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

AZ Crime Victims Memorial: Wes Bolin Plaza, AZ State Capitol

March 9, 2012

 

Mother of Dana Seawright, homicide victim, and aunt of Tony Lester, suicide victim, 

protesting the continuing abuse and neglect and violence 
perpetrated on prisoners of the state of Arizona. 

Both men were in the care of the AZ Department of Corrections when they died.

The intro to the following series from Bob Ortega and the AZ Republic on Chuck Ryan's growing body count. Fantastic work by all involved in the research, editing , and of course the writing of these pieces - but especially Bob Ortega.  

Here's the moving slideshow of prisoners put together by the AZ Republic for this series...check it out at the source.

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

 Arizona prison system sees high number of deaths.
Bob Ortega
Arizona Republic
June 2, 2012

Arizona's prison system has two death rows.

One is made up of the 126 inmates officially sentenced to death -- 123 men at the Eyman state prison in Florence and three women at Perryville. Seven convicted killers from that group have been executed over the last two years.

The other death row, the unofficial one, reaches into every prison in Arizona's sprawling correctional system. No judge or jury condemned anyone in this group to death. They die as victims of prison violence, neglect and mistreatment.

Over the past two years, this death row has claimed the lives of at least 37 inmates, more than five times the number executed from the official death row. Among them are mentally ill prisoners locked in solitary confinement who committed suicide, inmates who overdosed on drugs smuggled into prison, those with untreated medical conditions and inmates murdered by other inmates.

Unlike state executions, these deaths rarely draw much notice. Each receives a terse announcement by the Department of Corrections and then is largely forgotten.

But correctional officers and other staff who work with inmates say many of these deaths are needless and preventable.

Arizona will spend $1.1 billion this year to lock up its 40,000 prisoners.

But there is another cost, one measured not in dollars but in human lives.

Over four days, an Arizona Republic investigation will reveal a prison system that houses inmates under brutal conditions that can foster self-harm, allows deadly drugs to flow in from the outside, leaves inmates to die from treatable medical conditions and fails to protect inmates from prison predators.

Today, The Republic focuses on suicides in the prison system, where there have been at least 19 in the past two years. Arizona's official prison-suicide rate during that period was 60 percent higher than the national average. But suicides in prison are likely underreported, according to critics.

More than half of the suicides involved inmates in solitary confinement, including some with serious mental illnesses.

ToersBijns to Twist: Walking Arizona's other death row

Opening night of "Political Descent"

Firehouse Gallery, Phoenix

June 9, 2012

  

 The names of Arizona's victims of prison violence, 
gross neglect and despair under the administration of Chuck Ryan.

The excellent letter below was written by Carl Toersbijns, a retired AZ Department of Corrections Deputy Warden. He worked at the state's Supermax prison in Florence, ASPC-Eyman, and knows of what he speaks. The opinion piece by Steve Twist that Carl is responding to  is here.

Find Carl's personal blog here, and his blog on AZCentral under kodiakbears, here.

-----from Carl ToersBijns---

June 17, 2012



ARIZONA REPUBLIC LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

 In reply to Mr. Steve Twist’s story on Arizona state prison systems, I am compelled to write to set the record straight from another viewpoint that differs very much with those of Mr. Twist. In order to do this, I will reveal  I have 25 years in corrections with the last 5 years with the Arizona Corrections agency as a deputy warden of operations. I left on good terms but was viewed critical by many because of my viewpoints that were not shared by peers and co-workers inside the prison system. That having been said, I am readily identified as a critic of the agency and how it spends its money and how it operates it systems statewide. Being viewed as a “progressive” in this state can cause heartburn by many and conflict as well.

 Yes, Mr. Twist, Arizona prisons do make an easy target for the media but not just the Arizona Republic. There have been numerous critical reports delivered to the community by good investigative reporters who researched their stories for accuracy for they knew they would be challenged by the DOC for accuracy.

