ARIZONA
This is a really comprehensive article by a current AZ DOC prisoner, which was originally published in this month's Prison Legal News - subscribe every prisoner you know to that resource for only $30/year (PO Box 1151, Lake Worth, FLA 33460)
Joe Watson once worked for the Phoenix New Times, where Stephen Lemons has also featured this article in his blog this week. He gives Joe a pretty hard time about unrelated stuff, though.
I'm
making Joe's piece even longer by inserting some of my own art, as
well a narratives of prisoner deaths and work from a community mural
the Survivors of Prison Violence did at the Phoenix Art Museum last
year for Prisoners' Justice Day (AUG 10 has been designated as a day to
remember those who have died in the custody of the state). The art and
stories were not part of PLN's version of this article.
Joe
- this is not only well-written, but it took a hell of a lot of
courage. Be strong and be well, my friend. Let us know how things go for
you...
PLN / AUGUST 2013
by Joe Watson
By
the time Jan Brewer replaced Janet Napolitano as Arizona’s governor in
2009, it had been 22 years since the Arizona Department of Corrections
(ADC) built the first prison in the United States designed exclusively
for permanent lockdown – a prison that became the prototype for supermax
facilities across the country.
Even
before Brewer assumed the governorship and brought Charles L. Ryan out
of retirement to run the ADC, Arizona’s prisons were known to be
ruthless and inhumane. Few other prison systems can claim the dubious
distinction of leaving a mentally ill prisoner in an outdoor cage for
hours in scorching summer heat until she literally baked to death. [See:
PLN, Feb. 2010, p.32].
Yet
by playing politics, contracting with for-profit prison healthcare
companies and kowtowing to private prison firms, Governor Brewer and ADC
Director Ryan have taken a prison system already infamous for its
draconian conditions and unfettered incompetence and made it deadlier
and even more vindictive and profit-driven than ever before.
The
ADC, with a $1.1 billion budget in 2012, will soon open a new
maximum-security facility with 500 solitary confinement cells at a
prison complex in Buckeye, at a cost of $50 million. In doing so, state
officials ignored warnings by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
Amnesty International, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and
other human rights groups about the lasting, negative effects of
long-term isolation.
On
June 11, 2013, Prison Legal News sent copies of PLN’s October 2012
cover story on solitary confinement to members of the Arizona
legislative Joint Committee on Capital Review, noting that “budget
expenditures are a zero-sum game and money spent on prison beds is money
not spent on health care, education, affordable housing, infrastructure
and other services for the state’s citizens.” PLN observed that
solitary confinement has an adverse impact both in terms of fiscal costs
and higher recidivism rates for prisoners released after being held in
solitary.
“These
conditions are gratuitously cruel,” David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s
National Prison Project, said of the ADC’s Secure Management Units
(SMUs), where prisoners are held in solitary confinement. “There [is] no
penological nor security justification for those kinds of conditions.”
But
ADC Director Ryan testified before the Joint Committee on Capital
Review that “there are no solitary confinement cells in Arizona
prisons,” apparently based on his own peculiar notion of what
constitutes solitary confinement. The Committee duly approved the
500-bed maximum-security facility, which is scheduled to open in October
2014.
“Director
Ryan saying that ADC’s maximum-security units aren’t solitary
confinement is like the CIA claiming waterboarding is not torture,”
observed Caroline Isaacs, program director for the AFSC’s office in
Tucson. “Whatever you want to call them, the conditions in these
facilities are harmful to people’s physical and mental health.”
Since
Governor Brewer took office, the suicide rate in Arizona’s prison
system has increased while drug overdoses, homicides and untreated
medical conditions are responsible for other prisoner deaths. The ADC
reported that 81 prisoners died in 2012 while 36 deaths occurred in the
first half of 2013; most of the deaths were described as being due to
“apparent natural causes” or “unknown causes.”
|
Nelson Douglas Johnson III strangled himself
in an isolation cell at the AZ DOC
(AKA while in "solitary confinement"). 
His sister remembers him here
at the Maricopa County Courthouse
on the Day of the Dead Prisoner (November 1, 2012)
|
Even
after being sued by the ACLU for failing to provide adequate medical
treatment to the state’s more than 40,000 prisoners, the ADC has
continued to contract prisoner healthcare to a for-profit company with a
reputation for neglect and incompetence.
And
to punctuate Arizona’s merciless criminal justice system under Governor
Brewer’s leadership, she has granted only a handful of commutations and
has not issued a single pardon – a dismal record that is unlikely to
change during the remainder of her tenure.
With
Brewer as governor and Ryan as director of Arizona’s prison system,
conditions for the state’s prisoners have steadily deteriorated – though
private prison companies have profited handsomely.
Outside AZ Department of Corrections' Central Office
(Phoenix, July 2013)
Calls to Privatize More Prisons
To
replace Dora Schriro – the state's prison chief under former Governor
Napolitano before they both left for positions with the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security – Brewer appointed Charles Ryan, who had retired as
the ADC’s director in 2003. Since his return, Ryan has parroted
Brewer’s calls for expanding prison privatization in Arizona.
