Ryan "cares" enough to do damage control on teacher's rape, OSHA investigation.

Most readers are aware by now that a teacher at AZ DOC's supermax complex, ASPC-Eyman, was stabbed and raped in January after being left alone in a classroom with one of the sex offenders she was educating, on a sex offender unit, where teachers have routinely been left alone with students. Here's the more complete account of the incident by the AP just last month.

One might expect this to have happened sooner or with greater frequency, given the poor security measures taken at the state's "most secure" facility. Despite their charges, however, I suspect that most of the students would have come to this teacher's defense if they had been present when it happened - they not only value their educational opportunities and appreciate the people who offer them, they also know this whole incident will keep educators and other civilians away for years to come, now.  

Seems like any dummy in the Governor's office can take one good look and advise the AZ DOC director that Warden Credio is putting female staff and volunteers at risk by leaving them alone in classrooms full of sex offenders with no surveillance (or even pepper spray, until now), but in the aftermath of this rape report going national in June, the Arizona Occupational Safety and Health Administration has decided to conduct an investigation into staff safety at Eyman. I guess Arizona wants the nation to know that we take rape seriously here - we do if it happens to anyone other than a prisoner, at least. We refuse to abide by the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which should tell you something about how else we treat our prisoners.


Unfortunately, OSHA never investigates when prisoners are assaulted or injured on the job because prisoners are technically slaves of the state, or this might have been prevented. If ANYONE other than the DOC investigated prisoner assaults and deaths (and had authority to change things there), they would have most certainly required additional safety measures to be taken at Eyman and elsewhere. 


In fact, the whole system would be safer to work and be confined in than it is now if someone from outside of it - like the legislature or auditor general's office -took a good close look at how it's being run.  Makes you wonder where that billion dollar budget is being spent, since it clearly isn't going into facility repairs, surveillance cameras, security personnel, health care, psychiatric treatment, or substance abuse programs. (Hmm. I'd love to see DOC administrator's expense accounts and departmental credit cards...)

Needless to say, mainstream media has been rather critical of the AZ DOC over this, to which the director felt compelled to respond last week. It was such classic bureaucratic BS that I'm posting it below - along with the comment I left at the end of the article. All Chuck Ryan does about assaults on prisoners is punish the victim (and anyone else who dares say that violence is out of control in his prisons). 

Go to the source for the other remarks, including those by former Eyman Deputy Warden Carl Toersbijns...

--------------------- 

Prisons director: Actually, we do take rape seriously

AZCENTRAL.COM
Charles L. Ryan, AZ I See It 5:50 p.m. MST July 2, 2014

Regarding what I believe to be a misrepresentation of the Arizona Department of Corrections' response to an assault on one of its own employees, ("Is rape an acceptable risk for teachers? We think not," Editorial, Saturday):

On Jan. 30, a staff member at the Eyman corrections complex in Florence was brutally assaulted by an inmate. As the Department of Corrections reported in news releases that day and the following, a criminal investigation was immediately launched with the goal of pursuing prosecution of the inmate suspect to the fullest extent. In May, the inmate was indicted by a grand jury on charges including sexual assault, kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Contrary to The Republic editorial board's assertion of indifference, every assault against staff and inmates is reviewed extensively and thoroughly investigated. In fact, when I returned as director in January of 2009, I changed the previous policy and ordered that all physical actions taken by inmates against staff or other inmates be reported and investigated, whether an injury occurred or not. This sends the strong message that every assault is intolerable.

Obviously, this incident at Eyman was a despicable and cowardly act — a fact clearly stated by this department when the documents from the criminal investigation were released to the news media.

But an Associated Press story published June 22 in The Arizona Republic indicated, "Prison officials dismissed the concerns. They say assault is a risk that comes with the job of overseeing violent inmates." This is not a department quote. It's the description by the AP reporter.

Department practice is quite the opposite. Staff and inmate safety is our highest priority — a fact reflected and borne out by ongoing training and assessment of security protocols. Significant focus is given to ensuring that all staff remain vigilant that any inmate, regardless of custody level or prior criminal history, can turn violent.

Such self-examination is ingrained in the daily work of the Department of Corrections. It results in decisions to create sector officers who conduct security checks on staff working in isolated areas; random physical, visual, radio and phone checks of such sectors; implementation of chemical-agent and hand-held radio training; addition of cameras where appropriate; and numerous other security measures that are constantly being reviewed.