 The characterization made for the alleged “gross mischaracterization” of the “unofficial death row” that exists within the prisons statewide is accurate. There cannot be a debate about the deaths that have occurred since Director Ryan took over in the end of January 2009. To set the record straight do your homework and visit the agency’s web page at http://www.azcorrections.gov/Minh_news_gov.asp news releases and do the math.

Reporters are reporting exactly what is being provided by the agency in a most non-transparent manner as many deaths are “pending investigation”, natural deaths, suicides and homicides, just as it was reported by all media reporters especially Mr. Bob Ortega, who requested hundreds of freedom of information documents to solidify and document his data accurately.

Truth in sentencing rules of engagement were dominated by political influences of ALEC, PRIDE and many other groups who promised financial support for those who supported their views on his to be tough on crime. This is hardly an admirable position to take for what is suppose to be a task driven for justice and equality for all under our constitutional demands.

You boldly speak of “Maximum-security inmates, those who have committed brutally violent crimes, and those who have demonstrated predatory, unruly and violent behavior by being a danger to other inmates and staff, generally make up the population housed in high-security settings” and say this without one solid contribution to personally observing these conditions or walking the tiers as many of us have for at least 16 hours a day, five days a week.

 You speak of them not being in “dark isolation, deprived of human contact or anything comparable to solitary confinement.” I challenge your knowledge and ask how you arrived at this conclusion without setting one step inside one of these facilities for no less than 8 hours.

Again, as a former deputy warden of one of the highest and most restricted security units in the state, Eyman SMU II, Florence Arizona, I never remember you walking the corridors and making this evaluation or observation first hand thus I must assume you either took a 20 minute “dog and pony” tour that was offered to all politicians and attorneys from the AG’s office or you were told this by someone who didn’t work there either.

 Regardless, you information is totally misinformed as I can validate these conditions through spending my time walking, talking and interacting with both staff and inmates inside these dark corridors where direct sunlight only hits them in the outdoor recreation box if the sun is up at high noon.

In your letter you wrote “Nevertheless, these dangerous inmates are appropriately housed for the safety of the public, themselves, and other inmates and staff” which is a statement we can agree on for sure.

Your perspective in your “discussion of the rate of inmate deaths in the Arizona prison system” is either outdated or unreal. Although you mention valid reasons for death, you purposely omit the long delays of constitutionally mandated healthcare standards that accelerate or impact the risks of recovery and while we are talking about drug overdose, suicide and homicides, these events are never clearly explained or revealed as most investigations are shoddy, incomplete and designed to close the matter as “pending further investigations” with no real follow up to reveal the actual cause of death. You cite traditional and known factors as contributors to death just so you can marginalize these deaths as human beings not provided the proper custodial care and protection under law.

Your reflection of your “housing environment” is positive but lacks the details that might reveal to you problems contributing to the overall efficiency of these housing units especially in a hot state such as Arizona.  The prisons are aging and maintenance or rather preventive maintenance has been severely impacted by budget cuts and personnel cuts that once were available to take care of these physical plants and repair as needed to keep all HVAC systems in compliance and other maintenance tasks timely.

These “variety of housing environments: dormitories, double-person cells, detention areas where inmates are temporarily segregated, and maximum-security single-person cells that are exclusively for problematic, dangerous inmates -- the worst of the worst” is an untrue statement.

They are not the “worst of the worst” as I estimate at least 26 % are mentally ill; 50 % are protective segregation or death row and the rest are gang validated and behavioral problems that need to be kept out of general population because of their supervisory needs.

 For those gang and violent offenders, the state needs to review their policies and see how they can reduce their custody levels through step down programs that will allow them to return back to general population at one time or another instead of indefinitely.

There are too many mentally ill prisoners housed there who don’t belong in max custody but rather a treatment center for stabilization, recovery programming, medication compliance and crisis intervention. Mixing them with non-mentally ill prisoners impacts and upsets these “housing environments” severely and creates more uses of force, more medical injuries, more self-inflicted wounds and more staff getting hurt because of triggers inside there that is best described as chaotic and loud once the others join the rants and anger of those kept there for reasons that warrant another review by both clinical personnel and medical personnel who are violating their ethical oaths and licenses for not treating these prisoners kept there in max custody.