At
the time of his reappointment, five of the state’s 15 prison complexes
were already operated by private companies: two by Utah-based Management
& Training Corporation (MTC), including a medium-security facility
in Kingman, and three by Florida-based GEO Group, the nation’s
second-largest for-profit prison firm. Collectively those complexes
house over 6,000 prisoners, or 15% of the state’s prison population.
Around
the same time, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the
American Legislative Exchange Council were collaborating with then-state
Senator Russell Pearce to draft a xenophobic anti-immigration bill,
SB1070, which was introduced in the state legislature in December 2009
and enacted into law the following year. [See: PLN, Nov. 2010, p.1].
SB1070
was expected to increase the number of people arrested due to
immigration-related violations; this would potentially benefit CCA,
which operates immigration detention facilities in Arizona.
Within
Brewer’s first year in office, she and Ryan called for privatization of
the state’s entire prison system. The legislature obliged but CCA, GEO
Group and other for-profit prison companies shied away from wholesale
privatization. [See: PLN, Sept. 2010, p.42]. Therefore, in January 2010,
shortly after Senator Pearce introduced SB1070, Ryan proposed a more
modest addition of 5,000 new private prison beds to be opened within
three years. To justify the estimated $585 million cost, the ADC used a
combination of deceptive data and the anticipated impact of SB1070 to
project a need for an additional 8,500 prison beds by 2017.
Not
only were the projections wrong, the department never bothered to
compare the costs and quality of services of privately-operated prison
complexes with those run by the ADC, in violation of state law.
According to the Arizona Republic, “Arizona statutes require [the ADC]
to carry out a biannual performance study for every contract. The study
analyzes costs, the security and safety of each prison, how inmates are
managed and controlled, inmate discipline, programs, health and food
services, staff training, administration and other factors and then
compares these factors to other facilities.”
The
ADC had not conducted a private prison performance study since a state
statute requiring such studies was enacted in 1987. Undeterred, prison
officials proceeded with a request for proposals for 5,000 new private
prison beds.
Connecting the dots with AFSC-Tucson
Evo DeConcini Courthouse, Tucson (July 2013)
Deadly Private Prison Escape
Governor
Brewer and ADC Director Ryan’s efforts to expand prison privatization
in Arizona went mostly unchallenged until July 30, 2010, when prisoners
John Charles McCluskey, Daniel Renwick and Tracy Province – with the
help of McCluskey’s cousin, Casslyn Mae Welch – escaped from a
medium-security prison in Kingman operated by MTC. Over the following
three weeks the escapees kidnapped a pair of truck drivers, had a
shootout with police and evaded authorities during a multistate manhunt
throughout the western U.S.
While
on the run, McCluskey murdered two retirees, Gary and Linda Haas, in
the back of their camper off an old ranch road in New Mexico. He and
Welch then doused the bodies with an accelerant and torched the camper.
Five
days after the escape, a team of state investigators fanned out across
the Kingman prison complex to determine how it happened. They discovered
that MTC staff had ignored a malfunctioning alarm – which had been
going off hundreds of times a day for over two years – that sounded when
the escapees cut through a fence.
The
ADC also discovered eight burned-out perimeter lights, more broken
security equipment and, according to the Republic, “a lax, high-turnover
culture in which MTC’s green, undertrained staff and rookie supervisors
ignored alarms, left long gaps between patrols of the perimeter, left
doors leading out of some buildings open and unwatched, didn’t alert the
state or local police until hours after the escape, and failed in all
manner of basic security practices.”
A
report issued by state prison officials cited those and other problems
at the MTC-run facility. [See: PLN, March 2011, p.24]. The ADC’s on-site
monitor at Kingman, who was later fired, admitted that he had failed to
address security problems and had never even read the state’s contract
with MTC.
McCluskey,
Province and Welch were ultimately captured and charged with the Haas’
murders (Renwick was arrested after he split from the group a few days
after the escape). Province pleaded guilty and received five life
sentences, Welch pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing, Renwick was
sentenced to 60 years and capital murder charges against McCluskey
remain pending.
Following
the escape and nationwide manhunt, Ryan and the ADC did damage control
and made cosmetic changes to prison security statewide. Ryan temporarily
suspended all prisoner transfers to Kingman and moved 238 supposedly
high-risk prisoners out of the facility, and the complex’s population
dropped to 80% of capacity.
This
presumably would result in financial losses for MTC but the company
threatened to sue, citing its contract that guaranteed a minimum 97% bed
occupancy, and state officials ended up paying over $3 million to MTC
for empty prison beds. The company continues to operate the Kingman
facility.
“It’s
disgusting but not surprising,” said Caroline Isaacs. “Arizona is
strapped for cash, and we don’t have the political will or the legal
muscle to go up against a corporation like that, so they can operate
with something close to impunity.” She added, “We’re so desperate
because of prison overcrowding. These companies have got the state over a
barrel. When things go wrong, is [ADC Director] Ryan really going to
cancel the contract? Probably not, and they know that.”
In
2011, once the escape had faded from the headlines, Brewer and Ryan
reintroduced their plan to privatize an additional 5,000 prison beds –
even though the ADC’s daily prisoner count had fallen in the previous
year due to fewer felony arrests in Maricopa County (the state’s
population center) and fewer probation violations statewide, among other
factors.
