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

UPDATE 05/19/19

#DARTHryan   #DarkSideRyan 

#DELIBERATEindifferenceKILLS,   #CHUCKCHUCK

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

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

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

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

Uncle Sam Wants You Anyway

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

May 23, 2004  |   Dan Frosch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terry Stewart: Grassrooots Leadership Hall of Shame.

from the Grassroots Leadership Blog, some insights on former AZ Department of Corrections Director Terry Stewart...

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

Welcome to The Humpday Hall of Shame – every Wednesday we’ll highlight the private prison industry’s influence on public policy through campaign contributions, lobbying, and the revolving door of public and private corrections.

This week’s Hall of Shame inductee is Terry Stewart, former Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) director and current Management and Training Corporation consultant. Over the past several weeks, Stewart has reportedly been at all five community hearings debating bids on the State of Arizona’s RFP for a 5,000-bed for-profit prison expansion. MTC is one of four private prison corporations attempting to secure a contract under the bid for the new private prisons.

Terry Stewart has quite the resume. He served as ADOC director from 1995 until 2002. His second-in-command was none other than current ADOC director Charles Ryan, the man who is now in charge of awarding the contracts for the new private prison beds. In those days, dissatisfied correctional officers referred to Stewart as “The Emperor” and Deputy Director Charles Ryan as “Darth Vader,” according to an article in the Phoenix New Times (“The Vampire Strikes Back,” August 8, 2002).

As ADOC Director, Stewart was a proponent of prison privatization claiming that private facilities would be cheaper to build (though a later New York Times article found they are in fact more expensive than public facilities to operate). Under Stewart’s leadership, the department was sued by the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division over a pattern of sexual assault against female prisoners by male prison guards. The suit was settled after the Arizona Department of Corrections agreed to make major changes to prison practices (“Arizona DOC Settlement Agreement Addresses Abuse of Female Inmates,” Corrections Professional, April 23, 1999).

After his stint at the DOC, Stewart went to work as a prison privatization consultant, starting his own firm, Advanced Correctional Management (ACM). ACM pushed prison privatization as early as 2003, only a year after Stewart’s departure from ADOC (The Associated Press, “Former Dept. of Corrections chief involved with firm bidding to build new prison,” August 9, 2003). Stewart was also supported a proposal to build a for-profit prison in Mexico for Arizona inmates of Mexican nationality that was eventually defeated, in part because of Mexican government opposition.

However, Stewart’s international prison work was not over. Stewart was a part of a team, including former MTC chief Lane McCotter, that set up the Iraqi prison system, including the Abu Ghraib facility that would later become synonymous with prisoner abuse. Senator Chuck Schumer called for an investigation into how Stewart won the job in Iraq given his “shocking record of tolerating prisoner abuse” while in Arizona. The charges were investigated by the Department of Justice, though officials failed to fault Stewart for directly abusing detainees in Iraqi prisons.

Despite the bad press, Stewart continues pushing prison projects. In addition to his current work for MTC, Stewart has also contributed at least $1,950 to a host of right-wing Arizona candidates and causes over the years, including pro-privatization and SB 1070 supporters like State Representative Andy Biggs, who we profiled last week, as well as State Senator Al Melvin and State Senator Sylvia Allen, who was quoted in the Arizona Republic (Bob Ortega, “Winslow mostly open to prison plan,” August 12, 2011) as saying, “”I personally will cry if my district doesn’t get part of these 5,000 beds.”

Chuck Ryan andTerry Stewart : Common Ground.

The original posting of this was made nearly a year ago, around the publication of an AZ Republic story about what fire traps the state prison facilities are. It seemed worth resurrecting in light of the death records I've been reading of late and the letter that came out last week from the Arizona Correctional Peace Officer's Association calling for Brewer to fire Chuck Ryan, the Director of the ADC.

As far as I know, many of the prisons are still primed to go up in flames, taking everyone inside - prisoner and CO alike - with them. Even if those problems were addressed, there are serious problems with the conditions of confinement at the ADC.

The history of the class action suit against AZ for not protecting prisoners in protective segregation is especially interesting, considering how many prisoners have been murdered or killed themselves in higher level custody settings at the ADC of late - and those who killed themselves after being denied extra protection.

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

Arizona Prison Watch: January, 2010
(Edited slightly)

I don't know how the abuse that Marcia Powell endured in her final hours could have possibly been a shock to anyone in power at the AZ Department of Corrections. They've been defending that kind of behavior for a long time. Terry Stewart, the long time director there, is a disturbing man. Current Director Ryan was his protege, by all accounts.

Ryan's tenure consulting with Iraq's prisons isn't mentioned with the piece from Senator Charles Schumer's office about Stewart, but he apparently made it over there in time for the scandal: check out his bio. He was part of a team that was exporting our tactics for imprisoning and punishing people, while most of the rest of America thought we were "liberating" Iraq. It even appears he received a medal of valor for it. Coming from George Bush, I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

In either case, I sure hope you begin to show us something new at the ADC, Ryan.

How can you not keep track of fires at the prisons, anyway? How can those facilities even be open? And why wouldn't you tell the rest of us about those repairs being turned down - we'd have given the legislature hell and got that funding approved or had some folks sent home.