Reporting on corrections can be tainted by sensationalism. Each assault in prison is thoroughly reviewed and investigated, and those responsible are held accountable administratively or criminally for their actions.

The safety of our staff and inmates has been, and always will be, my commitment and first priority.

Charles L. Ryan is director of the Arizona Department of Corrections.

Join the Conversation...

Peggy Plews · Top Commenter · Editor at Arizona Prison Watch

Violence against the staff at the AZ DOC - as well as a jump in the viciousness of attacks on more vulnerable prisoners such as transgender women and those with mental illness, has increased under this man's leadership, causing such concern among officers that one of the employee associations has asked Judicial Watch to investigate and local advocates have called on the US department of Justice. Those pleas for outside intervention were preceded in November 2010 with an open letter to Jan Brewer by the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association urging her to sack Chuck Ryan because, among other things:

"There exists, within ADOC administration, a well-known pattern of obstructing the disclosure of hazards in time to prevent accidents, injury, illness, and deaths. Tragically, in these instances, danger is not "imminent" - it is past, and too late to respond. Employees are routinely ordered to falsify documents and when they proactively seek to report identified hazards, they face punishment and retaliation. Obtaining an accurate account of the range and extent of violations will be difficult from records alone. It is unlikely that ADOC will disclose information without well-planned intervention by authorities. There is no evidence of any health and safety program existing, even on paper. There is no identifiable health and safety officer or other person bearing that responsibility and essential training is lacking to assure staff can perform certain assigned tasks safely and equipped with appropriate equipment e.g. cell extractions, transports, etc.

The entire department is devoid of any active programs for: Fire Prevention, Hazard Communication, Respiratory Protection, Medical Surveillance, Record keeping, Ventilation, Emergency Evacuation Procedures, Disaster Preparedness, Emergency Response, Training, or Education. Failure of ADOC administration to respond has resulted in secondary risks and complications - now endangering, not just the prison population and employees, but the public at large. Appropriate identification of risk requires your immediate intervention. Another day must not go by without initiating an investigation.

We as institutional line staff are expected to hold a very high standard within the institutions and community, we expect that our Director and his administrators to be held to the same standard of conduct and the same standard of punishment if those standards are violated..."

The Minority Leader for the Arizona House of Representatives, Chad Campbell, has called for Ryan's termination more than once, and the media has feasted on the tragedies generated by the privatization of prison health care under this director. Of course, I've been calling for him to go for some time now, having heard from hundreds of prisoners and their loved ones about highly racialized gang violence, the heroin epidemic, pervasive despair and hunger, and gross medical neglect behind bars these days. Arizona should be ashamed of itself for rivaling the horrendous conditions attributed to prisons in far more impoverished countries run by dictators.

I hope some of you out there who know what I'm talking about have the courage to speak out and demand a new director. If you bother to call the governor's office about that, be sure to call your legislators as well - they are as much to blame for all this as Brewer, for simply refusing to oversee the prisons and giving them a blank check to do as they please.

Please ask that the Governor re-visit the AZ DOC's determined non-compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, too - I just received a letter from a gay prisoner who was raped and denied protective custody yet again, and the AZ DOC thinks they dont have a problem. http://www.arizonaprisonwatch.org/2014/06/az-state-prisoners-and-activists-call.html

ASPC-Eyman's TSU break bones, spew hate speech at Cook prisoners.

The excerpt from the email below comes from a family member of a prisoner at ASPC-Eyman/Cook Unit, which recently experienced an excessively violent shake-down by the troubled Tactical Support Unit (TSU).

  Apparently Eyman Warden Ron Credio and his brave and noble Tactical Support Unit didn't see my blog post about how disgraceful this kind of conduct is from last week. Or maybe they did, and that's what set them off on Cook. Or perhaps they're just jacked up on steroids or meth. In any case, they're still behaving like bullies and cowards, as evidenced by this most recent assault on prisoners - about 100 were hurt, according to this source.



This is so unacceptable - but clearly it's the way Ryan likes his prisons to be run. That, or the TSU at Eyman is just running amok - in which case, Credio has lost all control out there.
   
