Reducing the Cost of Incarceration in Arizona

This paper is written to simplify the current prison crisis which has been draining the state budget for the last ten years. It is not a politically correct nor a politically accepted concept as it offers alternatives to incarceration via traditional and evidence based programs but since the culture in Arizona is “tough on crime” the feasibility of making changes depends on the leadership of the state.

It is a common fact that prisons have grown exponentially in the United States and Arizona. There were major contributors to this growth including the war of drugs, veterans being discharged after serving in war, homeless populations roaming the streets, mentally ill persons incarcerated because of the lack of state hospitals or treatment facilities and many more. This has been accepted as fact and is not challenged.

What should be challenged is the fact that penal policies have shifted focusing on sentencing and doubling their sentence of confinement. As a natural consequence of such actions, the prison population exploded and has been growing ever since the implementation of such policies. The reality posing the state today is the fact this current policy is no longer affordable or sustainable with budgets facing decreased revenues and higher expenditures not just in prison costs but in education, healthcare, children protection needs, public safety etc.

Prosecutors are concerned about crime rates as this is a legitimate concern for public safety. The public is concerned about the cost of public safety and growing prison spending and this is also a legitimate concern today. A silent and hidden factor is the social and racial inequalities involved in the process of incarceration leaving families, children and communities damaged and dependent on public aid funding. However, we must focus on the social justice of incarceration and address the alternatives to reduce costs and populations.

The reality is that this paper only reflects the work that has already been done to reduce the incarceration rates. It merely mimics those recommendations and provides the reader with thought provoking ideas that break the bias of being “tough on crime” and offer a strategic viewpoint to reduce incarceration without impacting the crime rate and work on reducing imprisonment costs.

It is believed the point is not “something needs to be done” but rather we need to develop a strategy to seek reduction in prison costs through sound means and courses designed to reflect best practices. This paper is for the policymakers who appear to be restricted or hampered by political influences and a misunderstanding between incarceration rates and crime rates.

Thus they are taking the cautious approach about reducing incarceration for the fear of meddling or contributing to an increase in the crime rate. Making assumptions the connection between incarceration rates and the crime rates is flawed based on a constant factor that plays into these dynamics of what is called the “iron law of prison populations.” This principle applies two factors: the number of people put in prison and the length of time they stay incarcerated.

Obviously there is a link between the incarceration rate and the crime rate but it is misunderstood and has created a “fear” level of being too soft on crime. It has been determined you can reduce captivity rates or populations without a “substantial” negative impact on public safety. Thus this paper proposes a set of penal changes that would cut the population and costs respectively. If used accordingly and abiding by the previous sets of rules before the prison population boom, we could return the prison management element to a restored status and focus on alternatives to prison time given by judges and recommended by county prosecutors.

FACT: It takes a crime to convict someone to serve time in prison. If crime rates rise so does the imprisonment rate. We expect the crime rate to fall but we see it occurs on a very small scale thus we have a mild correlation that can be addressed and politically tolerated if the mindset changes to accepting alternatives to longer sentencing.Therefore a consensus is built that the impact is modest compared to other factors on crime.

FACT: When one person is locked up another person comes along and replaces him or her maintaining the crime rate. This is especially true for drug related crimes. This represents the fact that a prison conviction will increase the prison population but it does not decrease the crime rate. Another fact gathered over the years is that the length of time does not change the risk of recidivism thus sending to people for shorter periods would not impact their propensity to commit crimes upon release from prison. The exception to this rule would be in prisons were to release a disproportional number of persons from prison as it would have an impact on crime rates.

FACT: People released from prison are still high risk of committing new crimes however, they commit only a small fraction of all crimes reported. Taken into consideration prisoners are not less likely to commit crimes upon release after serving more time in prison and given the fact the contribution is small the risk is relatively small. Hence increasing the prison release rate would serve no advantage to this process since it has already been determined some prisoners will commit crimes upon release. However we can assume these prisoners would commit a crime anyway.

FACT: When the number of persons going to prison drops, the number of inmates released from prison will also drop. Hence the corresponding “new” crime committed rate would drop as well. Based on the research that the length of stay in prison has no relationship to rate of recidivism and going to prison in the first place it does not reduce the likelihood that the criminal offender will be a repeat offender and make it marginally higher.

