Deliberate indifference to addiction: AZ DOC treats only a fraction of their prisoners.

According to the AZ Department of Corrections, of the roughly 60,000 people who were cycled through our state prison system last year, only 3,175 got any kind of substance abuse treatment. How is that something to brag about, when the DOC themselves say that 75% of new arrivals come due to substance abuse problems? That's a treatment enrollment rate of something like 5% of prisoners, and there's no indication of what their success rate is for those who go through their programs. I mean, really: that's supposed to be some kind of "great achievement"?

I really feel for all the folks who develop new heroin and meth addictions behind bars due largely to the despair and tedium, with the lack of any meaningful activity. DOC knows about their drug epidemic behind bars, but simply puts prisoners in the hole when they get busted with dirty urines or need to leave a yard due to a drug debt - never offering them treatment options. This press release below, I suspect, is actually a response to my repeated criticisms of the AZ DOC's lack of treatment for addictions, and their waning support for even allowing 12 step groups to come in and help. 

Below is an example of one of my recent complaints to AZ DOC Director Charles Ryan about a young mentally ill/addicted prisoner who needs protective segregation due to being targeted for extortion after he got into trouble with drug debts and chased off a yard. I was pretty angry when I wrote it...


"Director Ryan:                                                                                              July 24, 2014

I have written to you previously about XX. According to Ms. Crabtree's email below, the AZ DOC is knowingly returning this dually-diagnosed young man to a hostile situation where he will likely be again victimized, his family having already been targeted for extortion that clearly is organized across the prison system, and extends beyond collections on the original drug debts. That's deliberate indifference to this prisoner's safety, as well as to his mother's.



 
Based on Ms. Crabtree's report alone of this guy's issues (my own assessment as emailed to you June 17 was much more thorough),  the DOC has a duty to at LEAST provide this young man with meaningful substance abuse treatment and a relatively clean and sober living environment - are folks you capable of doing that much? Is there ANYWHERE in the DOC system where this kid has a real chance to make it? Or do you plan to house him on a yard where he can more easily obtain heroin than a job or psychiatric and substance abuse treatment? What will you do to assure X is able to get the support he needs to resist or avoid the proliferation of drugs, despair, and gang violence in your system? And what has your Criminal Investigations Unit done to investigate the extortion attempts his mother has reported? X's mother is in the CC line and I believe she at least deserves a reply to those concerns. So do those legislators in the cc who are supposed to represent her interests.

Thank you for your time and attention to this prisoner's safety and welfare.

Margaret Plews"

(Ryan ignored this email, needless to say - but his media people sure didn't! 

Gotta make it look good, now, because the above email was cc'ed to some legislators...)

---------from the AZ DOC website----------

ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

1601 W. JEFFERSON PHOENIX, ARIZONA 85007 (602) 542-3133 www.azcorrections.gov

JANICE K. BREWER GOVERNOR

CHARLES L. RYAN DIRECTOR

NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release

For more information contact: Doug Nick dnick@azcorrections.gov Bill Lamoreaux blamorea@azcorrections.gov

Wednesday, August 13, 2014 THOUSANDS OF INMATES COMPLETE ADDICTION TREATMENT PROGRAMS IN FY 2014

PHOENIX (Wednesday, August 13, 2014) - More than three-thousand inmates successfully completed addiction or DUI treatment programs provided by the Arizona Department of Corrections in the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30.

In that period, 2,052 inmates concluded various substance abuse treatment programs, and another 1,123 inmates finished Level I and Level II DUI treatment programs.

“Addiction treatment programs are vital to the work of the Department of Corrections,” said Director Charles Ryan.  “Typically in recent years, more than 20 percent of the inmates incarcerated in ADC facilities have been committed for a drug-related offense.  Many other crimes can be traced to some involvement with illicit substances.  And we are all familiar with the tragic consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.  Therefore, it is very important that substance abuse treatment programs are made available, and that they are effective.”

Arizona is among a small number of states in which all inmate addiction treatment groups are provided by licensed substance abuse counselors.

Karen Hellman, the department’s Counseling and Treatment Services Administrator, notes this is an essential component to the program’s success. “It’s essential to have professional counselors who can work through the treatment process with the inmates,” she said.  “In order for inmates to transition back to society, as we expect them to do, they need the best possible assistance, and using licensed counselors goes a long way to reaching that goal.  Having more than two-thousand inmates complete this important step for addiction treatment and another 1,100 for DUI programming in the past fiscal year is a great achievement.”