ADC
officials downplayed their blatantly exaggerated earlier prison
population estimates and instead projected 3,800 more prisoners entering
the state’s prison system by June 2015, though they failed to provide
hard data to support those projections. The plan to privatize more
prison beds was met with bipartisan, if not broad, criticism.
“The
fact we’re moving forward with this outdated plan is mind-boggling to
me,” said Democratic state Rep. Chad Campbell, Arizona’s House minority
leader. “I don’t think there’s a need for it,” agreed state Rep. Cecil
Ash, a Republican who had unsuccessfully pushed for sentencing reforms
in the previous legislative session.
Regardless, Brewer and Ryan pressed ahead and four private prison companies responded to the ADC’s request for proposals.
In
the summer of 2011, ADC officials and representatives from CCA, GEO
Group, MTC and LaSalle Corrections – the companies bidding on the
5,000-bed contract – went on a tour around the state, holding town
hall-style meetings in communities from Winslow to Eloy to Coolidge. At
each meeting the companies deflected criticism about escapes and costs,
focusing instead on the promise of jobs and trotting out business
leaders and loyal employees.
“I
work with wonderful people,” said Linda Gibson, an antique shop owner
who is also employed by CCA, during a public meeting in Eloy, where CCA
operates a facility that houses prisoners from other states. “We have a
lot of single mothers who work at CCA, making good money, who have homes
they wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for CCA.”
Some
communities, however, rejected the private prison dog-and-pony show,
with GEO Group’s proposal to build a facility in the City of Goodyear,
outside Phoenix, running into a “buzz saw” of opposition according to
the Arizona Republic. Mayor Thomas Schoaf of nearby Litchfield Park
called the proposal “a slap in the face to our residents” and “a threat
to the public welfare of our communities.”
Prisoners Driven to Suicide
Meanwhile,
an April 2012 report from Amnesty International, titled “Cruel
Isolation,” examined Arizona’s draconian Special Management Units at the
Arizona State Prison Complex (ASPC) in Eyman and other maximum-security
ADC facilities. Citing prisoner advocates, current and former prison
staff and the ADC’s own written policies, the report found that the ADC,
which houses over 2,900 prisoners in maximum-security facilities, was
“in violation of international law.”
Amnesty
concluded that “the cumulative effects of the conditions [in SMUs],
particularly when imposed for a prolonged or indefinite period,
constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” Even those
prisoners considered especially dangerous, Amnesty argued, should be
treated “with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human
person,” pursuant to international standards related to the treatment
of prisoners.
“Amnesty
International recognizes that it may sometimes be necessary to
segregate prisoners for disciplinary or security purposes. However, all
measures must be consistent with international standards for humane
treatment,” Amnesty stated. “Article 10 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, which the USA has ratified, provides that
‘all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity
and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person,’ a
standard which the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee, the
treaty monitoring body, has stressed is a ‘fundamental and universally
applicable rule.’”
 * |  * |  *
Alfonso Farmer, 23
ASPC-Eyman (January 22, 2012)
|
But
according to Amnesty’s report, the ADC’s Special Management Units –
intended for prisoners who pose the greatest physical threat to prison
employees and the public – are too often filled with mentally ill,
nonviolent and vulnerable offenders.
Most
prisoners held in SMUs have little to no human interaction. With just
one or two hours out of their windowless cells each day, they must
choose to either bathe themselves or spend their limited out-of-cell
time in a small cage with 20-foot walls and a sliver of sky, which the
ADC contends is sufficient “outdoor recreation.” SMU prisoners cannot
participate in work, rehabilitative or educational programs. If they
protest their living conditions, guards ignore them or sometimes
deliberately deny them food.
 * |  * |
It
is little surprise then, but no less tragic, that Arizona’s prison
suicide rate, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report
released in December 2012, is higher than the national average.
Meanwhile, Amnesty found that at least 14 of 43 suicides recorded in
Arizona prisons between October 2005 and April 2011 – almost 33% –
occurred in SMUs, even though those units housed less than 9% of the
state’s total prison population.
“High
rates of suicide in solitary units is a widespread problem; that’s why
many states no longer house mentally ill inmates in solitary,” said
Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
“The severity of the conditions in those units ... most mentally healthy
people who go in are adversely affected. People can become so
despairing, so desperate that they take their own lives.”
According
to the ADC’s critics, prisoner suicides are likely underreported. And
of those that state prison officials publicly disclose, they do not
specify whether a suicide occurred in an SMU or other solitary
confinement unit.
A
major deficiency in the SMUs is a lack of treatment for seriously
mentally ill prisoners. Amnesty International found that “one prisoner
diagnosed with [serious mental illness] spent two years in SMU without
once seeing a psychiatrist despite his repeated requests and referrals
by staff.” Another prisoner had completed a seven-day mental health
treatment program, Amnesty reported, “after which he was returned to
isolation in SMU where he hanged himself the following day.”
 * |  * |
Approximately
10,000 state prisoners require ongoing mental health services,
according to the ADC, including prisoners in SMUs and general population
units.