FACT: This analysis shows that the size of the prison population and the amount of crimes committed are related but not as strong as assumed. Since the duration of time prisoners are released from prison is not related to their likelihood to remain crime free it suggests prisoners can serve shorter sentences without triggering an increase in the crime rate.

FACT: Policymakers misunderstand how prisons grow and confuse rehabilitation with punishment. The same goes for judges who think they are sending people for rehabilitation. Remember the “iron law” which states two factors: how many people go to prison and how long they stay. If either of these factors changes, the size of the prison population will also change. The corollary to this iron law is equally important: There is no way to change the prison population without changing either the number of people who go to prison or how long they stay there.

FACT: There were three deciding factors in prison growth – sentencing policies restricted the use of probation as a sentence for felons causing an increase in the number of people going to prison; enhanced penalties for felonies committed increased the length of time to serve; a backlog of people serving time (overcrowding) serving longer sentences. The result is today’s dilemma to reduce prison growth and costs.

Despite efforts to address alternative sentencing laws, the idea of sentencing reforms did not impact the length of sentence but rather focused on the probation periods and conditions. These reforms were basically sabotaged by technical violations that resulted in persons going to prison anyway. These revocations impacted the population and created a failed system to reform the problem. Hence the intention to provide non-incarceration alternatives turned into incarceration due to a lack of incentives on the community corrections side of the justice system.

Thus the laws changed for an alternative to serve but due to revocations it was not effective and there was not a single new law designed to address the change of length of time or reduce restrictions on probation sentences. Far more important are the emphases on reentry, alternatives to incarceration, and the philosophy of rehabilitation, a problem that can be addressed only with a focus on the iron law's two elements.

Political obstacles are in place to resist rehabilitation programs in Arizona. Because there are misunderstandings between punishment and treatment, the debate has caused a standstill in the process to address this issue. The focus on either penal strategy is understood but one serves an entire different purpose than the other.

FACT: Some judges will say that they send people to prison for rehabilitation purposes. This is not the accurate purpose of such sentencing. They are being sent to prison for punishment since treatment programs are severely limited inside prisons. Best case scenario are alcohol abuse, substance abuse and anger management programs available at a limited scale to the population and only as mandatory conditions of incarceration but this is not rehabilitate in nature since the prison environment is more dominantly counter-treatment than successful treatment outside of prisons.

FACT: To achieve a true rehabilitation prison program for treatment the system would have to be increased to scale of the population for everyone to attend. This is unrealistic and very costly done. In the end, rehabilitation is the right thing to do but it does not impact mass incarceration.

To reduce mass incarceration we must entice the criminal justice system e.g. prosecutors, judges to place offenders into community programs rather than incarceration including the intensive probation programs for drug treatment diversion programs. The same can be said for the mentally ill and other special needs however, in todays’ political world, these programs rarely replace incarceration thus doing nothing to drive down mass incarceration rates.

There are two main reasons for this. First it is not politically feasible to offer alternatives in Arizona as the politicians run on and are elected by the people for being “tough on criminals.” this results in having higher rates of incarceration and more  “technical” revocation failure rates.  Second, this strategy promises not to impact public safety or risk thus the system forgoes dealing with the serious violators and deal with those lawbreakers who would not have gone to prison anyways thus doing nothing for the incarnation rates.

In order to reduce incarceration and prison costs we should look at evidence based:

Re-entry programs

Sentencing reforms

The number of persons going into prison (including violators)

Mandatory sentencing

Technical violations of probation and parole

Length of incarceration

Impact of mass incarceration rates

Impact of the crime rates

References:

Harvard Law & Policy Review Summer, 2009 -Confronting the Costs on Incarceration Todd R. Clear James Austin Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; Todd R. Clear, James Austin

Prison Director Charles L. Ryan is Complicit with the Republican Party

Ignoring the multiple red flags that have been surfacing since his takeover back in January 2009, what we are witnessing is a prime example how one man, hired by key members of the Republican legislature, has performed or for a better word, underperformed, deliberately under the guiding eye of main players in the party. 

By design he had become the deliberate obstructionist he was hired to be when he took his oath as the prison agency’s director. Repeated reports gathered since his term began unveiled a strategy, a plan and a mission to allow the Department of Corrections to fail. His leadership style was purposely designed to enact a failing policy that has now cost the citizens of Arizona so much money it is now beyond repair with budget shortages coming up this year. 

Citing report after report showing substandard working and prison conditions he developed a strategy to sabotage our public safety nets related to the incarceration, the management and supervision of prisoners inside our prisons and those on community corrections supervision. His collusion with legislators gave him immunity to criticism and the accountability for his failures. 