Addiction treatment programs operate on a six or 12 month timetable and require inmates to participate in two hour sessions twice a week.

Deliberate indifference in AZ DOC custody continues under Corizon.

Good article today in the Tucson Weekly about the DOC's deliberate indifference to human life and their unnecessary deaths in custody.  Please go to the source and leave your comments, especially if you have personal experience with the DOC. 

This is what I had to say:

"Thank you so much for this article. As one who hears daily from prisoners and their families and fights with the DOC about health care and safety in custody, I can attest to the unconstitutional - the outright inhmane - standard of medical care in AZ prisons. From the deliberate indifference to pain and suffering of cancer patients to the brutal, degrading treatment dished out to the traumatized and mentally ill, the conditions of confinement under DOC director Charles Ryan are horrendous.

Ryan's reputation for running the cruelest system in the country actually invites some pats on the back from thick-headed legislators here, but from the junk laws and sentencing guidelines we pass to the implementation of our penal system, Arizona is exceptionally stupid on crime. What is the logic behind depriving prisoners of access to the resources they need to be rehabilitated while subjecting them to the rising violence, trauma and terror that has caused AZ prison homicide and suicide rates to double under Brewer's adminstration? We are simply inflicting further injury on already-damaged people.

Chuck Ryan seems to implement policy based on his contempt for prisoners and desire to punish rather than his duty to try to rehabilitate any of his charges so they are safe to be released back to the community. He's an embarassment to other law enforcemnt professionals in arizona, many of whom don't subscribe to his ideology. He doesn't seem to know what "evidence-based practice" is, or why it's so important to invest public resoures in corrections programs that are actually proven to increase parolee success and public safety.

For example, despite the fact that 75% of incoming prisoners are identified as having problems with addiction or alcoholism, and the growing epidemic of hepatitis c in the prison system (being spread by the obscene abundance of heroin and lack of access to clean needles behind bars) - only 4% of all state prisoners even got substance abuse treatment last year. That's unacceptable. In their 5-year plan the DOC claims not to have enough funding to increase the number of prisoners to more than 3000 a year who get treatment, either (that's out of a total of 60,000 prisoners who cycle through there). 

The problem with the AZ DOC isn't a lack of money, though - they have a billion dollar budget, and its still growing. Their problem is the failure to spend it responsibly. Instead of fully funding programs to help prisoners transition to the community again, the DOC actively convinced the legislature to take money out of an account for those kinds of services and put it into the building fund to support the construction of their new $50 million supermax to warehouse people in.

In fact, the state is facing a class action suit not only for gross medical neglect, but also for their illegal use of administrative segregation (i.e solitary confinement, which the DOC denies they ever use) to manage the symptoms of priosners with serious mental illness in the current supermax facility. If some of the folks currently filling those cells don't belong there to begin with, why build another one?

The only explanation I can see for that new supermax - other than the financial incentives all the obvious beneficiaries have to push this through - is that Chuck Ryan wants this monstrosity to stand as a monument to his brief reign as the DOC's king-baby. I think it's criminal for the public to have to pay for him to fulfill that immature fantasy, especially while other state DOC's are shutting down prisons AND bringing down crime rates by redirecting resources to supporting the reintegration of prisoners in their communities. If Jan Brewer had any real courage or common sense she would fire DOC director ryan immediately and reconstruct the entire system based on contemporary models of crime reduction and the rehabilitation of offenders."

If you are a prisoner's loved one fighting Corizon and the DOC for their access to health care, here's a link to a post that may help:

Corizon and the AZ DOC: Prisoners Families, Know Your Rights.

 please also feel free to contact Peggy Plews at 480-580-6807 or arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com

----from the Tucson Weekly-------

Cruel, But Not Unusual

State prisoners say lousy medical care is killing them

Tucson Citizen

by Tim Vanderpool

June 27, 2013

 

A narrow road shadows the outer fence at Arizona's state prison in Tucson. Composed of light gravel, always raked smooth, the lane is a blank palette for the footprints of escape. Yet much of this complex holds only petty offenders—short-termers, really—for whom such capers would seem pointless.

