. According to the AZ DOC’s current PREA report as posted on their website, out of 54 alleged “inmate-on-inmate unwanted sexual acts” and 30 alleged “inmate-on-inmate abusive sexual contacts” (I think they mean RAPE!) reported to them in 2012, absolutely none could be substantiated by the DOC’s CIU. Either the entire DOC prisoner population lies about rape and it never really happens in our state, or the DOC has no sincere commitment to either preventing it or responding effectively to it when it occurs.

Why should anyone even report their sexual victimization to the DOC, I’m asked? They end up being labeled as a snitch and sitting in the hole for months on end seeking PC, while the perpetrator gets off scott free to rape again. It’s especially disturbing to prisoners when the perp is a gang leader or enforcer, too - which is too often the case, particularly in re: the exploitation and abuse of transgender prisoners. “PREA reporting” has become a sick joke at the AZ DOC - it only stigmatizes the victim, who too often gets no counseling, nor are they very often placed in protective custody or mental health programs beyond the term of the rape investigation, even though research shows that most prisoners are at exquisite risk for even further victimization and deterioration of their mental status once they are raped the first time.

In addition to the recent example of the prisoner who was deliberately placed at risk by DOC staff with a bone to pick with me, I know of one gay prisoner who was verbally abused expressly for being gay after he reported rape (along the lines of you deserved it you fucking fag), in an incident in which he ended up biting staff while being taken down when he refused to sit on the floor to take more of the abuse. The rape victim got an extra year and half added onto his sentence as a result, and had to beg his judge to tell the DOC to place him in PC before they finally relented and did so. I believe he was more traumatized and harmed (by way of being charged with assaulting the staff) by the DOC’s response to his rape report and request for PC than he was by the actual sexual assault on him in the first place.. He is more than willing to make a statement if you will interview him.

I’m also wondering if the DOC ever reported the suicide of Forrest Day as a potential PREA issue. She had reported to her sister before she died that she was being sexually pressured/propositioned by an officer which she found disturbing, but his identity wasn’t revealed to anyone before she was found hanging in her cell, so he couldn’t be investigated. It no doubt never would have been substantiated anyway - you know how it is, when it comes down to the word of a prisoner against a crooked cop: the bad guys in power always win. So, again, why bother reporting rape in Arizona’s DOC even if PREA was implemented, the prisoners want to know. What would be any different than it is now, in practice, even if the DOC did say they were on board with the feds? The culture is so misogynistic and transphobic that it will take not only re-training, but years of just cleaning house - all those good old boys of Chuck Ryan’s and Terry Stewart’s need to go in order to turn this Titanic around.

That isn’t about to happen if Jan Brewer  is left to her own devices here, though, because she has been unmoved by the needless tragic deaths, the abysmal medical care,  or the DOC’s brutal response to those trying to simply flee the violence - and its not like I haven’t been emailing her staff my blog posts all this time - they know, at least, even if she doesnt. No matter what new atrocity is perpetrated on prisoners at the AZ DOC, Jan stands by her man, and so is either completely fooled by him and sheltered from public opinion, or she is fully aware of all that I’ve told you about, and is flat out lying to you in that May letter. If that’s the case, I’d like to know why they’re so damned determined to keep the DOJ out of their prisons.

Either way, be it due to ignorance or complicity with evil, Jan Brewer has consistently failed to provide any leadership around protecting prisoners - not even the children. She says that Arizona is a “leader” in protecting our most vulnerable people, especially kids and the mentally ill. After all, everything she’s done to improve mental health care and child protection is going to be her legacy - which is truly sad, because she hasnt done much on those fronts short of the medicaid expansion, which was to save the hospitals from going under as much as it was for the good of the poor here.

I dont know if she recalls - or ever even knew - that the last kid to suicide at the Adobe Mountain Detention Center run by the AZ Department of Juvenile Corrections did so after some of the other kids relentlessly bullied him for being gay and mentally ill. It seems the staff didn’t know how to deal with either queer kids or serious mental illness. I hope they do now. Charles Flanagan who took over the AZDJC several years ago, has not invited nearly the scrutiny of his department by me that Ryan has, so he might be doing something right there - or at least not so horribly wrong as his former boss. I’ll be terribly disappointed if he advised the Governor not to comply with PREA as well, though.

What I’m saying here is that Jan Brewer is either deliberately whitewashing the prison picture here, or she just doesn’t know what she’s talking about when it comes to prison rape, plain and simple. I can verify myself that Chuck Ryan knows everything I’ve told you of and more because most of what was reported to me along those lines I passed on to him, personally. I have lots of emails documenting it all.

