Kara Janssen cannot, and will not, stop pushing for a better corrections system. Being formerly incarcerated herself and now advocating for people still inside, she sees adequate oversight as a crucial step. 

“I can’t go in there and fix it myself,” Janssen said. “I wish I could just go in there and make it better. But I can’t. This is the only way that I can.” 

Janssen, an organizer for Dream.org, and a circle of criminal justice advocates have long pushed to create an independent body to monitor the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. 

Past legislative attempts never went the distance, and a commission convened by Gov. Katie Hobbs only returned a report recounting a need for resources and time to sow true change.  

But this legislative session, two bills to create an office tasked with overseeing everything from clean water access to the infringement of inmate rights, with Republican sponsors in both chambers wrings heightened potential for legislative success. 

Rep. Walt Blackman introduced House Bill 2553, which would establish the Office of the Independent Corrections Ombudsman. Sen. Shawnna Bolick followed with Senate Bill 1507. 

“If we want our department to run with efficiency, we need to lift the rug,” Blackman said. “We need to be looking under the hood to see what’s not working.” Though looking toward the same aim, there’s slight deviations between the two pieces of legislation. 

Blackman’s bill has the ombudsman’s office stand solitary, though with a legislative committee in tandem, while Bolick’s version houses it within the Auditor General’s Office. It forgoes the creation of an independent committee and incorporates a look at the corrections’ budget and expenditures. 

In both bills, the ombudsman office would provide information on the inmates’ rights, set up a hotline for complaints, monitor the conditions of confinement and provide technical assistance to support inmates in self-advocacy. 

The language would require the creation of a data system on the number of deaths and suicides, physical and sexual assaults, inmates in administrative segregation or solitary confinement and the duration of stays, facility lockdowns, staffing stats and grievance complaints submitted and resolved. 

On the inspection side, the office would have to review facilities at least once every two years and maximum security facilities once each year.

And with all the findings, the office would tender an annual report to the Legislature and the governor. 

Lauren Krisai, executive director of Justice Action Network, a national bipartisan criminal justice reform organization, said increased access to and understanding of the department stands to lead to better outcomes. 

“They’ll be able to understand what’s going on behind prison bars and just get a better understanding of how to make the department more efficient and how to really turn it around,” Krisai said. “Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle understand that they want to be getting better outcomes from the system that they’re paying for.”

With the ombudsman’s office comes an ombudsman. Under Blackman’s bill, the ombudsman would be selected by the committee and serve a six-year term. Bolick would have the governor appoint an ombudsman for a five-year term.

Blackman’s bill makes it so the ombudsman themselves cannot have any employment history with the department, and similarly any staff, contractors or volunteers may not be an employee, have a family member who is either an inmate or a department employee, or be or have relation to a victim of a crime committed by an inmate currently incarcerated. 

And Blackman creates a Correctional Ombudsman Committee, which would bring together two members of the Senate and two members of the House from different parties, and direct the governor to appoint a member of an inmate advocacy organization, a member of an organization providing training or rehabilitation programs, two formerly incarcerated individuals, a licensed physician, a behavioral health specialist, a family member, spouse or partner of a formerly incarcerated individual, a representative from a corrections staff association and two public members to appoint an ombudsman. 

The committee would, similar to the office, conduct inspections of facilities, hold an annual public meeting to review the ombudsman’s findings and meet with the governor and director of the Department of Corrections biannually to report the work of the committee.

To foot the bill, Blackman proposes 0.001% of the total monies appropriated to corrections in FY2025, or about $1.6 million, to go toward the office, with funding ongoing. Bolick’s does not yet have a fiscal note. 

Bolick’s bill is currently assigned to Regulatory Affairs and Government Efficiency, which she chairs. Blackman’s bill is assigned to House Government, which he chairs, and House Public Safety and Law Enforcement. 

Corrections oversight legislation has taken shape in past sessions but never proven successful, but this time around, organizers are hopeful. 

John Fabricius, organizer for Dream.org, said oversight has been a long time coming. 

“With a Department of Corrections that has locations as geographically distant around the state as we have, that have facilities in disrepair, many of them, as we have, and as much money as we have put on the system,” Fabricius said. “All these things will come home to roost. And they have… We’re there. We’re at the place where we cannot kick the can down the road anymore, and we have to do something different in terms of how we operate the Department of Corrections.” 

Fabricius said there was a “trifecta” in the way of oversight opportunities, given an awareness of corrections department failings by lawmakers, the public and a reform-minded director in Ryan Thornell. 

Fabricius has long worked on past legislation, and he noted a need for additional teeth in any oversight body became even clearer after the Independent Prison Oversight Commission convened by the governor came up short, given a lack of resources. 

“I don’t see any of this as failure,” Fabricius said. “I think that us coming out and having to argue for it, and having to really pound the tables for a couple years. I think that that’s a good part of the process. And I think it’s an organic part of the process.” 

He noted, too, the independent oversight commission by Hobbs. 

“I think that that was a good thing, and because it exhausted a potential process that was doomed to never work. And so we don’t have to go down that road,” Fabricius said. 

“Conditionally, it showed everybody that there has to be a real investment into this. We can’t do this on a wish and a dream.” 

Janssen, a commission member at the time, echoed the same. 

“We can’t just stop. We made a little bit of progress. But we can’t stop,” Janssen said. “We’ll keep going until we get it.”