But it seems even they can face a death sentence of sorts, delivered by a culture of medical neglect.

That's why two top dogs at the Arizona Department of Corrections are currently being sued, not only by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, but also by the potent, San Quentin, Calif.-based Prison Law Office. In 2011, Prison Law scored a resounding U.S. Supreme Court victory that compelled California to reduce prison overcrowding.

The Arizona lawsuit was filed in March against Corrections Director Charles Ryan and his health services director, Richard Pratt. It alleges that "medical, mental health, and dental care" provided to inmates is "grossly inadequate and subjects all prisoners to a substantial risk of serious harm, including unnecessary pain and suffering, preventable injury, amputation, disfigurement and death...

"Critically ill prisoners," the lawsuit continues, "have begged prison officials for treatment, only to be told 'be patient,' 'it's all in your head,' or 'pray' to be cured."

Dan Pochoda is legal director for the ACLU of Arizona. He calls health care in our state prisons "the worst I've ever seen, in terms of clearly increasing harm unnecessarily because of the inadequate care, and the absence of anything except trying to save money on the backs of the prisoners."

Because of its sweeping implications, the case has since evolved into a class action lawsuit. The next step is proving in court just how dire the situation truly is, says Pochoda. "The ideal outcome would be a finding that there is clearly deliberate indifference to the serious medical and mental health needs of the inmate population, that people are dying unnecessarily, that folks who are in for sentences of a few years—not life sentences or death sentences—are coming out with permanent and serious illnesses."

Their ranks include Robert Plasa, now doing three years at the Tucson prison for violating his probation. Back in 2011, before he was sent to jail, Plasa says he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He was waiting to have the gland removed when he was arrested.

Today, he's still waiting. "I have been strung along for almost a year-and-a-half here without treatment," he wrote me in a letter this March.

In that time, Corrections has turned its state-run prison medical program over to one private health care provider, and then to another. But for Plasa, apparently little has changed—except that his diagnosis has grown even more grim. "I have recently had blood work done and ultrasound on the thyroid," he wrote. "This revealed that the cancer not only spread through the whole thyroid, it is now in the lymph nodes. The thyroid could have been cut out before, and isolated the cancer. Due to the lack of medical attention and negligence on the part of the Department of Corrections, I have a more serious and maybe life-threatening medical condition."

When I asked Corrections for details on Plasa's plight, spokesman Andrew Wilder referred me to the state's current prison health care provider, Corizon Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn. Citing privacy laws, Corizon also refused to comment on Plasa. But in an email, company spokesman Brian Fulton did issue this boilerplate response: "We can say that since Corizon assumed providing medical services for the Arizona Department of Corrections in March 2013, our caregivers have worked hard every day to provide quality health care services that meet and exceed national accreditation standards."

To Caroline Isaacs, however, Plasa's version sounds much closer to the truth. She heads the American Friends Service Committee's Tucson office, which has long agitated for Arizona prison reforms. "This guy's problem is not an isolated issue," Isaacs says. "There are really serious consequences to this type of incompetence. But prisoners are people that nobody cares about."

Indeed, the ACLU's Pochoda provided a stream of examples in which prison medical care was seemingly riddled with negligence. They include the inmate displaying chronic and mysterious flu symptoms that were never treated. Or the prisoner with a growth on his throat that was left untreated until it burst. Following surgery, his condition was again ignored until it worsened. Only then did the doctors decide that the growth was cancerous; the man has yet to receive standard treatment such as radiation.

Then there's the guy who did have his cancerous prostate removed, but then received no follow-up testing to ensure that the cancer had not returned. Only much later—too much later, it appears—did he receive tests showing that the cancer had not only rebounded, but was now spreading.

In response to their panicky letters, distressed relatives or partners of inmates received cavalier responses from Corizon—at least when they weren't outright ignored. "Please be assured that (your boyfriend) is not going to die," a Corizon apparatchik finally wrote to one worried woman, after she repeatedly tried to get information. "It is important to remember that (the inmate) is an adult and must take some part in his day to day health care."

This current wave of incompetence dates to 2011, when the Legislature directed Corrections to put its health services out to bid. Last summer, a three-year, $349 million contract was awarded to Pittsburgh-based Wexford Health Sources despite the company's troubled history in other states. True to form, Wexford's Arizona tenure soon hit turbulence when Corrections blamed it for poor record keeping and staffing problems. In less than a year, prison medical care had switched over to Corizon.