As
part of an investigative series into the state’s prison system, the
Arizona Republic found there were 470 attempts of self-harm or suicide
by ADC prisoners statewide over an 11-month period ending in May 2012.
In
one earlier incident, Anthony Lester, 26, a mentally ill prisoner who
had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bled to death in his two-man cell
at ASPC-Tucson in July 2010 after slashing his neck, wrist and groin
with a razor blade. Prison staff stood by and watched him die without
providing medical assistance. One of the guards, Orlando Pope, said he
didn’t help because he had never been trained on how to apply pressure
to a wound.
“When
Tony was on his meds, he was our Tony,” said Lester’s aunt, Patti
Jones. “If he’d had access to care, he would have lived.” Lester had
been on suicide watch, but was removed two days before he killed
himself. A guard had mistakenly given him shaving razors.
Just
before the ADC provided suicide prevention training to 8,806 prison
employees in March 2012, Lester’s family filed a wrongful death claim
against the state, seeking $3 million. Pope and four other guards
received unpaid suspensions for failing to properly respond while Lester
was bleeding to death.
More
recent suicides in Arizona state prisons – three in one month – include
the May 10, 2013 suicide of death row prisoner Milo Stanley, 50, who
hung himself; Paul Henderson, 22, who died from “an apparent suicide” on
May 1, 2013; and prisoner Joaquin Tamayo, 41, serving a five-year
sentence, who killed himself on April 22, 2013. All three deaths
occurred at ASPC-Eyman. On February 12, 2013, ADC prisoner Christina
Black, 52, serving a life sentence for murder, committed suicide at the
Perryville prison complex in Goodyear.
Other Deaths Due to Violence, “Gratuitous Cruelty”
Suicides,
whether in SMUs or other units, aren’t the only cause of unnecessary
deaths in Arizona’s prison system. Other prisoners have overdosed on
drugs, been killed by fellow prisoners or died because they received
inadequate medical care.
“Arizona’s
prison system has two death rows,” the Arizona Republic proclaimed in
its investigative series. “One is made up of the 126 inmates officially
sentenced to death ... [and] 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.”
 * |  * |
Between
2010 and mid-2012, 37 Arizona prisoners died on Arizona’s “other death
row” – more than five times the number of condemned prisoners executed
during the same time period, the Republic reported. The ADC conducts its
own investigations into prisoners’ deaths rather than an outside
agency, and typically releases scanty information.
According
to Carl ToersBijns, a retired former ADC deputy warden who worked at
ASPC-Eyman, the lack of full disclosure with respect to prisoners’
deaths is intentional.
“The
cleanup starts the moment the incident is reported: eliminating flag
words, eliminating individuals who may be relevant to the situation, cut
back the witness list,” ToersBijns said. “By the time it’s finalized,
the incident report is so clean and sterile you won’t know what happened
because it’s already been filtered. The direction is given ... was it
deliberate, accidental, suicide, homicide? They try to fix and create a
summary for that report that they can defend.
|  * |
“A
lot of drug overdoses are [reported as] suicides,” ToersBijns
continued. “A lot of ‘natural deaths’ are people who have been suffering
medical conditions but finally just expired. It’s not reflected on
those reports and never will be reflected in the news reports. Only the
ones who were there know what happened.”
But
the Republic did manage to identify some of the causes of the 37
deaths, by filing public records requests. At least seven prisoners died
after overdosing on heroin, for example.
“Nobody
ever told me he could die in prison of illegal drugs,” stated Cynthia
Krakoff, whose 36-year-old son, Carlo, died from a heroin overdose at a
Tucson prison on July 31, 2011. “If they can’t clean up the prisons,
they need to find a different way to treat the drug addicts.”
Unfortunately,
substance abuse treatment programs in Arizona prisons are lacking.
While around 75% of ADC prisoners report having drug and/or alcohol
problems, only 1 in 13 of those prisoners received substance abuse
treatment in fiscal year 2011.
 * |  * |
Other
deaths were due to homicides. Seven prisoners were killed by fellow
prisoners between 2010 and mid-2012, including Eduardo Martinez, who was
beaten to death by gang members at ASPC-Yuma in December 2011. He had
been serving time for writing bad checks. Christian Frost, 38, was
killed at ASPC-Tucson on February 22, 2013, while ASPC-Lewis prisoner
John Jones, 63, was murdered on June 17, 2013. An investigation into
Jones’ death by the ADC’s Criminal Investigation Unit is reportedly
pending.
According
to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from 2001-2010,
Arizona has a prison homicide rate 25% higher than the national average.
With
respect to deaths due to substandard medical care, on March 6, 2012 the
ACLU – joined by the Berkeley, California-based Prison Law Office, the
Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms of Perkins Coie LLP
and Jones Day – filed suit against the ADC for unconstitutionally
denying prisoners adequate medical and mental health treatment. [See:
PLN, Sept. 2012, p.34].
The
federal lawsuit, which seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and
calls for the state to improve prison healthcare and address conditions
in SMUs, alleges that Arizona prisoners have suffered “serious,
preventable injuries, disfigurements and death.”
