Facing a potential court-ordered takeover of prison health care, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry claims significant improvements to medical staffing and capacity and a continual increase in the dollar amount spent on care negates any need for additional control.

Plaintiffs in the long-running class action lawsuit against ADCRR filed a motion for a receiver to assume responsibility for the carceral medical system after a string of reports from court-appointed monitors found inmates are still receiving less than adequate health care and dying “unnecessarily.”

The department claims too little time has passed since the court issued a permanent injunction, and, in that time, there has been and continues to be strides in quality of care, staffing levels and funds infused into health care.

“Interrupting these efforts midstream by appointing a receiver, who would necessarily need substantial time to onboard, would slow, rather than accelerate, the progress that is being made,” John Bullock, attorney for ADCRR, wrote.

The court entered a final injunction in April 2023, with a mandate to ensure clinically appropriate physical and mental health care, including, but not limited to, improving staffing and documentation.

More than ten years into class-action litigation and about two years since the injunction, attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and the ACLU National Prison Project, the Prison Law Office and the Disability Rights Arizona agency filed a motion for a receiver, citing a string of reports from court monitors finding a continued failure to reach compliance.

The department initially dismissed the plaintiffs’ motion in a statement, citing “numerous” improvements made already and claiming a receiver would result in additional and undue costs on taxpayers.

In a formal response, Bullock hit again on the financial implications, warning of a tripled prison health care budget. He contended, too, that appointing a receiver would be “[p]remature and otherwise unwarranted,” given it had been less than two years since the court issued the injunction and just over two years since Director Ryan Thornell took over the department.

In that time, though, he claimed the department had made significant progress in staffing, including a 61.5% overall increase in full-time health care employees, with a 53% increase in mental health staff and a 46% increase in physicians.

The department has also increased capacity for mental health residential treatment units by 200 beds, and increased the capacity of the special needs unit and inpatient care unit by 66% since October 2023.

The response painted the court monitor’s reports as an incomplete picture, claiming one report “largely ignores the efforts the Department and NaphCare continue to make to improve the delivery of medical and mental health care, and instead focuses on anecdotal examples of alleged non-compliance that, according to the Monitors, show the entire system is ‘broken.’”

Bullock then dove into the price tag on corrections health care.

He reported the department spent more in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, $255 million in FY2025, than the entire year prior to the injunction was entered, or $224 million in FY2022. In the last full fiscal year, the department spent $382 million.

Bullock writes, “the Department acknowledges that there is more work to do and recognizes the Court’s frustration that progress has not been faster.” But he claims the plaintiffs’ contention that the appointment of a receiver would bring a “relatively quick and efficient remedy” simply is not credible.

He looks to the central case law cited by plaintiffs, Plata v. Newsom, in which the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was put under receivership. He points out the department was still under receivership at a high cost to the state.

He said if Arizona were to match the current per-capita rate in California, the department’s health care budget would about triple to $1.06 billion a year.

Bullock claims the court should instead allow the department more time.

“The Department continues to make progress across all aspects of the Injunction, and the Department’s work should be permitted to continue,” Bullock said.

Rita Lomio, attorney for the plaintiff and author of the motion for receiver, said, “It’s really not about the amount of money put in. It isn’t the metric. It’s what the outcome is, whether you’re providing good care.”

A response from the plaintiffs is due on March 18.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t see in their brief a lot of solutions, just a lot of excuses,” Lomio said. “We’ll take a closer look, but we’ll be responding to that.”

The parties are due for a status hearing on March 25 and must file reports on whether discovery will be necessary and a proposed date for a hearing on the motion for receiver.