Although most investigators are given a time frame of approximately 53 days by the Director or designee to investigate prison deaths or serious events, there are many times that these investigations take the short cut to expedite the findings to take the heat of the agency. As the prison officials scramble to gather the data so they can notify numerous entities for the death or serious incident per policy, much information is not attained at the time of the news release. It has been recorded that investigations that would normally run the course of a month of so would be finished and completed and closed in less than a week. Such haste for meeting an executive deadline defeats the very purpose of an effective and thorough investigative process. In fact, one could glean this to be an effective method of covering up an embarrassing situation or event that would not pass the "headline test."
Regardless of the final results of any such case, the final report is rarely asked for as it won’t differ that much from the original provided earlier in the matter. The very first call is made to the warden of the institution who notifies the Central Office staff of the event. Then this matter is reviewed by the directors and a decision is made to release information through the public information officer. In the meantime, the director must notify the governor's chief of staff, in many cases, the process starts with the Director's authorization to make all notifications to the next of kin, victims or the media may "be delayed when security, sound correctional practice, or investigative reasons exist." This clause is imposed immediately to provide the agency to do some damage control of the situation and get a first hand summary of what may have occurred and who is involved. Political impact is measured by the circumstances, who and where the incident occurred and how this matter will be explained to the media as a reasonable and justifiable event.
Department order 711 outlines "Notifications of the death of an inmate by other than perceived apparent natural causes shall be completed as follows: The Director or designee shall immediately notify the Governor's Office by telephone, followed by a written notification and the Department's Legislative Liaison shall notify the Chairperson of the Joint Select Committee by telephone within one business day, followed by a written notification and the Speaker of the Arizona House and President of the Arizona Senate by telephone within one business day, followed by a written notification and finally the State legislators in the district where the event of consequence occurred by telephone within one business day, followed by a written notification. It is suspected that the news release serves the purpose for many of these notification requirements. It is easy to see where the political impact may come from if not handled correctly by the agency executive team. The same principles are in place for mass disturbances or escapes that will shake the public’s confidence in the prison manager’s ability to protect the public.
Going beyond these announcements illustrates clearly what happens next in this process concerning deaths that are not natural. The agency must collaborate with the investigators immediately to search for those keywords or red flags that may cause embarrassment or flaw with the agency thus the investigators are selected based on their ability to work closely with the executive group in charge of the critical incident. In the course of this matter, the Director will seek a course to impress the media with his obvious willingness to deal with the matter when in fact, he is expediting the process to clean it up and make it deliver a suitable outcome that will be considered to be the least amount of negative impact on the agency or staff involved. This is the damage control element of the critical incident that is often missed by many including the media.
It is reasonable to say that so far, so good as the agency has escaped scrutiny for many of these deaths, disturbances, escapes or other events. none have been challenged by any other law enforcement entity or labor union leaders. It appears that regardless of the cause of death or what kind of unusual circumstances are involved, the Department of Justice, the main agency with oversight of civil rights violations and public safety, sits back and allows the prison agency to conduct haphazard investigations to assist their need to be politically clean. These investigations, both by the Internal Affairs that investigate staff misconduct and the Criminal Investigative Unit that is responsible for investigating inmate deaths and misconduct are directly controlled by the Director and his field officers through informal discussions that involve all the key executive players of the location involved. This method of direct and indirect communication and control provides them the link to guide investigations into the direction desired for a predictable outcome.
There are no external audit formats in place to ensure factual and independent investigations are conducted. The final authority of such an activity remains with the directors involved. When investigators brief those interested in the product, they connect carefully and associate behind close door discussions that are "draft" in nature and cleaned up for the final report according to guidance provided. This applies to both staff and inmate investigations as the purpose is the same to reduce risk and negligence as well as identifying culpable acts of individuals who will either be targeted or selected to take the fall making a strong statement that corrective action was taken and no such conduct will be tolerated by the agency. These vulnerable persons will be disciplined and treated as the reason for the flaw to begin with thus exonerating anyone in the top executive levels of any blame.