The
complaint cites a prisoner who was ignored for two years until he died
due to liver cancer. A pregnant prisoner was told by prison staff that
her medical symptoms were “all in your head”; she was then left alone in
her cell, where she miscarried. One prisoner was punished for
administering CPR to another prisoner suffering a heart attack while
guards stood by and refused to summon medical assistance.
“In
recent years,” the lawsuit claims, “Defendants ignored repeated
warnings of the inadequacies of the healthcare system and of the
dangerous conditions in their isolation units that they received from
inmate grievances, reports from outside groups, and complaints from
prison personnel, including their own staff.”
The
lawsuit also describes a prisoner who was denied treatment for a
cancerous growth on his penis over a two-year period. His penis was
eventually amputated, but not before the cancer had spread to his
stomach. Another prisoner had most of his lip and mouth removed after
waiting seven months for medical care.
“In
two decades of prison litigation, this is one of the most broken
systems I’ve seen,” said ACLU National Prison Project director David
Fathi. “The indifference to the needs of desperately ill people is
shocking. And the gratuitous cruelty we see in Arizona’s SMUs is unlike
anything we’ve ever seen in other states’ supermax prisons.”
On
March 5, 2013, the district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for
class certification in the lawsuit. The court certified a class
consisting of “All prisoners who are now, or will in the future be,
subjected to the medical, mental health, and dental care policies and
practices of the ADC,” and a subclass of “All prisoners who are now, or
will in the future be, subjected by the ADC to isolation, defined as
confinement in a cell for 22 hours or more each day” or confinement in
specified maximum-security units, including SMUs.
The case remains pending. See: Parsons v. Ryan, U.S.D.C. (D. Ariz.), Case No. 2:12-cv-00601-PHX-NVW.
(Prisoners: request a copy from the ACLU-AZ at PO BOX 17148, Phoenix, AZ 85001)
Privatizing the Healthcare Problem
Given
the ADC's known deficiencies in providing adequate medical and mental
health care to prisoners, and having been criticized by human rights
groups, targeted by the news media and hit with a class-action lawsuit,
one would expect the ADC to make efforts to at least modestly improve
its dysfunctional medical system.
Instead,
in April 2012, state prison officials awarded Wexford Health Sources – a
for-profit company with a history of incompetence and medical neglect –
a three-year, $349 million contract to provide healthcare to Arizona
prisoners. The Wexford contract went into effect in June 2012. [See:
PLN, May 2012, p.36].
|  *
“Bury Hep C, Not People”
Wexford's PHX HQ (Summer 2012)
|
Less
than four months later the company had made quite a first impression.
On August 27, 2012, a vocational nurse employed by Wexford exposed more
than 100 prisoners at ASPC-Lewis to hepatitis C by contaminating the
prison’s insulin supply.
Nurse
Nwadiuto Jane Nwaohia, who was already under investigation by Arizona’s
Board of Nursing for undisclosed reasons, administered a routine dose
of insulin to a diabetic prisoner who had hepatitis C, then inserted the
same needle into another vial to draw more insulin for the same
prisoner. The vial was placed among other vials of insulin in a
medication refrigerator and used later that day to dispense insulin to
103 diabetic prisoners.
Medical
staff quickly discovered the contamination and destroyed all the vials
of insulin, and Nwaohia, according to a Wexford statement, was suspended
for violating “basic infection-control protocols while administering
medication that day.”
However, Wexford didn’t notify the state or Maricopa County officials until eight days after the incident.
“It’s
extremely disturbing that something like this could happen. It calls
for a thorough investigation to determine all of the surrounding causes
of the mistake or the negligence,” said Don Specter, director of the
Prison Law Office.
Wexford
tried to deflect responsibility for the insulin contamination by
blaming a local staffing agency for assigning Nwaohia to the prison
complex. But Ken Kopczynski, executive director of the Private
Corrections Working Group, which opposes prison privatization,
criticized state officials who contracted prisoner healthcare to Wexford
and then failed to maintain proper oversight.
“This is a problem with privatization,” Kopczynski noted. “[The ADC is] just accepting who Wexford will hire.”
State
prison officials threatened to fine Wexford a paltry $10,000 after the
hepatitis C contamination incident, which followed other disturbing
incidents.
A
prisoner at ASPC-Florence attempted to commit suicide on August 23,
2012 after not receiving his psychotropic medication for an entire
month. According to the ADC, Wexford’s failure to provide the medication
to the prisoner, who was found hanging from a sheet in his cell, was a
“significant, non-compliance issue.”
Ten
days earlier, ADC mental health contract monitor Ben Shaw had issued a
memo that described significant shortages among Wexford’s mental health
staff.
“Wexford’s
current level of psychiatry staffing is grossly insufficient to meet
[its] contractual requirement,” he wrote. “Further, this staffing level
is so limited that patient safety and orderly operation of ADOC
facilities may be significantly compromised.... Wexford currently has
14.85 psychiatry FTE’s [full time employees] allocated to address the
clinical needs of 8,891 patients who are prescribed psychotropic
medications. Wexford now employs a total of 5.95 FTE psychiatry
providers (approximately 33% of their allocation) [with] 8.9 FTE’s
vacant (leaving a vacancy rate of 66%).”