You state “But in all cases, an inmate is able to interact with others. This includes the worst inmates, whose cells are in areas where they can speak with others in cells around them” thus you marginalize their housing conditions as acceptable and humane yet you have no idea what goes on inside these cell areas that turn into “bedlam” or craziness on a moments notice that impacts the sanity and insanity of everyone housed there as the need to use chemical agents is often not reserved for the one individual acting out but the entire pod will be exposed because of the ventilation systems that are joined and linked to each other through their venting systems. It is obvious you have never engaged in making housing assignments for as you had, you would know there is a systematic manner of making housing assignments inside prisons that carries with it many factors too long to mention.

The fact is that I am a critic of the agency. I am a critic in the manner they dispose of human beings in a cultural demeanor that dictates “deliberate indifference” to their civil rights and standards of care as well as custodial responsibilities.  I am a critic in hope of finding change in the manner we do business in Arizona prisons.

Many of these prisoners, both the mentally ill and the others will return back to our neighborhoods without treatment, programming and successful release planning. Their chances of staying out of prison are reduced by the lack of understanding and comprehension of how prisoners do time in Arizona as you have so superbly demonstrated by your letter indicating you are endorsing the manner it is being run and that civil rights and human rights don’t matter as long as you are incarcerated in the state of Arizona.

For the record, we have a prison system that provides “food and shelter, education, work programs, alcohol- and drug-addiction programs, and medical- and mental-health care that meet community standards” and that is most certainly truth to some extent. Your statement is misdirected to those lower custody yards not written about by Mr. Bob Ortega.

However, Bob Ortega wasn’t writing about the open yards where these amenities are so closely monitored and delivered and in compliance to a large degree. He was talking about the max custody units [and administrative segregation / detention units] where a fair proportion of Arizona prisoners are now housed under current policies to fill max custody beds so they can justify asking the legislature for more max custody beds. Beds that are the most expensive type to keep and filled but that doesn’t matter to those who pay taxes as they are willing to shell out $ 1.1 billion dollars for a system that has so many problems, they are “money pits” and wasting valuable funds that could be redirected to educational and other social needs for this state instead of prisons.

The only way you can save money on prisons is to reduce the population (what a concept) and find alternative sentencing and give the discretion back to judges to apply justified prison sentences for all persons equally under the law. 

Carl ToersBijns

Journalist Keifer witnesses Wood's execution; urges independent inquiry.

Very thorough coverage of the botched execution of Joseph Wood, which was witnessed by AZ Republic journalist Michael Keifer, as well as the family of Joseph Wood's victims, who I do feel for. Both have something to say about the execution in the video clip below.

I have no idea why Jan Brewer continues to employ Director Charles Ryan at the AZ Department of Corrections. Those prisoners of his who are in for minor offenses are being beaten and killed by gangs - effectively punished with death - while  the condemned are being medically tortured. The last condemned Arizona prisoner who died succumbed to untreated throat cancer before he could be executed...he might have preferred the drug cocktail instead. Three men on death row committed suicide last year, as well. 

Hmm. Yes, I must say that all is certainly not well on Arizona's Death Row.

Meanwhile Debra Milke was released from death row at ASPC-Perryville last year when her conviction was overturned after 23 years of imprisonment. That was due to evidence that she was convicted on testimony of a dirty, lying cop who likely perjured himself saying she confessed to having her son murdered when he interrogated her. Guess it's a good thing that we hadn't yet gotten around to killing her before we made absolutely sure she was prosecuted justly...