Really now -  how much courage and skill does it take to beat up a bunch of helpless prisoners (probably stripped to their boxer shorts) while you possess the sole authority to use violence, are decked out in body armor, and are wielding canisters of pepper spray? And who are all these criminals supposed to learn non-violent conflict resolution skills from when the officers act out like this all the time, anyway?  


"My (loved one) is on the Cook unit in  Florence's Eyman complex. Earlier this week--Tuesday, I think--about 10 TSU officers came onto the yard and terrorized the inmates, seemingly randomly. They broke one man's arm, smashed another's guy's face in, broke someone's finger, did violence on a guy with a prosthetic leg, etc. They slammed my loved one onto the concrete and gravel several times on his knees and hog-tied him and kept him  face down in the dirt like that for an hour. They called him faggot, and much worse. They randomly took people's property, too. For instance, they smashed around his TV, then took it, his calculator, and other items.

My loved one said family members have complained to the warden. I'd like to be connected to some of those folks so I could add my voice. Have you heard about what happened, or do you happen to know where online I find more info?"


If there are other families out there from Cook Unit, please contact me so I can put you all in touch with each other. I'd also appreciate as many accounts of this incident as possible so I can add it to my DOJ complaint about the incident on Meadows - especially in light of the hate speech used, yet again. 

Peggy Plews 

PO Box 20494 

PHX AZ 85036 

arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com

Incarceration is Violence: snapshots from ASPC-EYMAN/Meadows.

I recently took AZ DOC Director Chuck Ryan to task about sending the sex offenders to Red Rock to decrease the over-crowding on those units before the other medium security yards where race riots are breaking out, simply because I so seldom hear about violence coming out of places like ASPC-EYMAN/Meadows. I also accused him of making a big deal of "routine" staff assaults of late in order to justify continuing to build his totally unnecessary $50 million Supermax prison at Lewis complex. I stand corrected, now, sorry to say, in light of what has recently happened. Besides, no assault is "routine" to the person who is the victim of one. I know, having survived quite a bit of violence in my life myself.

I've been hearing from employees and former employees of the AZ DOC in the wake of the sexual assault of a teacher on the Meadows unit at ASPC-Eyman this week- they are livid. There's some contention over what "fully-staffed" means. Some officers seem to feel as if not only is Meadows under-staffed, this teacher never should have ended up alone in a room with these particular prisoners. Meadows is the unit designated for housing about 1100 medium security sex offenders, about 330 of whom appear to be in "temporary" beds. That means the yard is a bit full. 

The opening of Red Rock didn't help relieve pressure on staff and prisoners at Meadows much, unfortunately, though I don't know how directly that would have impacted this situation with the teacher's assault. It appears they moved prisoners from Cook to Red Rock first, as that was the most over-crowded yard. Meadows should be next, I would think.

In any case, my apoligies if I have seemed to minimize staff assaults. No one's safety in prison is more or less important than another's by virtue of whether they wear orange, brown, or civies. The assault rate on staff appears to have been decreasing at the same time it's actually increasing among prisoners, nevertheless the staff are still so upset about the way the DOC has failed to address their safety concerns that one of the officers' unions, the Arizona Corrections Association, has dragged Judicial Watch into it - they're demanding records for an investigation. 

What I hear most from the sex offender yards, actually, is not how vicious the other prisoners are or how violent the gangs are (they really don't seem to run the SO yards), but how cruel some of the officers are.  Here's an excerpt from a man who was homeless, mentally ill, and an easy target for police when arrested and prosecuted for the rape and murder of an 88-year old woman over a decade ago. Even the Arizona Justice Project tried to get the DNA evidence re-examined because they believe he was wrongfully-convicted, for some reason the judge wouldn't allow it. 

" i have been There hrassed and ThreaTed by STaff and inmaTes asaltied  by STaff and ThreaTing black and blue marks on my arm For 30 Days and  For whaT because I senT in a inmaTe LeTTer or a grievance on STaff or  a inmaTe. No Help with it. My Cell maTe Said noT to Say any Thing  abouT. Time I am mad and and write a inmaTe Letter or grievance about  it All it dose is geT STaff mad a you and Then Tell everyone To Harass you They mess up your mail or your indigent or HNRS inmate LeTTers They are LosT or ? you donT geT your RefiLL meds. your Food is mess with They spit in it or mess it up They put some Thing in you Food. mae Time I did NoT EAT because of it. you donT get yourr maiL They Throw it somewhere and maybe if some one funds it you met get it Back. your maiL, or your mail is being given To a inmaTe ? He dans whaT He want with it He reads your maiL and Throws it away. ? or when They Take you To The Shower. They go in your Cell and Take Things or brake Things of yours your T.V. your Radio.... 