Also
in August 2012, a Wexford nurse at the women’s prison in Perryville
administered medication to a prisoner by having her “lick the powdered
medication from her own hand” rather than putting the meds in a cup of
water, in violation of policy. Further, a number of prisoners at the
facility, the state learned, “may not have been receiving their
medications as prescribed due to expired prescription[s] and
inappropriate renewals or refills.”
On
September 21, 2012 the ADC issued a “Written Cure Notification” to
Wexford that detailed a litany of contract violations – including
inadequate staffing levels, a decrease in routine institutional care,
incorrect or incomplete medication prescriptions and refill procedures,
inconsistent medical records documentation, lack of responsiveness to
incident urgency and reporting requirements, and an unresponsive
approach to prisoners’ grievances.
ADC
officials ordered Wexford to fix the staffing problems, properly
distribute and document medication for prisoners and communicate more
effectively when problems arise. ADC Director Ryan later said in a
written statement that Wexford was being afforded a chance to “improve
communications and ensure [that] the healthcare needs of the inmates
incarcerated by the State of Arizona are being met.”
Wexford,
on the other hand, shifted blame back to the state. In a letter to Ryan
the company stated the ADC “must recognize that the system that was in
place” before Wexford’s contract began was “extremely weak.”
“This
is more proof that privatization is not saving us money, not providing
better services and is not any more efficient,” said Caroline Isaacs
with the AFSC. “While the state clearly had its problems, just inserting
another layer to the bureaucracy is no way to address the problems, and
it complicates the matter.”
Doris
Marie Provine, a justice studies professor at Arizona State University,
noted that “When the state locks someone up, it assumes responsibility
to provide safe and humane conditions of confinement. No amount of
outsourcing will change that.”
The
ADC apparently thought otherwise; after terminating its contract with
Wexford in January 2013 due to “both parties encountering unforeseeable
challenges,” state prison officials instead contracted with Corizon,
another for-profit prison healthcare company with a history of abuses
and neglect. Corizon began providing medical care to prisoners on March
4, 2013.
“Merely
replacing one for-profit prison contractor with another will only
prolong the crisis in Arizona’s prisons,” said Dan Pochoda, legal
director of the ACLU of Arizona. “There is no reason to think that
anything will change under Corizon, Inc.”
Shutting the Safety Valve of Justice
Unfortunately,
Arizona prisoners with life-threatening medical conditions who apply
for commutations of their sentences are largely out of luck, as Governor
Brewer apparently doesn’t like making clemency decisions. Or perhaps
she simply doesn’t like justifying them.
In
April 2012, Brewer replaced three of the five members of Arizona’s
Board of Executive Clemency – board chairman Duane Belcher; Marilyn
Wilkens, who was appointed in 2010; and Ellen Stenson, appointed by
former Governor Napolitano in 2007.
According
to Belcher, Governor Brewer was displeased by the board’s 2009 majority
recommendation to grant clemency to convicted murderer William
Macumber, who had raised a strong claim of innocence. Wilkens also
indicated that Brewer was dissatisfied with the way she had voted in a
clemency case.
“It
was expressed clearly that there was dissatisfaction with my vote on a
particular issue, and that I had not voted the way they wished that I
would have voted,” she said. According to one source, that case was most
likely the clemency board’s January 26, 2012 unanimous recommendation
to reduce 74-year-old Robert Flibotte’s 90-year sentence for possession
of child porn to five years plus lifetime supervision.
Governor Brewer overruled both clemency recommendations.
The
clemency board’s new members include Brian Livingston, a retired police
officer and executive director of the Arizona Police Association;
Melvin Thomas, a former Arizona warden who was employed by private
prison firm GEO Group after working for the ADC for 21 years; and new
board chairman Jesse Hernandez.
Hernandez
had worked on some of Arizona’s more recent high-profile conservative
political campaigns, including leading a Republican Latino group’s
support for anti-immigrant legislation SB1070. Hernandez was also
chairman of a group that tried to help state Senator Russell Pearce win
his recall election in November 2011.
The
replacement of the clemency board members didn’t go smoothly, however.
An attorney for death row prisoner Samuel Lopez challenged Brewer’s
appointment of the new board members in court, claiming the committee
that had conducted interviews and made recommendations did not comply
with the Open Meetings Law and other state statutes, and that the new
members had not received required training before they began conducting
hearings. Lopez’s attorney refused to participate in an initial clemency
hearing, saying the board wasn’t authorized to act on clemency
petitions. Lopez was executed on June 27, 2012.
Brewer’s
three new clemency board members, as gatekeepers to the clemency
process, will help determine whether prisoners’ commutation and pardon
petitions are sent to her office for consideration.
“It’s
clear to me now that they are trying in any way they can to manipulate
the outcome of clemency hearings,” said Belcher. “If the cases don’t go
before the governor, she doesn’t have to say yes or no.”
Not that prisoners seeking clemency have much of a chance anyway.