But for critics such as Pochoda, that's like choosing which train to ride off the rails. "Wexford has a very spotty record, after getting kicked out of other states, and it was a disaster," he says. "After nine months, they got fired or quit, and now (Corrections) has brought in Corizon, also with a spotty record. And we don't believe it will make a bit of difference because the goal is to reduce costs. For the private firms, there's a profit motive: the less they spend, the more they keep."

Ultimately, he blames state lawmakers for privatizing prison health care to save a buck, "but not uttering a peep about how it should be a better service, and not result in so many deaths, etc."

That's hardly news for guys like Robert Plasa.

"I have a good company I work for and a beautiful family waiting for me," Plasa wrote in his letter. "I wasn't figuring that paying my dues to the state of Arizona meant a life sentence from cancer."

Why AZ doesn't need another Supermax prison...

Hey Folks:

*** much to my surprise, there apparently IS supposed to be further discussion on funding for the new Supermax: The AZ LEG Joint Committee on Capital Review  is meeting next Wednesday (June 12) at 9:00 a.m. in the Senate Bldg, Appropriations Room 109. The committee documents most pertinent to this discussion are here. We need to get as many people out to that as possible and/or contact those members ahead of time. Keep an eye out for it to be rescheduled at the last minute, though.****

In light of that, I have just a few thoughts: the last part of this post below addresses how so many prisoners inappropriately end up in Supermax.  My buddy C  gave me his full blessings on this campaign (see flyer). Since I launched this campaign a couple of months ago, the DOC has reclassed him down again and moved him to a close custody general population (GP) yard at ASPC-YUMA - punishing him further by forcing him back into GP, where he has told them he is in danger (especially now that I've made him a high-profile prisoner). 

I think we should demand that an audit be done by the legislature of who exactly the current Supermax prisoners are and why they happen to be there - how many are inappropriately there because they are Seriously Mentally Ill (SMI) - does the ACLU already have a count on that? how many are like C (I can probably name/ identify about 15 actual prisoners like him), and  how many really are the "worst of the worst"? And what exactly is being done about the violence on the GP yards? Substance abuse (SA) treatment programs would help, as would educational and vocational opportunities - Ryan wiped everything out when he took over. I bet recovering drug addicts can't even designate that they want to be in clean and sober dorms - that would be another idea, though...

Those of you with family in prison: you might want to emphasize to your own legislators (find them here) that the DOC has failed to provide adequate mental health care and offers hardly ANY substance abuse treatment, yet they're putting people in supermax who have disciplinaries due to mental health and addiction problems, not violence. (the violent ones are being left to run the yards while the pacifists get punished.)

Check out the DOC's own records: below is their "Corrections at a Glance April 2013" monthly report (here's the section with all thier reports). In the left hand column (the red ink is mine) you can see how DOC identifies 75% of incoming prisoners as having a major substance abuse problem, but in 2012 only 2,633 prisoners received any kind of substance abuse treatment - that's only about 4% of the nearly 60,000 prisoners who went through our state prisons last year. 

Now this is especially alarming given that the DOC is planning to take all the money from the Transitional Program fund (which prisoners pay into from their earnings). The Transitional Program fund pays for the services that are supposed to help prepare prisoners for release - some may qualify for up to 90 days early release.  Evidently the DOC thinks putting money it takes from the wages of prisoners into new prisons is a better use of the funds than providing substance abuse treatment or helping people adjust to the community again. That's about 3 1/5 million dollars, as far as I can tell. Boy, are the prisoners ever going to be mad about that one. They pay $.08 out of every dollar they earn into that fund.

Another fund that could be used for treatment services for drug-dependent prisoners is the Inmate Store Account - where they have nearly 9 million dollars they haven't spent on prisoner programs, like they once promised they would. In 2011 the legislature approved annual transfers of $500,000 from that account to the DOC Building Renewal Fund, and it looks like the DOC wants the rest for general operations.