I wanT no more of This I wanT Peace. To be in Peace. I am Sorry. I want to go home. or. I want to go home soon I Pray I go home, I am innocent of this crime. Look at it. "


So here sits this possibly innocent man in prison, and yet most Americans would look at his crime, and say "good riddance" in response to his grievances - and the officers perpetrating this garbage on him know it. That kind of relentless abuse meted out to certain prisoners by guards who think they deserve torture on top of imprisonment isn't uncommon, nor is it limited to the sex offenders. 

Never mind that an estimated 8-15% of  convicted sex offenders, in one DNA-based exoneration study, may well be innocent. We too often presume that the "truth" comes out in the prosecution process and no one is in prison unless they're definitely guilty. Not that the possibility we are punishing "the innocent" in prison too harshly should be the only reason not to torture prisoners in America - torture should be banned regardless of the status of one's guilt or inocence.

Some officers I hear about over and over again are exacting their own kind of justice from prisoners, only it seems their abuse can never be "substantiated" when formal complaints are made, so they remain in positions of power - some even get promoted. I believe the heirarchy in those places encourages brutality by consistently failing to substantiate it. They know they can get away with hurting those guys, too, as there will be no public outcry in their defense.

As another example, last April the Meadows' Tactical Support Unit was called on to do a shakedown (thorough search for contraband) of the unit, during which several of the prisoners allege that that the TSU officers pushed them around aggressively and used racial epithets. Several prisoners from that yard also reported that a deaf prisoner was beaten by guards because he couldn't hear the orders being barked at him and respond fast enough. According to one witness, when the officers took him to medical to treat him for the injuries they inflicted on him, the nurse naturally asked what happened. "He fell," the TSU officers laughed.  Of course, in their own  incident reports - amended after the prisoners complained - the guards assert that they used the "least amount of force necessary to gain compliance" from the deaf guy, and mention nothing about him going to medical. The DOC asserts every one of their officers conducted themselves professionally. That kind of unjust treatment of prisoners can cause serious resentment and thus endangers all staff, ultimately.

Meadows was also recently the subject of concern about how the prisoners' mental health needs are being attended to - they were essentially rounded up, chained like animals, and taken to a mass video-psych eval this fall, which sounds like its a coomon practice, actually.  I often hear complaints from there about poor health care access as well.

In any case, my thoughts and healing wishes do go out to this teacher who was so brutally assaulted, and to the rest of the staff and prisoners at the DOC who have been victims of violence behind bars. If we counted the crimes perpetrated against people in prison with the community's statistics, the crime rates of those communities would be much higher and we might have to address them differently - like redistribute victim assistance resources, among other things. In fact, if crime against people in prison was reported as such, the USA would have the highest male-on-male rate of rape in the world. Think about that as you contemplate how necessary prisons are to contain and rehabilitate young drug offenders, check bouncers, or people who smuggled themselves into the country to find a decent job and support their family, for example. 

Bottom line is that prisons are heteropatriarchal, misogynistic institutions run entirely on violence and the threat of it. Prisons are designed to inflict harm on people's minds and lives without leaving a mark on their bodies, hidden in the shadows and margins of our social fabirc so the rest of us can sleep at night, certain that only the purest system of Justice is what lets Freedom ring in America for the rest of us. In truth, the US justice system works only for the privileged few, trials are contests between opposing attorneys, not effective methods of discovering truth, and prisons are essentially horribly dangerous places to both live and work. Those of you who clamor for a new prison in your town may want to reconsider how much these jobs are really the kind you want your children and grandchildren to grow into.  

In light of the above, our judiciary should really reconsider how many more drug addicts, sex workers, and homeless mentally ill people they want to throw into the lion's den. Many will simply be further victimized and traumatized, few will be able to afford to pay to get their GED or pursue other educational options in state prison, only 4% will ever get any kind of substance abuse treatment in there to rehabilitate themselves, and over 40% of prisoners are coming out infected with Hep C, a good many with new addictions to boot.
(See Corrections at a Glance for stats on substance abuse treatment, HEP C, and the reasons people are in prison)