Studying these investigative packets can be helpful and indicative of the methodology used to conduct such a task. Attorneys could in fact seek public information requests for these packets but will find them to be loosely narrated and summarized. Specific facts are omitted and all possible incriminating evidence or information is quickly expedited up the chain of command to avoid being included in the final packet. There again, the purpose of drafting such reports eliminates their discovery after the fact as they are not released for review. There are hardly any prosecutions conducted after these deaths that are not natural of nature and the reasons are quite simple. The manner these reports pass through a non-existing quality control process is amazingly smooth as the only standard to be acceptable is the approval of the Director or his designee.
The investigators collect evidence in a poor and unethical manner making them questionable to be used in a courtroom. When these investigative packets are written they are brief and short providing no additional information to anyone reading them for litigation purposes. In fact, many times, the line of questioning of the subject involved are bare of substance and allows the reader no insight on whether the subject answered the questions or evaded them by changing the subject or leading the investigator into an abyss of confusion as many do not have any experience in corrections as a former officer or the corrections academy. They are police certified and conduct their interviews and interrogations with kid gloves compared to street detectives who do their jobs to find the culprit or suspect and the motive aggressively. Ironically, many pieces of evidence come up "missing" contrary to how well trained police detectives handle their roles in criminal investigations outside prisons. The chain of custody is often mishandled giving the department no leg to stand on when it goes to court. On the other side of this coin, the agency does not have to defend any negligence or misconduct viewed in these tapes if available.
Reasons for such critical events or serious incidents are rarely found during any prison investigation unless it is gang related and then the motive is guided into that direction by those above. It will be likely someone will be blamed for poor performance or not following policies and procedures. Lackluster investigations that are accelerated to be brief in substance are the norm for this prison agency. Its serves the public no purpose as it is merely a puppet for the agency and its executive branch. Handing out template investigative packets with predetermined outcomes has demoralized both staff and families. Staff because they are often targets of discussions before the investigation begins and families of inmates who have been impacted by violence but are provided no answers.
It is highly recommended that these critical incidents, escapes, disturbances and inmate death investigations be audited externally by the federal authorities to seek better understandings of how they are conducted and how controls the process. Perhaps, a conflict of interest is injected into the process that appears to be present on the surface but rarely impacted or invoked as deep as the policies allow but rarely executed or given the seriousness of this matter, the consideration to do it and do it right regardless where the harm may fall to correct this matter of reporting prison deaths not caused by natural causes.
A deep analysis can bring closure to such doubt by many staff that were wrongfully accused and disciplined possibly ruining their chances for promotions, further career opportunities with other agencies or just personal ethical satisfaction of knowing their rights were violated by their employer. Staffs are often found to be at a distinct disadvantage when they are found guilty before the investigation has even started. Many witnesses aren't interviewed and a conclusion is drawn on inferences rather than evidence and facts gathered in the case. On the other hand, there are both family of staff and family of inmates who could finally expect some closure to their relative's injuries, death and base their emotions on the fact that the process used to glean the truth was accurate in considering all facts and truthful circumstances surrounding it.
For closing, these "non-public" investigations and behind the scenes negotiations to keep the lid on this billion dollar agency can be easily exposed by the Department of Justice if it seeks an injunction into the practice and position itself as a guiding tool to ensure civil rights are maintained and recognized for both the employees and the inmate. Perhaps, employees can engage their union attorneys to get involved in correcting this imperfection in place.
It is time for the agency to provide a reasonable amount of transparency into its operations and allow others to see how their tax payer's money is spent on a system that is growing yearly as Arizona has one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States. Secondly, there appears to be a high rate of disciplinary involved in these cases where there are gaps of credibility in their findings but brush it off as an employee's fault thus creating more tension between the agency and its employees when the sustained rate of disciplinary action runs as high as 92 % in some complexes around the state. Civil rights of both employees and prisoners are being violated and nobody is holding anyone accountable for such injustice in one of the largest prison systems in the country.