(see page 87 of this document for those figures)

Perhaps the DOC has better plans to rehabilitate prisoners down the road? Hardly. Here's Chuck Ryan's vision for our collective future: despite packing our prison system full of drunks and addicts, and a plethora of best practice guidelines about treating them, only a handful of AZ prisoners will ever get treatment for their addictions or alcoholism in his custody. While fighting for tens of millions to increase their capacity by thousands of beds in recent years, the AZ DOC's strategic plan for 2014-2018 indicates that they only plan to increase the number of prisoners who receive substance abuse treatment services from 3,000 in 2013 to 3,250 in 2014. But in the Governor's Master List of State Government programs 2012-2015 the DOC says that without an increase in what they call "human resources" both the substance abuse and the sex offender treatment programs will be maxed out, at capacity, at the 2013 levels.

It's troubling that Chuck Ryan's prisoners have been killing eachother and themselves at twice the rate they did under previous administrations...That doesn't sound anything near what we should be getting from our state's Department of Corrections - especially for a billion dollars a year. No wonder there's so much heroin and extortion and violence in our state prisons. And what happens to these prisoners when you kick them lose with nothing but $50 and a prison ID card at the end of their sentences? Are they all really coming out better prepared to deal with life clean and sober than when they went in?

Here's some "truth in sentencing" for the judges out there: some of those homeless or seriously mentally ill folks who you locked up "for their own good" will come out addicted to worse drugs with more skills to commit new crimes - and probably infected with Hep C, too. Some won't even survive it - they may end up like Shannon Palmer, Marcia Powell, Carlo Krakoff or Tony Lester instead.

Now that's just plain shameful.

SMI prisoners and addicts should be placed in more appropriate facilities with the proper treatment resources before a new Supermax is built. Furthermore, if more resources went into community treatment options and re-entry support for prisoners, not plans for re-incarceration of the most vulnerable and troubled, there would be less demand for more prison space down the road. 

This is the Joint Legislative Committee on Capital Review - tell them we don't need another Supermax, and they need to look into who we are imprisoning in the Supermax we already have. Here are the committee members  to contact before next Wednesday's discussion about approving the new Supermax:

Senator Don Shooter Chairman 2013	Representative John Kavanagh Chairman 2014
Senator Gail Griffin	Representative Lela Alston
Senator Leah Landrum Taylor	Representative Chad Campbell
Senator John McComish	Representative Tom Forese
Senator Al Melvin	Representative David Gowan, Sr.
Senator Lynne Pancrazi	Representative Rick Gray
Senator Anna Tovar	Representative Andrew C. Sherwood

here's their address:

Joint Committee on Capital Review

Joint Legislative Budget Committee

AZ Legislature
1716 West Adams
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Phone: (602) 926-5491 

This is one way that Supermax gets so full:


You would think from all the rhetoric about trying to curb gang violence that prisoners would be encouraged and rewarded when they resist gang domination - especially the younger, more easily-influenced guys. Often these men say they refuse to perpetrate gang violence because they're trying to turn away from criminal activity, or because they don't believe in hurting people they have no personal issue with - I'd want to help those guys if I was running the prisons, frankly. Once they make themselves a target by asserting their autonomy, though, instead of being provided some measure of protection by the DOC they're being pushed back out into GP yards with the mark of "snitch" on them for having sought out PC even once.

To assert their dominance, the yard leaders or gang leaders these PC prisoners push back against give the nod to putting a "green light" on them for things like eating or speaking with members of the wrong race or with someone who is openly gay or transgender - meaning they're fair game for anyone to attack. The violence isn't just reserved for child molesters or career "snitches".

Since virtually all of the General Population (GP) prison yards are now run by the gangs, not the guards, prisoners who are thus targeted are forced to seek protective custody (PC) from the state - which immediately means they go into the hole (detention), not the perpetrators of threats or violence against them - those guys are often left to keep running the yards, despite all sorts of witnesses that they are dealing drugs and extorting prisoners.

There they sit for one or two months while the DOC justifies denying their PC applications (if they don't have an attorney on board, anyway) and placing them on a different prison yard, asserting to the prisoner that the threat that drove them to seek safety in a hole is simply "self-reported" (i.e. their death warrants aren't signed by gang leaders on letterhead, so therefore they must be fabricating said threat), doesn't pose a substantiated danger from a security threat group (STG), isn't statewide/ systemwide, and doesn't warrant much concern simply because the terrified, traumatized prisoner may not have been "smashed" (beaten into a coma) yet.