The problem is that Ryan doesn’t tell the truth about any of this, either - he even insists to the legislature that there’s NO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT practiced at the AZ DOC (that’s just semantics, but the legs accept his answer as evidence that the ACLU is hysterical and over-reacting) -  so you can’t count on him to give you an accurate assessment of whether or not the AZ DOC is doing its job when it comes to protecting prisoners from violence, exploitation,  and rape.

No, Mr. Holder, you really need to come talk to me and the families I work with- not just have the FBI spy on me and my buddies in black. Look at my files and analyze my data yourselves. Visit my correspondents. Chat with former employees like former Eyman DW Carl Toersbijns or former Perryville officer Gary Bullock, former ASPC-Lewis Lieutenant Chuck Bauer, former Corizon employee, Teresa Short, AZ State Representative Chad Campbell, who has called for Ryan’s resignation, or any number of other parties to this disaster who I could introduce you to so you can verify mine and the the prisoners’ accounts of prison conditions and the many assaults on their safety - including sexual assaults and exploitation -  in the AZ DOC.

While you’re at it, subpoena the records from the AZ Corrections and Peace Officers Association - they had thousands of DOC employees sign onto a letter of no confidence in Chuck Ryan to Jan Brewer not two years into his tenure. That letter alleged that, among other things:

“...There exists, within ADOC administration, a well-known pattern of obstructing the disclosure of hazards in time to prevent accidents, injury, illness, and deaths. Tragically, in these instances, danger is not "imminent" - it is past, and too late to respond. Employees are routinely ordered to falsify documents and when they proactively seek to report identified hazards, they face punishment and retaliation. Obtaining an accurate account of the range and extent of violations will be difficult from records alone. It is unlikely that ADOC will disclose information without well-planned intervention by authorities.”

These are strikingly similar to the allegations that prisoners make, which are often dismissed as  “unsubstantiated”. The Governor completely ignored the union’s letter, by the way, so its not the credibility of the source that's really the issue - it’s simply a critique she doesn’t want to hear.

In addition to the letters I get from current AZ DOC prisoners, I’ve reviewed hundreds of  death reports since the the start of the current administration. I call tell you that prisoners routinely die of both indifference and  outright abuse here, and Charles Ryan’s DOC sometimes uses their Criminal Investigations Unit to cover up homicides they didn’t feel like pursuing or listing for the feds as such.  Like PC and SP. The AZ DOC’s inspector general’s office didn’t even have the decency to tell PC's mother that his death was more likely than not a homicide, instead of a suicide. They just left her believing her child had taken his life. Fortunately, PC’s mom never bought it and had her own autopsy done - which revealed that there was plenty of evidence he was murdered the DOC never even bothered to look at...

(section edited out)

I dont know if the CIU is corrupt or just has an irresponsible ethos that has no regard for the survivors of victims of violence in their custody. Maybe they are all just lazy - though I suspect the Ryan administration calculated that they would be more liable to a mother whose child was murdered instead of one whose child committed suicide in custody, and decided that if she wasn’t going to sue over  a suicide, they better not tell her it was murder, or someone will start to dig...

(section edited out) 

In any case, the DOC can’t be trusted to investigate themselves and be forthright with their discoveries, and the ACLU is already busy with the health care and psychiatric concerns, including the abuse of solitary confinement for mentally ill prisoners. That’s why we need the feds in on this matter of prisoner safety and prison rape now. Charles Ryan’s Criminal Investigations Unit has no credibility with the prisoners, the staff, or the advocates who know what’s going on in there. Nor do his media and legislative liaisons - they outright lie to the public and elected officials about the heinous behavior of their employees and the corporate jackals who feed off the imprisoned population. Just ask the journalists who have been covering the DOC under Ryan’s tenure - like KPNX’s Wendy Halloran, who won an Emmy for pursuing the truth about the suicide of Tony Lester, or the AZ Republic’s Bob Ortega, who did a fantastic series on “Arizona’s Other Death Row” - that is, the mainstream prison population, which he noticed was dying by suicide, drug overdose, and homicide at unusually high rates after Ryan had been in charge for awhile.