You can't be imprisoning people if you can't keep them safe, Ryan - if you were a nightclub, you'd be shut down and charged with all sorts of things - and that's if nothing even caught fire and no one died. You're just waiting for someone to die before you have to do anything about it.


We can't afford to wait for that.


What other population that the state has custody of is left to languish locked inside fire traps? Maybe we better check all the institutions to make sure...

That must be some kind of constitutional violation - stripping someone of their liberty and trapping them someplace you can't safely evacuate. We saw what happened to the guys in New Orleans when the guards abandoned their posts, leaving them locked up to drown.



Anyway, here's ADC's darker side, Terry Stewart. He's the one who seemed to think that it was okay to ignore sexual abuse and to punish prisoners for days on end with exposure to the elements. It's a wonder he didn't kill more prisoners than he did.

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 2, 2004

Schumer Reveals Fourth Corrections Official With Checkered Record In Power Position At Iraqi Prisons

Former head of Arizona prisons turned a blind eye to sexual abuse of female prisoners by male guards including rape, sodomy and assault

Evidence mounts: Fourth civilian with shocking record of tolerating prisoner abuse hand picked to oversee reconstruction and running of Iraqi prisons


U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today revealed evidence that a fourth civilian who served in a position of power in the Iraqi prison system had a troubling history of tolerating and defending prisoner abuse while serving as a corrections administrator in the United States. Senator Schumer also called upon the Department of Justice's Inspector General to investigate how so many US prison officials with checkered records were selected by the DOJ to oversee the sensitive and important project of reconstituting the Iraqi prison system.

Schumer revealed that Terry Stewart, one of a handful of former prison officials recruited by the Department of Justice to help rebuild Iraq's prison system, came under scrutiny for numerous incidents involving the mistreatment of inmates while serving as the head of the Arizona Department of Corrections from 1995-2002.

In 1997, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division named Stewart in a suit brought against the Arizona Department of Corrections concerning a pattern of sexual assault against female prisoners by male prison guards. Stewart was charged with knowingly turning a blind eye to repeated incidents of sexual abuse by guards against female prisoners ranging from sexual assault, rape and sodomy to watching female prisoners undress and use the restroom. The suit was eventually settled after the Arizona Department of Corrections agreed to make major changes in numerous prison policies.

Under Stewart's watch prisoners at Arizona facilities were also made to stand outside in the summer for up to four days in the summer and for up to 17 hours in the winter without sanitation, adequate drinking water, changes of clothing, proper food or protection from the elements. In a third questionable incident a class action suit was brought against the Arizona Department of Corrections during Stewart's tenure charging that the prison system had failed to properly use protective custody to shield certain at-risk inmates from harm.

“How four individuals with such checkered pasts could be placed in positions of power in Iraq's prison system defies reason and demands explanation,” Schumer said. "The fact that Terry Stewart turned a blind eye to sexual assault perpetrated by guards under his watch is appalling. Every revelation leads to further questions, and to further silence from the Department of Justice. I wish Attorney General Ashcroft would at a minimum explain what kind of vetting system, if any, was in place for such high level appointments to such sensitive posts."

Stewart joins John Armstrong of Connecticut and Lane McCotter and Gary DeLand of Utah as members of a growing list of civilians with checkered records who were placed in positions of power overseeing the reconstitution and running of Iraq's prison system. While serving in Iraq McCotter and Stewart even dubbed themselves the "Baghdad Duo" while traveling the country in their roles working for the Department of Justice.

Schumer's revelations concerning Stewart come on the heels of his discoveries concerning John Armstrong, who was forced from his post as the head of Connecticut’s corrections department for defending abuses of prisoners before eventually serving in a high-ranking management position overseeing the Iraqi prison system. While running Connecticut’s prison system, Armstrong made a practice of shipping even low-level offenders to a supermax facility in Virginia which was notorious for its use of excessive force - ranging from unjustified use of stun guns shooting 50,000 volts through prisoners to locking inmates in five-point restraints for such lengthy periods that they were routinely forced to defecate on themselves.

Armstrong resigned under a cloud of credible allegations that he tolerated and personally engaged in the sexual harassment of female employees under his command.

Lane McCotter, who had a similarly disturbing history of defending inmate abuses, was also tapped to be one of four individuals sent by the Department of Justice to redevelop Iraq’s prison system. McCotter was forced out of the top spot in Utah's Department of Corrections when a schizophrenic prisoner died after being strapped to a chair naked for sixteen hours. His record was further tainted when the DOJ investigated a New Mexico prison that was run by a private corrections firm that employed McCotter for failing to provide inmates with a safe environment and adequate medical facilities.

Gary DeLand served in the same position later held by McCotter, as head of Utah's Department of Corrections, in the late 1980's. According to Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, Deland was well known for the "sadistic" manner in which he ran the state's penal institutions. DeLand was also recruited to help reconstitute Iraq's prison system, including Abu Ghraib.

"A pattern like this just doesn't happen spontaneously," said Schumer. "It is time for the Department of Justice to explain how lightening managed to strike four times in the same place. This why I am calling on the Inspector General to investigate how the United States government manage to send four individuals with histories of involvement in prisoner abuse cases to oversee a prison system that is now notorious for prisoner abuse. Given the far reaching impact of the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib it is vital that we answer this fundamental question, and we must answer it soon."