A
s the Arizona’s Department of Corrections (ADOC) suffers
daily staff shortages and critical mass situations, the control of the agency
has fallen under the control of Republican legislators and our Governor who
occupy the offices that funds and oversees such public services. Within this
email, I want to relay some concerns that demonstrates the emasculation of our
correctional forces and the tempting desire to destroy it for reasons that
point to the proliferation for more private prison services.
While the services of correctional services have long been
inadequate and insufficient for public and employee safety, there has been a
weak attempt to recruit and select qualified personnel of integrity and honor
needed to fill such positions. In the meantime, the agency has replaced and
purged qualified and good men and women with strong integrity & values from
administrative ranks and replaced them with individuals who share the desire of
the power brokers to devastate the agency into ruins and allow privatization to
pick up the tab for public safety of our prisons.
Since 2009, we have endured the increasing influence of new
politically correct guidelines but was ultimately given one that was simply too
offensive to the men and women in key administrative and mid-level supervisory
positions, creating a mass exodus of qualified people through early retirements
or resignations.
In the meantime, we are under assault of more PC directives
that are insufficient to protect the lives of staff and inmates and directly
impacts good public safety. We should all take notice. The director took a
sworn oath of office to uphold the state constitution and the US Constitution.
This oath has been denigrated and indicates that the governor needs to
re-evaluate his positon on public prisons and remove the current director from
office.
A purge of experience is never good. If it continues, what
will the agency be like in a few more years?
Whenever this matter comes up, the union and every officer,
are told not to talk to the media or press about the staff shortage situation
as well as the deterioration of the agency from within as infra-structures are
seriously suffering major damages and no repairs are in sight for such
recoveries. They are purging everyone and if you want to keep your job just
keep your mouth shut. Now this trend appears to be accelerating.
Since Charles Ryan took office, former Governor Brewer and
present governor Ducey have given him free rein in destroying the agency for
the betterment of privatization. The more the public prisons failed, the better
the private industry looks from their view. Things have gotten so bad during
this purge that people are starting to speak out about the atrocities and
mismanagements when silence was kept intact before.
Today there is a deliberate attempt to reshape our prison
systems and the change or reform will be justified through administrative or
management failures. Every day, they are removing those who don’t follow or
adhere to the new policies written to appease failure. This administration
protects their own with stalled requests for public document information and
investigations.
In an election
climate that reeks of economic chaos, we may be overlooking a greater threat to
our future. Diversity has been replaced by division of the rank and file.
Employees wounded or injured in workplace violence or attacks are being denied
reasonable accommodations to heal and return to full duty in an effort to
identify as the workplace violence as an acceptable condition of employment.
This includes blunt trauma, sharpened instruments or prison made knives, rapes,
physical and sexual assaults and many more.
Under the leadership of Charles Ryan, the agency has
suffered as never before. He instituted an insane policy which has caused an
unprecedented number of staff and inmate suicides and PTSD rates among our
state employees and depression and anxiety in their families. The public is
unwise and heeds no attention to the failures related to the Parsons vs. Ryan
healthcare lawsuit but the families of these victims have reached out to many legislators,
attorneys, or some news reporters, to have someone help their sons and
daughters inside prisons.
The officers are being grossly neglected. They haven’t
received a raise since 2007 and more cuts are coming, and the administration
actually admits losing more than 500 officers in the past years and re-arranges
staffing patterns to pat the numbers on paper but leaving officers dangerously
low or short on shifts. This loss is blamed on legislative cuts but in all
reality, the culture of the agency drives people away and hampers legitimate
recruitment attempts to hire new employees.
Just as frightening is the lack of experience or expertise
in the agency. Leadership is lacking and poor decisions are made by those on
the front lines responding to critical incidents that result in life and death
situations.
Through their silence on the matter, a majority of the media
are complicit in the cover-ups of events happening inside our prisons. Add
those legislators who turn a blind eye to the matter and we should think, that
should be enough – and refusing to at least give it a shot to investigate this
deficiency in our state prison system is scandalous.