 ---------------------------------

Execution of Arizona murderer takes nearly 2 hours

Bob Ortega, Michael Kiefer and Mariana Dale, 

The Republic | azcentral.com  

12:24 a.m. MST July 24, 2014

The controversial drug that Arizona used to execute double-murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood on Wednesday took nearly two hours to kill him and left him snorting and gasping for breath. One reporter who witnessed the execution, Troy Hayden of Fox 10 News, said it was "very disturbing to watch ... like a fish on shore gulping for air. At a certain point, you wondered whether he was ever going to die." State officials and the victims' families, however, took issue with other witness descriptions, saying that Wood was not conscious after the first few minutes and that the noises he made sounded like snoring.

The drawn-out execution — most take about 10 minutes — quickly drew international attention and criticism, spurring calls for a moratorium on executions and putting Arizona front and center in the contentious debate over lethal-injection drugs.

RELATED: Emergency motion for stay

The process at the state prison in Florence began about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and dragged on long enough that, more than an hour after the execution started, Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender's Office sent two other lawyers out to file an emergency motion asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt it, saying it violated Wood's Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The motion noted that Wood "has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour" after being injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.

Wood died before the appeals court responded.

"The experiment failed," Baich said to reporters as he left the execution chamber. In a statement later, he added that "Arizona appears to have joined several other states who have been responsible for an entirely preventable horror — a bungled execution."

U.S. District Judge Neil Wake granted a motion Wednesday requiring the state to preserve all physical evidence related to Wood's body. The motion directed the medical examiner to draw blood from the femoral subclavian veins and from the ventricles of the heart before 8 p.m. Wednesday. Wake earlier this month denied Wood's request for a preliminary injunction blocking the execution.

Gov. Jan Brewer said she was concerned by how long the execution took and directed the Department of Corrections to review the process. She released a written statement that "Wood died in a lawful manner" and did not suffer. Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan said Wood remained "deeply sedated" until his death.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne declined to comment. His spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, disputed that Wood snorted or gasped for air. "He went to sleep and appeared to be snoring," she said. "This was my first execution, and I was surprised at how peaceful it was."

Wood was sentenced to death for the 1989 murders of his ex-girlfriend, Debra Dietz, and her father, Eugene Dietz.

The victims' family members said the media were wrong to focus on the execution method rather than on the victims. "Everybody here said it was excruciating," said Jeanne Brown, Debra Dietz's sister. "You don't know what excruciating is. Seeing your dad lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying there in a pool of blood, that's excruciating."

Her husband, Richard Brown, who said he witnessed the murders, said, "What I've seen today, you guys are blowing this all out of proportion about these drugs.

"Why didn't we give him a bullet? Why didn't we give him some Drano? These people that are on death row, they deserve to suffer a little bit."

Across the country, a majority of Americans support the death penalty, but that support appears to be waning.

A 2013 Pew Research Center survey indicated that 55 percent of U.S. adults favor the practice, while 37 percent oppose it, a big drop from two years earlier, when 62 percent said they favored the death penalty for murder convictions and 31 percent opposed it.

Wednesday's execution began at 1:53 p.m., after Wood's last words, in which he thanked his attorneys, said he had found Christ and concluded, "May God forgive all of you."

According to Arizona Republic reporter Michael Kiefer, who witnessed the execution, lines were run into each of Wood's arms. Wood was unconscious by 1:57 p.m. At about 2:05, he started gasping, Kiefer said.
"I counted about 640 times he gasped," Kiefer said. "That petered out by 3:33. The death was called at 3:49. ... I just know it was not efficient. It took a long time."

The length of the process drew swift condemnation from death-penalty critics.

"The worst part about Joseph Wood's botched execution was, it was entirely predictable and avoidable," Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty, said in a statement noting that the same combination of drugs had been used in a problematic execution in Ohio earlier this year.

That was echoed by the Arizona director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Arizona had clear warnings from Ohio and Oklahoma," said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, calling for a moratorium on executions. "Instead of ensuring that a similar outcome was avoided here, our state officials cloaked the plans for Mr. Wood's death in secrecy."