When prisoners who are denied PC status get pushed out into a new GP yard, they're usually quickly confronted by other prisoners and told to leave or they will be hurt for having PC'ed up on the yard they just got off of.  They aren't any safer on a prison yard across the state than the one they originally get into trouble with the gangs on  because of both guard corruption and the prevalence of cell phones inside - the gang members and gang wannabes waiting to assault them often know about PC prisoner moves and their issues before the prisoners even land on the next yard.

In fact, by pushing them onto one GP yard after another - from which they will predictably PC up off of to avoid being assaulted - the DOC is exposing these guys to an even larger number of state prisoners who will identify them each time they land on a new yard on out as prisoners with PC issues (code for snitches and sex offenders). The DOC is thus setting that prisoner up to get hurt again, and again, and again for a long time to come that way.

If a prisoner refuses to go onto a GP yard because they are afraid of being assaulted - which they have the "right" to do - they can be given a major disciplinary ticket for an "aggravated refusal of an order to house" (RTH). That means they go back into the hole another month or so AND lose good time and visitation and other privileges, and eventually get enough RTH tickets that their custody scores are jacked up to maximum security - whereby the DOC can place them in the Supermax prison and simply bury them there, where no one can hear them any more.

I dare the legislature to audit the Supermax - ALL the Maximum custody cells across the system - to see who's really there. I have a real problem with this pattern of punishing the prisoners who resist violence. For refusing to comply with gang orders to extort, hurt or kill others - including guards and community members - prisoners shouldn't be forced into Supermax cages for 23 hours a day, only to be allowed out to exercise or use the shower if chained up with two guard escorts.
 
In fact, many of those in ASPC-Eyman/SMU-I now are actually low-risk, non-violent, and mentally ill - they landed there thanks to RTH tickets. They include prisoners like C, here - HIS STORY IS QUITE COMMON...

The intent of funding and exercising that level of control over prisoners movements is to manage highly dangerous prisoners - not to punish them for passivity, or simply move them out of the way because the administration and guards have lost control of the GP yards. That's an absurdly abusive and expensive response to punish and silence a guy who just doesn't want to go along with the gang rules or perpetrate racist violence. The DOC doesn't have to be too conscientious about who they put there, though, because no one pays attention out here, and they already have 500 more Supermax beds approved to build and bring on line, no more questions asked ***

HELLO??? Is anybody at the AZ LEG really watching how the DOC is spending our money? They have a billion dollar budget and it's still growing, even though the prison population has been shrinking. This is one reason why we have a ton of guys in Supermax now who really don't meet the DOC's standard criteria for maximum security. The legislature is being taken for a ride, deluded about who that new prison is going to house, and deliberately indifferent to all the class action lawsuit allegations about the mentally ill being warehoused there already.

The AZ Inspector General's office and a legislative committee - as well as the US DOJ, in my book - needs to audit the DOC's PC program and the use of the existing Supermax prison and maximum security designations before they build that addition out at ASPC-Lewis..."

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

FYI, families and recent prisoners:  I'm compiling a report for the US Department of Justice right now about the violence in AZ DOC prisons and the problems with the protective custody process (805), whereby it's impossible for male prisoners to refuse to "join" the gangs (which often involves assaulting another prisoner)  - much less just refuse to follow their stupid racist, sexist, patriarchal rules - without being victimized themselves, yet many guys still refuse. 

Do not go to Tom Horne's office  (AZ Attorney General) for info about civil rights in the prisons, or for help if you love a prisoner and want DOC investigated - they are the bad guys, too. The AZ Attorney General's office has no regard for civil rights; they defend the DOC against wrongful death, deliberate indifference and brutality suits, and are thus compromised. 

Report civil rights violations in the prisons to the ACLU of Arizona, the US Department of Justice (Civil Rights Division) and to me at arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com.  All reports of prison violence that folks are aware could be useful as I put this thing together, so please pass them on.

Kingman Prison: Once upon a time.

(FYI: McCluskey and Welch arrested in AZ 8/19/10 post)

Looks like the priorities of Arizonans shifted in recent years from rehabilitating offenders to warehousing them again. Maybe if we didn't have so many petty offenders incarcerated in the state - and such high recidivism rates - there would have been more room for murderers so they wouldn't be putting the overflow in medium security private prisons dedicated to DUI and drug offenders.