I once had a contact at the DOJ’s Special Litigation Section - Aaron Zisser. I even sent him all the death records my mother bought from the AZ DOC for me to analyze. But I think Special Litigation abandoned AZ awhile ago, perhaps thinking the ACLU et al have it covered. Not hardly.  And Ryan knows no one will hold him accountable for prison rape if the feds don’t - just look at his annual reports. For the past two years in the Five-Year Plans, Director Ryan has managed to invisibilize rape victims in his custody - its not even an institutional goal to reduce the incidence of sexual assaults in the prisons anymore, much less a priority.

Do you understand where I’m coming from here, Mr Holder?

(section edited out)

By the way, Arizona’s sole Protection & Advocacy authority, the AZ Center for Disability Law, won’t help or visit or investigate abuse reports from SMI prisoners under any circumstances. It appears that they only joined Parsons v Ryan in name because they were coerced into doing so. Now, they are the only ones in this state with the authority to get into those prisons on demand to see disabled individuals reporting abuse, and yet they adamantly refuse to exercise it. Is that legal, for a P&A agency to flat out discriminate against an entire population of disabled people solely because the institution housing and abusing them is a prison or jail, instead of a school or a nursing home? If they refuse to exercise that authority, another agency should be identified that will do so, and should be funded to do so. That’s got to be unconstitutional.

Along those lines, I want to quote from a letter I received from the women’s prison just yesterday - this is from (a prisoner) on Death Row, in a building where other maximum security prisoners - like the mentally ill - are held as well. She (wrote) despite risking retaliation from the state because she is so troubled by what she’s hearing and is afraid the women who cry and plead all day and night are too mentally impaired, traumatized, and intimidated to know how to get help themselves via the grievance process and courts…

“They have watch cells below us and I’m very concerned about our mentally ill being pepper-sprayed and drug around naked by male guards and videoed by male guards over the simplest issue. They yell at the mentally ill, scare them. then when they don’t comply (usually strip out) they spray them. They are forced to strip out 3-4 times a day with male guards walking all over. I hear some of them crying “I don’t want to get naked”. I understand security, but not these measures on the mentally ill…”

That sounds like a violation of the agreement the DOC made with the AZDOC some 15 or so years ago to keep a sexual harassment/abuse CRIPA complaint from proceeding to trial, is it not? Let me remind you that I myself have a major mood disorder and PTSD - is this the kind of treatment I can expect as an American citizen in our women’s prisons, should I ever find myself there?

(She) also reports the male officers don’t announce themselves on Lumley. That comes as no surprise - as indicated by the good governor’s letter to you, the DOC doesn’t think it’s necessary for them to do so, even though they are citing women for sexual offenses if they accidentally expose themselves while changing, or toileting, or showering. You know as well as I that most women in prison - especially the severely mentally ill - are already traumatized. Best practices would not say that security demands the male guards come through without announcing themselves. Best practices in corrections now would look at trauma-informed care more closely than the security aspect of that  and say those women are being routinely retraumatized and violated by the AZ DOC’s policies and practices for no good penological reason. They are just not wanting to make sure female staff are available at all times for the women prisoners, though they are quite plentiful in the men’s prisons.

Well, I’ve covered a lot of ground, and there still so much more. I wish we could meet to discuss PREA and CRIPA matters further in person, but I know you have a lot on your hands already, so please have the appropriate staff contact me as soon as possible about this matter - I and the prisoners are requesting a DOJ CRIPA Investigation into these patterns and practices of violating prisoners civil rights, as well as the Governor’s decision to not bother with PREA mandates anymore. At the very least, you should call her out on that.

Thank you so much for reading this through, Mr Holder, if you’ve made it this far. I will be eagerly anticipating your reply. So will the prisoners and their loved ones.

Sincerely,

Margaret Jean Plews

Jan Brewer to AG Holder on PREA: Whitewash of prison rape.

Below is Governor Jan Brewer's letter to the US Attorney General, Eric Holder, explaining why she doesn't think Arizona should comply with the Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). I posted my own letter to Holder to the DAILY KOS today...

AZ PRISON ALERT! Tell Brewer to order DOC to prevent prison rape/implement PREA!

UPDATE: JUNE 13, 2014

THE GOVERNOR ALREADY KNOWS ALL THIS AND DOESN'T CARE, SO DONT BOTHER WRITING TO HER. READ BREWER'S LETTER TO THE DOJ HERE, INSTEAD, THEN MINE, AND THEN WRITE TO THE US ATTORNEY GENERAL TO DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION.

