Key Points: 

• Lawmakers seek watchdog to monitor prison agency accountability

• House stalls bill despite rising prison system concerns

• Governor Hobbs silent on independent panel; critics demand urgent oversight

   

Two Republican state lawmakers are making a last-ditch effort to establish a permanent independent panel to oversee the state prison system.

Sen. Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix, managed to get the Senate to approve her plan to set up the Office of Independent Corrections Ombudsman to investigate complaints involving the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. More to the point, proponents said it would provide lawmakers, who fund the agency, the information they need to know how well it is doing its job.

But the efforts stalled in the House. So have perennial efforts by Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake, to have someone outside the department keep tabs on what is going on inside the system, which at last count housed more than 35,000 inmates.
Blackman pushed colleagues to create a requirement for oversight included in the state budget.

“That’s our second largest budget item,” Blackman told colleagues, with spending approaching $1.8 billion. “In order for us to really get a hold of this thing, we do need to get an oversight so we can save taxpayer dollars (and) hold the Department of Corrections accountable.”
However, it wasn’t in the package that cleared the House late on June 13, and now all eyes are on the Senate’s budget.

The only thing is, there’s a third party to all of this: Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Bolick said that Hobbs, who appointed Ryan Thornell as the current state prisons chief, does not want such oversight. But the Governor’s Office isn’t commenting.

Blackman said that, gubernatorial opposition or not, the Legislature needs to decide whether it wants to order anyone to take a closer look at an agency that has had a history of murders, escapes, assaults — many of those recent — and so far paid millions of dollars in court-ordered fines for inadequate health care to inmates.

“We have those types of issues that we need to see what’s going on,” he told Capitol Media Services.

He added that there have been limited reviews of the agency, many of which have revealed problems, such as inaccuracies in computing the length of time inmates were supposed to be incarcerated.

“As a result, I think there was somebody in there after three months that should have been released,” he said.

His preference is even more sweeping than what is in Bolick’s plan. He wants to create an independent panel to “make sure we are doing our due diligence, saving taxpayer dollars, keeping our communities safe and ensuring that those folks that are in there, when they get out, they are not going back in because of bad policy.”

Christian Slater, the governor’s press aide, declined to respond to questions about whether she believes outside oversight of the agency is necessary. But Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, the assistant House minority leader, questioned the need.

“I think that I trust the department director and what he’s doing,” she said, referring to Thornell, who was tapped by Hobbs to head the agency shortly after she took office in early 2023.

She acknowledged there is a yet-to-be-resolved multi-year federal court lawsuit over inadequate health care.

“The lawsuits were before his time,” Gutierrez said. “So let’s give him a chance to fix it.”

But the American Civil Liberties Union isn’t convinced that anything meaningful has been done in the two years that Thornell has been on the job. Now, the ACLU is asking U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver to appoint a receiver to oversee the management of health care in Arizona prisons.

This isn’t a new problem — the lawsuit dates back to 2012. And it’s been more than two years since Silver declared the care in the prison system “plainly, grossly inadequate” and concluded that state officials have been acting “with deliberate indifference” to the substantial harm to inmates.

That was after Silver had already fined the state $2.5 million for failing to live up to earlier agreements.

Silver then ordered the state to make comprehensive improvements to prison medical and mental health care.

That was under a prior prisons chief, an appointee of Doug Ducey, Hobbs’ predecessor.

In court filings in February, attorneys for the ACLU and others told the judge the problems still exist under Thornell. In fact, they quoted court-appointed experts who said there is “little evidence” the agency has any commitment to meeting the court-ordered requirements.

A hearing before Silver to decide whether to wrest control of the prison health care system from the state and give it to a court-appointed receiver — and bill the state for the expenses — is set for next month.

Blackman said the ongoing federal court lawsuit is just one example of ongoing issues in the prison system. More to the point, he said there’s no reason to believe that, absent real oversight, things will change by simply continuing to give the agency more money based on promises to improve.
“Every year we’re expecting a different outcome,” he said. And he sniffed at the idea that a change in administration makes the issues go away.

“We get a new director every time we get a new governor and it’s the same problem when we look across the board,” Blackman said. “So it has to be something that we need to do, as a body, to look in there.”

Understanding the problem, he said, is the first step.

“They may need more money, they may need more personnel or training, or what have you, facilities upgrades,” Blackman said, all issues within the purview of the Legislature. “So yeah, it is our job to do that.”

And an independent oversight commission, he said, is the way to get a handle on all that.

While Hobbs remains quiet about the idea of permanent prison oversight, what Blackman and Bolick are proposing should come as no surprise to the governor.

Hobbs created a commission shortly after taking office, directing it to examine a range of issues.

Its preliminary report, issued in December 2023, identified a series of problems, including meal quality that contributes to poor health, inadequate access to basic hygiene items, and even the inability of inmates to call family and lawyers.

The main conclusion was that members told Hobbs they didn’t have the time or resources to do anything. Put simply, they said that if the governor really wanted external oversight, she needed something far different from what she formed: a group of 11 members, except for someone from the prison system, all of whom have other jobs.

“A volunteer commission faces significant challenges to conducting meaningful independent oversight of the state’s corrections system,” said the report obtained by Capitol Media Services. “Significant time must be dedicated to deliver effective solutions.”
And then there was the lack of independence.

“It cannot truly serve as an independent oversight commission while housed within the Governor’s Office,” the report said. Aside from the lack of dedicated funding and staffing, commission members said what’s needed is something not subject to the whims of whoever holds the governor’s chair.

That recommendation to the governor for permanent and independent oversight went nowhere.

Instead, Hobbs simply thanked the members “for the steadfast efforts examining our prison system and commitment to improve it.”

Blackman said that all that proves is that there needs to be a commission with “teeth,” including the time, staff, resources, and power to actually do something, and not just something created at the whim of the governor.

He said that what was in the report should have highlighted the need for immediate action to address the issues.

Consider, he said, the finding that, out of the 46 men in the system who were asked about meal service, 42 reported problems. And Blackman said there is evidence the health issues some inmates were having — part of what’s driving the federal court lawsuit — is due to the lack of nutritious food and that meal times were wildly inconsistent.

“I’m not talking T-bone steaks and all that stuff,” he said. “I’m talking nutrition, food that’s going to keep them healthy.”