The latest petition initially was filed in Pima County Superior Court after a federal appellate court's stay was lifted Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court. It argued that Wood had ineffective assistance of counsel during his trial, and also challenged Arizona's lethal-injection protocol and the drug cocktail used in executions.
Pima County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Lee dismissed Wood's first argument, but sent the question of Arizona's lethal-injection protocol to the state high court.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld Arizona's veil of secrecy around its lethal-injection drugs, permitting plans for the execution to proceed.

The high-court ruling knocked down a federal appeals court decision that the execution could not move forward unless the state turned over information about how the execution would be carried out.

Executions are public events. But in recent years, many states that still have capital punishment, including Arizona, have passed or expanded laws that shroud the procedures in secrecy.

The Arizona Department of Corrections planned to use a controversial drug, and it favors a controversial method of administering it, so Wood's attorneys demanded to know the qualifications of the executioners and the origin of the drugs to be used in the execution, claiming that Wood had a First Amendment right to the information.

On Saturday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which lifted the stay without addressing the First Amendment issue.

State officials said in court filings that they need to maintain secrecy because publicity has made it more difficult to obtain the drugs needed to carry out executions.

Drug manufacturers have begun refusing to sell to departments of corrections, forcing the departments to experiment with new and less reliable drugs or to specially order them from compounding pharmacies, which in turn are harassed by anti-death-penalty activists.

"Prisoners who are sentenced to death for their crimes have every right to know what drugs are going to be used," said Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, "but it would be a bad matter of policy if the manufacturer of these drugs were identified. The very reason we have a new drug protocol is because of the pressure and threats applied to the companies ... forcing them to stop making it."

It was not the first time the Supreme Court has ruled against a stay of execution based on drug secrecy. In 2010, it ruled against an Arizona prisoner asserting his right to know about lethal-injection drugs that turned out to have been improperly obtained from overseas.

The U.S. District and Circuit Courts in Washington, D.C., later determined federal law had been violated, which the Arizona Attorney General's Office denies.

"In most respects, what Mr. Wood is asking for is quite small," said Megan McCracken, a former federal defender who works with the University of California-Berkeley Death Penalty Clinic. "I think they don't want to set precedent about giving out information, and they don't want to come under scrutiny."

Sen. Ed Ableser, D-Tempe, called the execution barbaric and said: "This one is really on (Brewer's) shoulders. She can sign an executive order, put a stay on executions and let the Legislature find a better way to deal with violent criminals who deserve the maximum penalty, but one that is not cruel and unusual."

Dan Peitzmeyer, president of Phoenix-based Death Penalty Alternatives, said, "Actions like this might not cause us to totally repeal the death penalty. But it should sure as hell cause us to bring a moratorium to it and take a sincere look at what we're doing."

Executions by lethal injection using barbiturates such as pentobarbital more typically take about 10 minutes. But the European and American manufacturers refuse to supply it for executions. With the drug unavailable for death penalties, Arizona became the latest of four states to turn to another sedative, midazolam, first used for execution less than a year ago.

Arizona used it in combination with a narcotic, hydromorphone. Midazolam, by itself or with hydromorphone, has led to flawed, drawn-out executions in three other states.

Wood's attorneys had fought its use before the U.S. Supreme Court and then in a last-minute appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, saying the drug was "experimental" and had not been proven to be effective.

Wood had been scheduled to die at 10a.m. Wednesday, but the state Supreme Court halted the process to consider a last-minute petition for post-conviction relief. The court lifted its temporary stay shortly before noon, clearing the way for his execution later in the day. Witnesses were told when the stay was issued to return by 1 p.m.

One day earlier, it was uncertain whether the execution would go forward. Wood's attorneys had filed for a preliminary injunction to stop the execution unless Arizona revealed where it had obtained the midazolam and divulged the qualifications of the medical team that would administer it.

In October and January, midazolam was used in executions in other states. Both times, witnesses said that the condemned prisoners appeared to gasp for breath and took longer to die than with the barbiturates that were used until they became unavailable.

