Ignoring the
multiple red flags that have been surfacing since his takeover back in January
2009, what we are witnessing is a prime example how one man, hired by key
members of the Republican legislature, has performed or for a better word,
underperformed, deliberately under the guiding eye of main players in the
party. A party that is now wanting the people to elect Doug Ducey as the next Republican governor for Arizona.
By design he had become the deliberate
obstructionist he was hired to be when he took his oath as the prison agency’s
director. Repeated reports gathered since his term began unveiled a strategy, a
plan and a mission to allow the Department of Corrections to fail. His
leadership style was purposely designed to enact a failing policy that has now
cost the citizens of Arizona so much money it is now beyond repair with budget
shortages coming up this year.
Citing report
after report showing substandard working and prison conditions he developed a
strategy to sabotage our public safety nets related to the incarceration, the
management and supervision of prisoners inside our prisons and those on
community corrections supervision. His collusion with legislators gave him
immunity to criticism and the accountability for his failures.
To this day, the
ADOC has gone nowhere fast. It has failed in every facet of public service and
it has been challenged by key media reports but has always rebutted the facts
of the incidents with a cleverly cynical argument that plays on the fact that
these matters are being looked into, pending investigation, under consideration
or there are incomplete factors to consider to seek the truth.
This complicity
to refuse to do good government effort and implementing his policies in a
committed ineffective manner has been recognized to be the main catalyst in the
diminished capacity to provide adequate safety and wellness for the state’s employees, the legal and
moral responsibility to take care and treat the prisoners.
Strongly
supported for this action our state is now facing a class action lawsuit for
medical care and other constitutionally provided services, essentially costing
Arizona more money than necessary and through a political collusion with the
Legislature, provided private prison medical and bed contractors for shoddy but
expensive work with profits paid for with taxpayer’s money.
His deliberate
failure to manage his administrators to enforce policies and procedures has
resulted in excessive litigation against the state. The irony of this ploy of
milking the state for more funding has benefitted only two parties: contractors
and lobbyist who knock on these legislators doors and deliver their share of
the bargain.
It would be
remiss to mention some kickbacks are in place to further enhance the profit
margin but that is only suspect. Unfortunately this includes the governor’s
office as well as the Legislature thereby illustrating how deep this strategy
is plotted and seated.
The approach was
easily created. First he tampered with employee disciplinary policies, human resource
personnel policies and inmate classification policies that rendered the state
severely handicapped when it came to alternative spending or prison programming.
Since the culture of the state support toxic and harsh punishment of our
prisoners none of this was challenged.
Disregarding
best practices adopted by many other states, he made his own rules based on the
traditional “lessons learned” ideology that has drifted from the national
standards for prisons. This rogue management style makes Arizona 6th
in the nation for prison population growth.
Implementing steps
to punish employees arbitrarily, he decimated morale of the troops. His policy
to change hiring and job classification status to at-will or uncovered put
these employees in fear of losing their job nullifying the employee grievance
process along the way.
Applying peer
pressure and political pressure from the administrators targeting those staff
close to retirement Ryan claimed savings based on attrition rates, vacancies
and other strategies that caused a statewide staff shortage and now jeopardizes
public safety as the state is experiencing a high rate of turnover. Elimination
of essential programs also lowered costs but created designed chaos on the
other end of the scale as inmate idleness created security problems.
With the
employees under control and using fear and intimidation as his HR tactics to
keep them silent he changed the classification policy so the state could send
more inmates to private beds for a healthy per diem and a guaranteed set quota
which would pay for empty beds promised but not used. He tampered with national
accepted “best practices” for custody levels and institutional security needs
to allow more inmates to be transferred to private prisons.
This
exploitation of employees is shameful and deliberately fragmented essential
services, lowered performance expectations and compromised the quality of
security and safety within the prisons. It made great political lines for
taking the necessary steps to show management of self-created problems but it
hurt the state and it hurt the employees. It will do nothing for Arizona’s
ability to recover from the economy but it will make the private prison
contractors richer.
Indirectly,
because the classification risk assessment tool was no longer similar to
original tool once developed on evidence based criteria, the results were poor
housing decisions, more violence at the medium custody levels, more staff
assaults and more inmates being locked up into the higher and more expensive close
and maximum custody.
Disregarding
gang issues, he drove the prison setting into a drug haven, cell phones are
plentiful and inmates are continued to be assaulted by gangs as they are trying
to do their time. The expensive use of K9 detection dogs have been lend out
more to the community than their use inside the prisons allowing contraband to
flow freely exist.
All designed to
drive up the cost of our prisons making it a prime reason to privatize them. To
say it was operating at a disproportional rate of effectiveness would be an
understatement. The lack of balance and the creation of a nonlinear
organizational flow to perform the mission has been compromised.
In the meantime
he denied capital outlay budget requests to repair or replace physical plant
structures and infrastructures that are near disaster levels now. The agency’s
computer infrastructure is outdated creating classification errors as the risk
tool is computerized but compromised due to faulty computations of time,
severity of crime, erroneous disciplinary histories, and an omission of
security concerns not computed by the computer but needs to be inputted
manually to reflect the inmate’s actual risk score.
This is an
election year. It would be an opportunity to change the guards as matter of
speaking for it is time we change leadership in this state. Our state is in
deep trouble, our prisons are at the cusp of imploding because of the internal
sabotage that has taken place.
Upon hire, Charles
L. Ryan walked away from his oath and his duty to serve this state honorably
and ethically. He signed on with a selfish legislative cast that hired him to
lead the destruction of our prison system. When it explodes, they will all walk
way and blame the director but in the end he will be rewarded for doing the job
he was hired to do – destroy Arizona prisons and open the door to prison
privatization efforts led by these same legislators who hired Ryan.
