With potential sanctions for his agency’s failure to meet court-ordered prison health care standards looming, Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan laid the blame largely at the feet of private contractor Corizon Correctional Healthcare.

An ex-prisoner has come forward with allegations that a former Arizona Department of Corrections detention officer, Kenneth Couture, made inappropriate sexual advances while she was incarcerated and had sex with her while she was still under the agency’s supervision after her release from prison.

Gov. Doug Ducey wants to expand employment centers for soon-to-be-released prisoners and give them identification cards before they leave state custody.

The governor also said the state will restore cuts made during the Great Recession to formula funding for K-12 schools, but details on how much money and where it will come from won’t be known until the governor releases his budget on Friday.

The weekend death of a Guatemalan woman who became ill at a detention center in Arizona with the most in-custody immigrant deaths in the U.S. is another example of inadequate care and poor practices at the privately run site, advocates for immigrants said this week.

Attorneys who brought a class-action lawsuit over the quality of health care in Arizona's prisons said Friday that the state is trying to skirt a requirement in a settlement that mental health professionals see inmates who have recently been taken off psychotropic medications.

The Department of Corrections is returning to court on claims the agency is shirking its obligation under a year-old lawsuit settlement to improve health care for prisoners.

The only agency in Arizona that requires leap year funding was allocated more than $900,000 to cover the costs of one extra calendar day.

A corrections officer who was sexually assaulted by an inmate at the Yuma state prison is among eight prison guards suing Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan and the state of Arizona for conditions they contend led to assaults and injuries.

Lawmakers at the joint Appropriations Committee briefing on Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget proposal Jan. 19 were only allotted time for one question each following the budget presentation, but the questions they asked were telling.