And in April, an Oklahoma inmate was executed using the drug, but the medical person inserting the catheter into a groin artery completely punctured it, sending the drug into the soft tissue beneath. The man writhed in pain for more than 40 minutes before dying of an apparent heart attack.

Wood's attorneys asked for information with those incidents in mind. A U.S. District Court judge denied a stay. But on Saturday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted it, with the condition that it would be vacated if the state turned over the information. The Arizona Attorney General's Office appealed the 9th Circuit ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court threw it out Tuesday afternoon.

Wood chose not to have a special "last meal" Tuesday night, instead eating the sausage and mashed potatoes that the rest of the prisoners were served.

In 1989, Wood was living with Debra Dietz, who supported him and paid for the apartment they shared. But Wood was abusive, and after Dietz moved out of the apartment, he stalked her.

On Aug. 7, 1989, Wood became enraged when Dietz wouldn't take his calls. He went to the auto body shop where Dietz worked for her father. Eugene Dietz was on the phone when Wood reached the body shop; Wood waited for him to hang up and then shot him in the chest without saying a word.

Wood then hunted down Debra Dietz and shot her twice in the chest.

Megan Finnerty and Megan Cassidy contributed to this article.

Parsons v Ryan: Experts report on Arizona's Other Death Row...

Per the ACLU of Arizona: "Every week, on average, a patient who has been neglected or mistreated dies in the Arizona prison system..."

Thank you, ACLU and Prison Law Office, as well as the folks at Perkins Coie and Jones Day, and the AZ Center for Disability Law for fighting Parsons v Ryan.  Thanks as well to Wendy Halloran at KPNX/Channel 12 News, and Bob Ortega at the Arizona Republic for exposing the AZ DOC's and their medical care providers' failings.

 

I urge all of you who are helping prisoners fight Corizon now for their medical care to read these reports (links are here). There may be something in there your loved ones can use for their own cases - after all, its the pattern of deliberate indifference that makes  the AZ DOC director personally responsible for their suffering, even if he didn't know about them individually or their conditions. 

 the sad story of ferdinand dix...

  Along those lines, prisoners really need to follow the AZ DOC's medical grievance policy (DO 802) to the letter if they are going to get any help, so download and study that policy first, yourselves, and send them a copy. Send them this one as well, DO 1101 on accessing health care services. Then send them this thing, the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook from the National Lawyers' Guild. It'll tell them why they need to file grievances and what to do when they don't get the answers they need.

If you need more info on strategies for fighting DOC and Corizon, check out this newsletter and these blog posts:

APW Summer 2014 Newsletter

Corizon's deliberate indifference: fighting back. (Thursday, May 30, 2013)

Corizon and the AZ DOC: Prisoners & Families, Know Your Rights. (Tuesday, March 5, 2013)

 a loving sister remembering Nelson Douglas Johnson, one of many AZ DOC prisoners

 who committed suicide in solitary confinement under Jan Brewer's administration...

Here's also a list of civil suit attorneys that I know have sued the AZ DOC before, as well as a few other resources. Now, that's not an endorsement of anyone in particular - check them out yourselves. Just make sure you get someone who understands prison law - it's really not like any other civil litigation.

The class action suit is scheduled to go to trial on October 21, 2014 in US District Court in Phoenix, so plan to be with us that week, at least!!!

---------from the ACLU of Arizona---------

Arizona Prisons’ Widespread Failings Detailed 

in Newly Released Reports

 Healthcare in Arizona Department of Corrections Facilities 

Does Not Meet Minimum Standards, Experts Find 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 9, 2014 

CONTACT: Steve Kilar, ACLU of Arizona, 602-773-6007, skilar@acluaz.org

PHOENIX – Nearly two dozen expert reports that detail widespread problems with the Arizona Department of Corrections’ healthcare system, as well as its use of solitary confinement, were made public late Monday. 