PEGGY PLEWS

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

 "Justice for Victims of Prison Violence"

Crime Victims' Rights Week (APRIL 2013) 

Governor Brewer has apparently informed the federal government that Arizona has no intentions of protecting its prisoners from rape by abiding by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which is now supposed to be going into effect across the country. Given the current conditions in Arizona's state prisons, this should be no surprise. This is just one more piece of evidence that AZ Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan has no regard whatsoever for the health, safety, or welfare of his prisoners: his actions consistently speaks louder than his words. And we can't let it go this way without a fight. The Department of Corrections (DOC) sucks up over 10% of the state budget, but NO ONE wants to hold them accountable for how that money is being spent, for some reason.

Rejecting the PREA standards means the state actually loses federal funding for the prison system, so there must be some serious problems preventing the DOC from thinking they could comply. As folks may recall, the NAACP sent the AZ DOC Director, Charles Ryan, a letter last fall expressing concern for the safety of gay and transgender prisoners in his custody, as we had received numerous complaints that they were being targeted with violence and the DOC was routinely, repeatedly, refusing to place those who needed it into protective custody (PC), leaving them to be brutalized in general population (GP) or giving them disciplinary tickets and punishment for refusing to house in GP. Ryan responded with his assurances that he cares about each and every one of his prisoners, of course, and wouldn't dream of letting them get hurt, if he can help it.



I've also received reports of DOC staff responding to rape victims with abusive language, harsh housing assignments, loss of privileges, accusations of lying, and hate speech and violence in response to a gay prisoner who was raped. Most often the victim is put in the hole during a brief "investigation" ("Hey, did you rape Joe? He says you did. NO? Oh, sorry to bother you then...."). Once the DOC investigates and fails to substantiate anything, the victim is then moved to another GP yard to be further traumatized and violated, while the accused (often a prisoner in a position of power on the yards) is left in place to brutalize others - this teaches rape victims at the AZ DOC not to speak up at all, which means there are likely far more prison rapes in our state than are reported. 



The AZ DOC is so incapable of adequately investigating rapes that occur in their facilities, in fact, that in 2013, out of more than 80 allegations of inmate-on-inmate "non-consensual sexual acts" (they wont even call it rape) or "abusive sexual contact" they weren't able to substantiate a single one - not a single rapist in their custody was found to have done a thing as of the time their 2013 PREA report was due. I find that astonishing - I'd fire the whole DOC Criminal Investigations Unit over that. Maybe that's why they don't want to comply with federal standards protecting prisoners from rape - Director Ryan clearly must not think there really is such a thing as rape in his prisons.


I hope all you families out there bombard the Governor's office this week with complaints about her decision to allow the DOC to refuse to comply with PREA guidelines, and demand that she take responsibility for investigating the escalating violence against gay and trans prisoners, the brown on black race war, the flourishing heroin trade, the control of most general population yards by gangs, and the horrendous disaster that the privatization of health care at the DOC has been. Please cc your correspondence to the Governor's office to the local media, too. Contact info is below.


One thing which makes it easier for Arizona to get away with rejecting PREA standards, I'm sure, is the fact that the state's "Victims Bill of Rights", as enshrined in the AZ Constitution, deprives one class of people of the same rights everyone else in this state gets when they become crime victims: individuals "in custody for an offense". Even Walmart has more legal standing in court as a crime victim than actual human beings in state custody have. That means that if your child is murdered in custody - even by agents of the state - you also have no "victims rights" guaranteed to you as a survivor (no wonder the DOC leaves so many homicides unsolved...).


The Victims' Bill of Rights for the AZ Constitution was engineered by the state' prosecutors who campaigned hard with crime victims groups to have voters approve the constitutional amendment in 1990. The primary author of the bill, ASU law professor Steve Twist, also thinks everything is fine in the most poorly run state prison system in the country, and clearly has no compassion for crime victims in custody - not even those prisoners still considered innocent until proven guilty. 

Thanks to a big push among legislators from Bill Montgomery, Steve Twist's non-profit organization serving crime victims will get a huge boost in funding in coming years. I just don't know how an organization which self-identifies as the "ARIZONA VOICE FOR CRIME VICTIMS" can refuse to acknowledge as a crime victim a woman whose life was destroyed when her son was murdered in prison, or a mentally impaired juvenile in detention being sexually abused by an adult predator in uniform. 