Between
January 2009 and June 2013, Governor Brewer granted just 28
commutations due to prisoners’ life-threatening medical conditions and 6
for non-medical reasons. Her poor record on granting clemency petitions
mirrors that of prior Arizona governors, but she is the first governor
in at least 35 years to not issue a single pardon, denying all of the
board’s pardon recommendations. She has never commuted a death sentence.
One
noteworthy exception to Brewer’s stingy clemency policy was her
decision to commute the life without parole sentence of ADC prisoner
Betty Smithey in August 2012, resulting in Smithey’s immediate release
after serving 49 years. [See: PLN, Dec. 2012, p.50].
In
a state where the prison population has increased eight-fold over the
past 30 years; where budget cuts have created a two-year backlog for the
clemency board; and where more than 90% of Arizona’s 76,000 felony
criminal cases each year are settled by plea bargains driven by harsh
mandatory minimums, the clemency process is considered the criminal
justice system’s safety valve.
Yet
Brewer continues to deny most clemency applications, even those that
apparently have merit. One particularly egregious case involved William
Macumber, who was convicted of a double homicide in 1975 and sentenced
to life.
Former
state judge and public defender Thomas O’Toole told the clemency board
in 2009 that another man, Ernest Valenzuela, had confessed the killings
to him in 1967, but due to attorney-client privilege he didn’t disclose
the confession until after his client died in a prison fight. “There is
no doubt in my mind that Ernesto Valenzuela committed those crimes,”
O’Toole said. However, the judge over Macumber’s criminal case refused
to allow O’Toole to testify about his client’s confession, and the
Arizona Supreme Court agreed that the trial court could assert
attorney-client privilege on behalf of Valenzuela even though he was
deceased.
In
2009, based on O’Toole’s testimony and other evidence in the case –
including evidence suggesting that Macumber had been framed by his
ex-wife, who worked at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office – the
clemency board recommended that his sentence be commuted.
The
board, then chaired by Duane Belcher, found not only that Macumber had
served an excessive amount of time in prison and was not a threat to
society, but that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice, stating,
“the evidence that now exists certainly casts serious doubt on Mr.
Macumber’s conviction.”
Regardless, Governor Brewer denied the board’s recommendation without explanation.
“Sometimes
the law has a disproportionate impact and may be too rigid. That’s what
the pardon power is for,” said P.S. Ruckman, an Illinois political
science professor who runs a blog about clemency and pardons. “Brewer
has the power and discretion to have a larger sense of justice and to do
something about it. That’s her duty.”
But
with Brewer failing in that duty the Arizona courts stepped in,
scheduling an evidentiary hearing after Macumber filed a petition for
post-conviction relief. Prosecutors offered a plea deal rather than
proceed with the hearing, and on November 7, 2012, Macumber, now 77
years old, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and was released
on time served – over Brewer’s public objection. He had spent 37 years
in prison.
Private Prison Contract Awarded
The
ADC's long-delayed performance study of the state’s private prisons was
finally released in December 2011, and predictably found, in a
self-serving manner, that the state’s private and publicly-operated
prisons were comparable in both cost and quality of services. Yet
according to the American Friends Service Committee, the ADC’s study
included “very little methodological information or supporting data,
suffers from inconsistent data collection procedures, and overlooks
important measures of prison safety.”
The
AFSC had filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s proposed 5,000-bed
private prison contract on September 12, 2011, seeking an injunction
prohibiting the ADC from awarding the contract, but the suit was
dismissed due to lack of standing. The organization also filed an
unsuccessful administrative challenge that served to delay the
contracting process.
The
ADC canceled its contract proposal for 5,000 new private prison beds in
December 2011 and issued a revised proposal for 2,000 beds, which was
later reduced to 1,000.
Never
mind that Arizona’s prison population had declined over the previous
year, which indicated that additional prison beds were not needed. Never
mind that, according to the ADC’s own records, there were around 2,000
empty beds in the state’s prison system at the time the ADC was
soliciting a contract for 1,000 more private prison beds.
And
never mind that a September 2010 report by the Arizona State Auditor’s
office, based on ADC data, noted that minimum- and medium-security
private prisons in the state actually cost more to operate than
government-run prisons, when comparable costs were taken into account.
[See: PLN, July 2012, p.45].
In
February 2012, the AFSC released a report titled “Private Prisons: The
Public’s Problem,” which provided a quality assessment of
privately-operated prisons in Arizona. The report found that the state
did not need additional prison beds and was wasting money on prison
privatization; that private prisons had “serious security flaws” and
“serious staffing problems,” and did not measure recidivism rates; and
that private prison companies were “buying influence” through lobbying
and political campaign contributions, and were not accountable to
Arizona taxpayers. Overall, the report revealed “widespread and
persistent problems in private facilities around safety, lack of
accountability, and cost.”
On
August 31, 2012, the ADC announced that its 1,000-bed private prison
contract, worth $21.5 million annually, had been awarded to Corrections
Corporation of America. The contract, for an initial period of ten years
with options for two 5-year renewals, includes a 90% bed occupancy
guarantee.