“I observed locked, dark and empty rooms that I was told were exam rooms, but lacked basic medical equipment,” wrote Dr. Robert Cohen, an expert in correctional medicine, in one of his reports (11/8/13 report, page 5). “Medical equipment was broken, covered in dust, and in some cases based on logs attached to them, had not been repaired or checked in more than a decade.” 

Dr. Cohen found that almost half of people who died “natural deaths” while in ADC’s care over a six-month period received “grossly deficient” medical care (2/24/14 report, pages 1-2). Every week, on average, a patient who has been neglected or mistreated dies in the Arizona prison system, according to these expert reports. 

“In some of these cases, the poor care clearly caused or hastened their death,” Dr. Cohen wrote (2/24/14 report, page 1-2). “It is alarming that almost half of the natural deaths occurring during the brief half year period under review would reveal such significant problems with delivery of basic medical services.” 

Dr. Cohen uncovered shocking delays in treatment including the case of a 38-year-old prisoner whose death from cancer was avoidable according to ADC’s own documents (2/24/14 report, pages 19-25). Another prisoner died of untreated lung cancer after being accused by nurses of lying about his medical condition; they said in his medical records that he was “playing games” and “seeking attention” (2/24/14 report, pages 25-32). A 24-year-old man died of AIDS-related pneumonia after his AIDS went undiagnosed and untreated for a year, despite his pleas for HIV tests and treatment, Dr. Cohen found (2/24/14 report, page 52). 

These are not isolated cases. Dr. Cohen’s findings, and the findings of the plaintiffs’ other experts, point to systemic deficiencies in ADC’s healthcare. 

“[T]here were multiple cases in which the lapses were so shocking and dangerous that I felt ethically obligated as a medical professional to bring them to the immediate attention of the ADC and Corizon staff,” Dr. Cohen said (11/8/13 report, page 4). Corizon is the company contracted by the state to provide healthcare to prisoners. 

The other experts made equally damning discoveries. The 23 expert reports, which were previously confidential, were made public yesterday pursuant to a court order in anticipation of an October trial relating to ADC’s failure to provide more than 33,000 prisoners in 10 prisons healthcare and conditions of confinement that meet constitutional standards. 

“[T]he chronic shortage of mental health staff, delays in providing or outright failure to provide mental health treatment, the gross inadequacies in the provision of psychiatric medications, and the other deficiencies identified in this report are statewide systemic problems, and prisoners who need mental health care have already experienced, and will experience, a serious risk of injury to their health if these problems are not addressed,” wrote Dr. Pablo Stewart, another expert hired by plaintiffs’ counsel to tour ADC’s prisons and review prisoners’ medical records, in one of his reports (11/8/13 report, page 10). 

Dr. Stewart, a psychiatry professor with expertise in prison mental health care, uncovered numerous preventable suicides by prisoners, lengthy and serious delays in care, insufficient and unlicensed staff and inadequate medication protocols. One prisoner hanged himself after ADC neglected to give him his prescribed mood stabilizing drugs for more than three weeks, Dr. Stewart found (11/8/13 report, pages 21-23). 

The reports also detail significant, dangerous problems with ADC’s use of solitary confinement. Some people, for instance, are put in isolation simply because other beds are full (Vail 11/8/13 report, page 9). Mentally ill prisoners are often isolated because ADC does not have treatment alternatives, according to one expert (Vail 11/8/13 report, page 13). 

“[T]he ADC health care delivery system is fundamentally broken and is among the worst prison health care systems I have encountered,” Dr. Cohen wrote (11/8/13 report, page 3). “[U]nless ADC dramatically reverses its course, it will continue to operate in a way that harms patients by denying them necessary care for serious medical conditions.” 

Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit, Parsons v. Ryan, are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, the ACLU of Arizona, the Prison Law Office, Jones Day, Perkins Coie LLP and the Arizona Center for Disability Law. 

A trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 21. More expert reports will be made public prior to the trial. 

The complete reports now available can be found here. Reporters can email the ACLU of Arizona to request report summaries.

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...

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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...

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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?

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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