To this day, the ADOC has gone nowhere fast. It has failed in every facet of public service and it has been challenged by key media reports but has always rebutted the facts of the incidents with a cleverly cynical argument that plays on the fact that these matters are being looked into, pending investigation, under consideration or there are incomplete factors to consider to seek the truth.

This complicity to refuse to do good government effort and implementing his policies in a committed ineffective manner has been recognized to be the main catalyst in the diminished capacity to provide adequate safety and wellness  for the state’s employees, the legal and moral responsibility to take care and treat the prisoners. 

Strongly supported for this action our state is now facing a class action lawsuit for medical care and other constitutionally provided services, essentially costing Arizona more money than necessary and through a political collusion with the Legislature, provided private prison medical and bed contractors for shoddy but expensive work with profits paid for with taxpayer’s money. 

His deliberate failure to manage his administrators to enforce policies and procedures has resulted in excessive litigation against the state. The irony of this ploy of milking the state for more funding has benefitted only two parties: contractors and lobbyist who knock on these legislators doors and deliver their share of the bargain. 

It would be remiss to mention some kickbacks are in place to further enhance the profit margin but that is only suspect.  Unfortunately this includes the governor’s office as well as the Legislature thereby illustrating how deep this strategy is plotted and seated.

The approach was easily created. First he tampered with employee disciplinary policies, human resource personnel policies and inmate classification policies that rendered the state severely handicapped when it came to alternative spending or prison programming. Since the culture of the state support toxic and harsh punishment of our prisoners none of this was challenged.  

Disregarding best practices adopted by many other states, he made his own rules based on the traditional “lessons learned” ideology that has drifted from the national standards for prisons. This rogue management style makes Arizona 6^th in the nation for prison population growth.

Implementing steps to punish employees arbitrarily, he decimated morale of the troops. His policy to change hiring and job classification status to at-will or uncovered put these employees in fear of losing their job nullifying the employee grievance process along the way. 

Applying peer pressure and political pressure from the administrators targeting those staff close to retirement Ryan claimed savings based on attrition rates, vacancies and other strategies that caused a statewide staff shortage and now jeopardizes public safety as the state is experiencing a high rate of turnover. Elimination of essential programs also lowered costs but created designed chaos on the other end of the scale as inmate idleness created security problems.

With the employees under control and using fear and intimidation as his HR tactics to keep them silent he changed the classification policy so the state could send more inmates to private beds for a healthy per diem and a guaranteed set quota which would pay for empty beds promised but not used. He tampered with national accepted “best practices” for custody levels and institutional security needs to allow more inmates to be transferred to private prisons. 

This exploitation of employees is shameful and deliberately fragmented essential services, lowered performance expectations and compromised the quality of security and safety within the prisons. It made great political lines for taking the necessary steps to show management of self-created problems but it hurt the state and it hurt the employees. It will do nothing for Arizona’s ability to recover from the economy but it will make the private prison contractors richer.

Indirectly, because the classification risk assessment tool was no longer similar to original tool once developed on evidence based criteria, the results were poor housing decisions, more violence at the medium custody levels, more staff assaults and more inmates being locked up into the higher and more expensive close and maximum custody. 

Disregarding gang issues, he drove the prison setting into a drug haven, cell phones are plentiful and inmates are continued to be assaulted by gangs as they are trying to do their time. The expensive use of K9 detection dogs have been lend out more to the community than their use inside the prisons allowing contraband to flow freely exist. 

All designed to drive up the cost of our prisons making it a prime reason to privatize them. To say it was operating at a disproportional rate of effectiveness would be an understatement. The lack of balance and the creation of a nonlinear organizational flow to perform the mission has been compromised. 

In the meantime he denied capital outlay budget requests to repair or replace physical plant structures and infrastructures that are near disaster levels now. The agency’s computer infrastructure is outdated creating classification errors as the risk tool is computerized but compromised due to faulty computations of time, severity of crime, erroneous disciplinary histories, and an omission of security concerns not computed by the computer but needs to be inputted manually to reflect the inmate’s actual risk score.

This is an election year. It would be an opportunity to change the guards as matter of speaking for it is time we change leadership in this state. Our state is in deep trouble, our prisons are at the cusp of imploding because of the internal sabotage that has taken place.