In
fairness, CCA had worked hard to win the contract. The company employed
a cadre of lobbyists, including Paul Senseman, Governor Brewer’s
one-time spokesman before leaving her administration in 2011, who worked
for a lobbying firm hired by CCA, Policy Development Group. His wife,
Kathryn Senseman, was also a CCA lobbyist. Additionally, CCA hired
lobbying firm HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, a company founded
by Chuck Coughlin, Brewer’s former campaign manager and policy advisor.
[See: PLN, July 2012, p.45].
“If
you place two of your lobbyists at the right and left hand of the
governor of the state and she has final say and oversight of the
Department of Corrections, I would say that’s a pretty smart business
strategy,” said Caroline Isaacs.
According
to the AFSC, CCA had also made at least $35,000 in campaign
contributions to Arizona candidates during the 2010 election cycle and
donated $10,000 to Brewer’s “Yes on 100” sales tax initiative. CCA’s
other political connections included former Arizona U.S. Senator Dennis
DeConcini, who serves on CCA’s board of directors; additionally,
Governor Brewer had appointed former CCA employee and lobbyist Mark
Brnovich as chairman of the state’s Commission on Privatization and
Efficiency.
CCA
will open the first 500 contract beds at its prison complex in Eloy by
January 2014, and the remaining 500 beds should be on line a year later.
All of the beds are for medium-security prisoners.
The
contract also gives CCA an option to operate another 1,000 prison beds
after 2015 provided that there is an increase in the state’s
medium-security prison population, which – based on the ADC’s
classification system – can be easily manipulated by arbitrarily
increasing scores on prisoners’ security-risk assessments.
State
Rep. Chad Campbell joined a group of Democrats, clergy members and
civil rights organizations in asking Governor Brewer to rescind the
state’s private prison contract. Of course she declined.
“The
bottom line is we need to protect safety while protecting taxpayer
dollars,” said Rep. Campbell, “and expansion of private prisons does
neither.”
The
AFSC was more blunt, concluding in its February 2012 report that either
“our state leaders are so ideologically wedded to the idea of
privatization that they are unable or unwilling to face reality,” or
that “they are beholden to the for-profit prison industry and that this
industry has such unmitigated power in Arizona that it has simply
hijacked the democratic process.”
Conclusion
Governor
Brewer and ADC Director Ryan’s negative influence on Arizona’s prison
system will persist long after they depart from office unless criminal
justice advocates, human rights groups and Arizona voters take action.
There
have been some glimmers of hope, including an unprecedented recall
campaign against former state Senator Russell Pearce, the author of
SB1070, who was removed from office in November 2011. SB1070 was largely
struck down by the federal courts after the U.S. Justice Department
sued the state of Arizona, although the bill’s “show me your papers”
provision, which allows law enforcement officers to question people
about their citizenship status based on reasonable suspicion, was upheld
by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25, 2012. See: Arizona v. United
States, 132 S.Ct. 2492 (2012).
Also,
in November 2012 the ADC released video of the events surrounding the
2010 suicide of Anthony Lester at ASPC-Tucson, resulting in public
outrage. Prison officials had fought for two years against the release
of the video, which showed multiple guards standing around for 23
minutes, doing nothing to help Lester as he bled to death. Channel 12
News KPNX had to file suit in state court to obtain the video footage;
the court found the ADC had wrongly refused a reporter’s request for the
video and ordered the ADC to pay $26,000 in attorney’s fees to the news
station.
After
seeing the video, state Rep. Chad Campbell called for Ryan’s
resignation as ADC director. Predictably, that hasn’t happened.
The
class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Prison Law Office over
inadequate medical treatment in Arizona’s prison system remains pending
and hopefully will result in improved medical and mental health care,
although the state still contracts with Corizon.
Neither
Brewer nor Ryan is expected to be out of a job until at least January
2015, when Arizona’s next governor is inaugurated. At least until then,
the state’s prison system will continue to suffer under their
leadership.
More
prisoners will needlessly die due to suicide, violence and medical
neglect. The state’s prison system will expand its use of solitary
confinement. Private prison companies will continue to profit at the
expense of taxpayers. And prisoners’ clemency petitions will be largely
ignored by the clemency board’s new members appointed by Governor
Brewer.
All of this should matter to Arizonans.
“This
matters,” according to a June 9, 2012 Arizona Republic editorial,
“because tax dollars should buy secure prisons. It matters because
inmates who survive a brutal system are unlikely to become good
neighbors when they return to our communities. It matters because
assuring the basic needs and safety of prisoners says a great deal more
about us than it does about them.”
It matters, but apparently not to most Arizona lawmakers who presumably have the power to improve the state’s prison system.
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“SOS From Arizona's Other Death Row”
firehouse gallery, phoenix
JULY 2012
(40-foot long community-chalked mural for dead prisoners, from the roof)
|
The AZ Governor and State Legislators can be reached at
Arizona State Capitol
1700 W. Washington St.
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Journalists Bob Ortega and Wendy Halloran (who received an Emmy for exposing the Tony Lester suicide) can be reached at
The AZ Republic /KPNX CH12
200 E. Van Buren St.
Phoenix, AZ 85006
Send copies of your letters to AZ Prison Watch for publication on the blog, too.