It seems to me that if he really cared about ending the violence and evil humans perpetrate on eachother in this world, Steve Twist would be urging Governor Brewer to reconsider her position on prison rape and implementing the PREA standards across the AZ DOC. The failure to implement PREA standards will place kids in the juvenile and adult criminal justice system at greater risk of sexual abuse, too - and Steve Twist is on Brewer's Children's Protective Services Task force, so it's not like he wouldn't have her ear on this issue. Please especially write to him if you are a survivor of prison violence. He needs to hear from you, now, not me.

STEVEN J. TWIST

ARIZONA VOICE FOR CRIME VICTIMS
P.O. Box 12722

Scottsdale, Arizona 85267

(480) 600-2661

If you folks who care about prisoners don't contact the Governor and media on this, your loved ones will be at even greater risk in custody in this state than they are already, so please, everyone, call or write both the Governor and Gannett News and protest her decisoon on PREA.

Here is the contact info you need:

The Honorable Janice K. Brewer
Arizona Governor
Executive Tower
1700 West Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007
WEB CONTACT FORM
(602) 542-4331

Producers and Editors

AZ Republic/ KPNX CH 12 News

200 E. Van Buren

Phoenix, AZ 850o4

(602) 444-8000

gannett@ad.connect.com

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

Some States Opting out of Federal Prison Rape Law

ABC NEWS
May 24, 2014 (AP)
By REBECCA BOONE Associated Press

Several states are refusing to comply with a federal law designed to reduce sexual assaults in prison, with governors criticizing the decade-old law as counterproductive and too expensive to implement.

The governors of Idaho, Texas, Indiana, Utah and Arizona have informed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that they won't try to meet the standards required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Governors were required to certify by May 15 that their states either met the standards designed to curb widespread sexual abuse behind bars, or to promise that they were actively working toward that goal.

"Idaho supports the spirit and intention of PREA and the National PREA Standards, but a law with good intent has evolved into a law with too much red tape," Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter wrote in a letter to Holder sent five days after the deadline. It would cost the state millions of dollars to meet some of the standards, Otter said, and he believed the cost would have little ultimate benefit. Besides, the governor said, the state has taken substantial steps to reduce sexual victimization in correctional facilities.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry told Holder in April that his state wouldn't comply because the rules were too costly and violated states' rights. Perry's letter also encouraged other states to reject the federal law, and said that instead, his state would continue the programs it already has to reduce prison rapes. Perry's spokesman Rich Parsons said Friday that Perry sent a subsequent letter last week to Holder, contending that some PREA standards are in conflict with Texas state laws.

Brenda Smith, a former commissioner on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission which helped create the PREA standards, said the decision by some states to opt out is shameful.

"These are not some high falutin', unreachable standards. These are things that are constitutional, based on best practices that have been determined in the field and in the courts," Smith said. "As a state you can move over to the sidelines, but people in custody don't get to move over to the sidelines. Providing them safety from sexual abuse is the minimum we can do."

At least 10 more states — Alaska, New York, Ohio, California, Washington, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Colorado, Mississippi and Illinois — have said that they can't meet all the requirements yet, but are actively working toward that goal. New Mexico says it's fully compliant with the law.

Leaders of Just Detention International, an organization that works to end sexual abuse in detention facilities, said they were encouraged that most states are working toward PREA compliance.

"We want actual certifications to be meaningful, so states should certify only when they know that they are in full compliance," said the organization's executive director Lovisa Stannow in a prepared statement. "Until then, the Department of Justice must strictly monitor states to ensure that they are using their federal funds appropriately. No state should be meeting its five percent financial commitment by diverting funds away from essential inmate services like rape crisis counseling - doing so would run counter to the intent of PREA."

The Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed unanimously by Congress in 2003. The next several years were spent developing PREA standards, and in 2012 those rules went into effect. The Department of Justice is expected to publish a list of PREA-compliant states by September.

The major provisions of PREA are designed to change the culture of prisons to one that has zero tolerance for sexual victimization; to change prison facilities so that there are fewer opportunities for rape to occur; and to change reporting policies so that inmates have a safe way to report a crime and a safe place to go if they are sexually victimized.

The law's only enforcement mechanism is a partial loss of grant funding. States that don't comply with PREA can lose up to 5 percent of the federal grant money they receive for corrections. States can keep the money if they promise to use it to come into compliance with the law.

The potential human impact is huge: The Department of Justice says that at least 216,000 of U.S. prisoners were raped or sexually abused behind bars in 2011, and cautions that the number is likely low, because prison rapes are seldom reported. The ACLU estimates that about 2 million people have been raped or sexually abused behind bars since PREA was enacted by Congress.