Upon hire, Charles L. Ryan walked away from his oath and his duty to serve this state honorably and ethically. He signed on with a selfish legislative cast that hired him to lead the destruction of our prison system. When it explodes, they will all walk way and blame the director but in the end he will be rewarded for doing the job he was hired to do – destroy Arizona prisons and open the door to prison privatization efforts led by these same legislators who hired Ryan.

Sexual Harassment Creates more Conflict

Management often talks about a win-win solution when it comes to conflicts in the workplace but in reality there are some conflicts that have no ideal solution or answer to a problem reported. Sexual harassment is one of those problems for management to deal with according to federal laws and other regulatory statutes within the organizational policies and procedures as well as other mandatory regulatory requirements posted for all employees to read and see. 

It has been established that in most cases, sexual harassment does not get reported to supervisor or the administration until all avenues of informal resolutions are exhausted. There may be exceptions to this rule but the majority cases of sexual harassment reports are what we call “last resort” situations with the inability to find a happy solution to the party who filed the report. 

Sexual harassment is a very large problem in the workplace and is pervasive in nature. It does not exempt any particular workplace environment and occurs more than we would like it to happen. In fact, statistically speaking, because the definition of sexual harassment is so ambiguous and less defined, many situations may fall under the umbrellas of such a misconduct and warrants a closer examination for fact finding and closer examination of the complaint.

A national survey shows that 21% of all women report being sexually harassed at work. This amounts to almost a quarter of the workforce who experience some kind of discomfort or unwanted attention while they are working. There is likely a higher percentage in the workforce as many remain unreported by individuals who cope with it and hope it passes.

The biggest deterrent in filing a report is the humiliation and embarrassment caused by the human resource people who usually handle such a complaint. Standing by their zero tolerance policy is declared up front but in the background, they loathe to work on such a grievance due to the political ramifications it has once it is completed. 

Even though the laws are posted, it is not strong enough to handle the reality of what happens once a protest is filed. The dynamics are fluid, twisted and highly manipulative by all involved. All those involved are jockeying for leverage to ensure there are no blowback results in how this matter is handled, processed and determined for cause or legitimate recommendations for actions proposed. 

A closer examination of this reveals an attitude of us versus them that normally results in the company or organization looking out for them first while making the unhappy employee satisfied as the last concern. They view this as a damage control issues that has a risk of collateral damage to other people in positions of authority thus they create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation whether deliberately or not making the entire process flawed, biased and often misunderstood. 

The contents of the report filed is closely examined to justify a re-write for insufficient data or information to constitute a legitimate complaint. This is tactfully delivered in a positive approach by indicating the investigation cannot be completed unless they receive more information to substantiate the allegations made and identify specific violations of law. Technically speaking, this is an attempt to stall the process and have someone talk to the employee to see if they will drop the report

In the meantime, since they are awaiting the re-write or amended version of the allegations, they implement corporate steps to protect the “innocents” from collateral damage. This usually takes a few days of gathering emails, meeting notes, performance notes and other documentation that shows management was on top of all the required management principles in how to properly supervise, evaluate and counsel employees related to the law.

In other words, they are getting their ducks in a row. They are setting up an adversarial relationship with the reporting employee whether they realize it or not as the us versus them results in biased action plans to protect themselves and the company rather than the employee. 

At this point they will look at making sacrifices and take action against the alleged violator or the reporting employee for conduct unprofessional or other violations of company rules. The table are now turning where the reporting employee becomes a target of an investigation for their own conduct or misconduct rather than focusing on the employee reported in the report.  

Mentioned before are the twisted ways the company scrambles to comply or to fit neatly in the law and policies. Most of the energy spent on sexual harassment cases are to protect the company as they do not want to end up in a courtroom and discuss their dirty laundry in front of a judge. 

Eventually in most cases, the victim gets frustrated, ostracized, labeled as a disgruntled or unhappy employee and gets fired for something they did or didn’t do whichever may be the case. The law is not strong enough to protect an employee from retaliation and most of the time, retaliation is not taken until a significant period of time has passed and a new supervisor or new job assignment has occurred making it a clean case for disciplinary action.  

Thus the reality is when you report it to Human Resources you may be sacrificing your career for telling on someone who harassed you or violated the Equal Employment Opportunity Law and may suffer a mild form of discipline or be terminated  based on the severity of the complaint but the fact remains, you are not off the hook until the case is completed settled internally and administratively.