What happened to this teacher at Eyman a few months back seems highly avoidable, but it was also quite predictable. In fact, I wonder why it didn't happen sooner.
DOC staff and contract workers
have been saying that they aren't getting what they need to do their
jobs safely for a long time. Here's one officers' union's 2011 letter of no confidence in Charles Ryan's leadership...sadly, though, Jan still stands by her man. The
folks at Judicial Watch are also investigating the high incidence of staff assaults
at the AZ DOC after receiving complaints from the unions about the
failure of the DOC to curb the violence or improve basic security measures.
Moreover, the AZ DOC isn't
ever able to substantiate rape when it happens to prisoners, so they
don't have a lot of good experience preventing rape or helping the
victims of sexual assault. In fact, they tend to blame them and do
everything they can to punish and muzzle them if they try to hold
administration responsible for their negligence. It's no wonder that they're trying to do that here, too.
The
consequences of a politic which prioritizes the rights of corporations to profit over basic human rights end up being felt
not only by prisoners, but by staff and community members as well, as this poor teacher found out. The
misogyny and patriarchy pervasive throughout the department produced the typical administrative response to this woman's rape - which is to deny and dismiss any responsibility the AZ DOC had to keeping her safer than they did.
This all really makes you wonder where the 1 $billion AZ DOC budget is going to if these prisons are always short-staffed and prisoners are going hungry, never getting the medical care they need, being taken off their psychiatric meds and buried in isolation cells instead, living in condemned facilities, and not being provided with meaningful employment or rehabilitation opportunities - in fact, only 4% can access any kind of substance abuse treatment in the course of a year.
Despite claiming to have too few resources to invest in crime-reduction and prevention strategies that work, like addictions treatment often does, the incarceration industry is making a killing off charging the state a fortune for feeding prisoners
things not meant for human consumption, denying critical health care to
the seriously ill, under-staffing essential medical and security
positions, obstructing efforts by prisoners to grieve or sue, and simply
warehousing people in the least-constitutional settings and
circumstances they can get away with...and the DOC enables it all...
----------------------
New York Daily News
Thursday, June 19, 2014, 7:47 AM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHOENIX — A teacher at an Arizona prison was alone in a room full of
sex offenders before being stabbed and sexually assaulted by a convicted
rapist, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press about
an attack that highlighted major security lapses at the facility.
The attack occurred Jan. 30 at the Eyman prison’s Meadows Unit, which
houses about 1,300 rapists, child molesters and other sex offenders. The
teacher was administering a high school equivalency test to about a
half-dozen inmates in a classroom with no guard nearby and only a radio
to summon help. The Department of Corrections issued only a bare-bones
press release after the attack, but the AP pieced together what happened
based on interviews and investigatory reports obtained under the
Arizona Public Records Act.
After the last of the other inmates left, Jacob Harvey asked the
teacher if she could open the bathroom and then attacked her, records
show. Harvey is accused of stabbing her in the head with a pen, forcing
her to the ground and raping her.
The teacher told investigators that she screamed for help, but none
came. Afterward, Harvey tried to use her radio to call for help. It had
apparently been changed to a channel the unit’s guards didn’t use, so
Harvey let the woman use a phone, according to the reports.
Carl ToersBijns, a former deputy warden at the prison, said the assault
highlights chronic understaffing and lax security policies that put
staff members at risk.
“Here you’ve got a guy that commits a hell of a crime ... and he’s put
into an environment that actually gives him an opportunity to do his
criminality because of a lack of staffing,” said ToersBijns, who was
deputy warden at the Eyman prison in Florence until retiring in 2010 and
oversaw the Meadows Unit for 19 months.
State prison officials, however, dismiss the concerns. They say the
assault at the prison about 60 miles southeast of Phoenix is a risk that
comes with the job of overseeing violent prison inmates.
Harvey was in the first year of a 30-year sentence for raping a
Glendale woman in November 2011. Just 17 at the time, he had knocked on
the woman’s door in the middle of the day, asked for a drink of water,
then forced his way inside, where he repeatedly raped and beat her while
her 2-year-old child was in the apartment. He fled naked when the
woman’s roommate arrived home.
He was arrested after DNA evidence connected him to the crime, and he pleaded guilty.
Harvey was initially classified as a “Class 4” security risk, one notch
lower than the highest level. Six months later, despite violating
prison rules at least once, he was reclassified at a lower level.
Department of Corrections spokesman Doug Nick said classrooms at
prisons across the state are having cameras installed.
But he said no
administrative investigation was launched because there was no need, and
no one was disciplined. He said all prisons are dangerous places and
staff are trained accordingly.
“This is an assault that reflects the fact that inmates in our system
often act out violently, and it is the inmate suspect who is responsible
for this despicable act,” he said.
Nick also said that not having a guard in classrooms or nearby “follows accepted corrections practices nationwide.”
That’s not the case, said Carolyn Eggleston, a professor at California
State University, San Bernardino, who started her career as a prison
teacher in several states and now is director of the university’s
Correctional and Alternative Education Program.
“I have to say, I don’t find that consistent with standards,” Eggleston
said. “In a sex offender unit, especially, they should be counting the
people leaving the classroom. They just should. And there should be
somebody, not in the class ... but there should be somebody in proximity
so they can help monitor that.”
The woman, who was not critically injured, has filed a worker’s
compensation claim against the state and did not want to comment on
case. The AP does not usually identify sexual assault victims.
Internal emails obtained by the AP show that prisons Director Charles
Ryan ordered all non-corrections officer staff at prisons statewide to
be issued pepper spray and trained in its use just days after the
attack. And an internal memo sent the day after the assault ordered
guards at a nearby prison to begin checking on civilian staff every
hour.
Nick said the pepper-spray order was in the works before the assault.
And he said that, despite the internal memo from a major that ordered
hourly checks, the actual practice is unpredictable and more frequent,
with staggered checks three times an hour.
ToersBijns, who is an advocate for prison safety and believes
understaffing has put state prison staff at risk, said multiple errors
likely led to the assault, including not having video cameras in the
classroom, a lack of checks on civilian staff and use of an outdated
classification system for inmates that led to a violent predator being
misidentified as a relatively low-level threat.
After the attack, Harvey was calm when confronted in the classroom,
refused to talk to investigators and asked for a lawyer. He was charged
last month with sexual assault, kidnapping and assault with a deadly
weapon. A public defender was appointed, and he pleaded not guilty at
his arraignment. The public defender assigned to his case, Paula Cook,
declined to comment.
Harvey was convicted in a prison administrative hearing of sexually
assaulting the staff member. Three weeks after the rape, he assaulted
another prison employee, although records don’t show any details. His
security classification was raised two levels, to the highest, nearly
three months after the teacher was assaulted.