It's now damn near impossible for prisoners who really need it to be placed in a meaningful substance abuse or mental health treatment unit - programs which, if they were accessible enough on the outside, may have prevented many from needing them on the inside. Now lifers and white supremacists occupy this place, and young addicts and burglars with just a few years to do are placed in massive state prisons with gangs and killers running them. What do we think we're teaching them there? Who will they be when they leave - if they survive?

College classes for AZ state prisoners, by the way, are reserved for those who can afford to pay for it themselves - funding for that was axed a long time ago, fueling the prison boom.

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

Prison outside Kingman at capacity of 472 Oct 14, 2004 By Marvin Robertson Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN – The Arizona State Prison facility southwest of Kingman has an inmate population unique in the state, Deputy Warden Clint Davis said.

“This is the first place I have worked where all the inmates were in for the same offense.” Davis said “I have always recommended non-violent first offenders be kept away from repeat offenders.”

The population at the facility near the Griffith power plant interchange in Interstate 40 is at current capacity of 472. Construction continues to add space for nearly another 1,000 inmates by April. Food service and administrative facilities are in temporary buildings. Davis said the prison population is older than he had expected for the driving under the influence sentences. Most are there for drinking and driving, although DUI could include drugs if the individual was picked up driving while “high,” Davis said.

The prison was quiet Monday, a holiday when some staff members who handle the educational programs were taking a break.

Many inmates were enjoying the warm Arizona October sun in the exercise yard. Some were still in their bunks sleeping past mid-morning. Others had their usual duties helping in the kitchen, cleaning floors and raking the exercise yard.

“Rocks seem to float to the surface here,” Davis said. “We continually rake the surface and remove them so they do not become weapons.”

Inmates can stay in the exercise yard most of the day if their assignments are completed. They walk, use the fitness stations and sit on benches in the warm sunshine. Volleyball and horseshoes (plastic not iron) will be added to the basketball courts now available. “The average length of stay is four to six months,” Davis said. “They take a basic six-week program followed by 16 hours of DUI education and treatment,” Davis said. “They then enter aftercare and have basic education and will have classes up to college available.”

Management Training Corp., a Utah company, operates the prison as a private facility for the Arizona Department of Corrections. As deputy warden, Davis is in charge of the educational programs.

“The MTC mission is ‘Success for Life,’” he said. The motto is “Preparing offenders for re-entry to society.”

“I know of no other private of public prison operation than MTC with that mission,” he said.

Half the inmates come without a high school education. The Department of Corrections requires that those who cannot pass a basic test of skills at the eighth-grade level to take basic education courses.

Davis said inmates who get some college classes or vocational training during first incarceration seldom return. With a college class, the return rate is 3 percent. With a vocation skill or trade, the return rate is 12 percent.

Without either, 85 percent of the inmates will return within five years. On average, those will spend 10 of the next 20 years behind bars at a total cost to the state of $250,000 for prison. By age 40, many stay out of prison. MTC now employees 120 people at the Kingman site. Another 150 employees will be added by April when the full 1,400 inmates are housed. Mohave Community College is recruiting employees for MTC and conducts training academies to train new employees.

Most of the employees live in Mohave County.

Juvenile Justice & Teen Substance Abuse

From Reclaiming futures.org, passed on by Lois at Real Cost of Prisons Project:

Reclaiming Futures Launches Blog Dedicated to Substance Abuse and Teens in the Juvenile Justice System

Reclaiming Futures Every Day is a professionally-staffed blog that aims to keep people informed of the latest happenings in juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment. Launched by Reclaiming Futures, an initiative
of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it can be found at http://blog.reclaimingfutures.org, and is designed to help readers:

   * Discuss the national challenge of helping teens break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime.
   * Comment on new developments in teen alcohol and drug treatment and juvenile justice reform.
   * Stay in touch with what's going on in the 23 communities using the proven Reclaiming Futures approach.
   * Receive expert opinions and commentary from regular contributors who are leaders in the field.

Reclaiming Futures is an initiative created by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that offers a new approach to helping teenagers caught in the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime. Now in 23 communities across
the nation, the program has received additional investments to spread its model from RWJF, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and the Kate B.
Reynolds Charitable Trust. The national office of Reclaiming Futures is housed in the Regional Research Institute of the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University. For a list of our 23 locations
and more information, please visit www.reclaimingfutures.org.