Purging the ADOC with good people -

As the Arizona’s Department of Corrections (ADOC) suffers daily staff shortages and critical mass situations, the control of the agency has fallen under the control of Republican legislators and our Governor who occupy the offices that funds and oversees such public services. Within this email, I want to relay some concerns that demonstrates the emasculation of our correctional forces and the tempting desire to destroy it for reasons that point to the proliferation for more private prison services.

While the services of correctional services have long been inadequate and insufficient for public and employee safety, there has been a weak attempt to recruit and select qualified personnel of integrity and honor needed to fill such positions. In the meantime, the agency has replaced and purged qualified and good men and women with strong integrity & values from administrative ranks and replaced them with individuals who share the desire of the power brokers to devastate the agency into ruins and allow privatization to pick up the tab for public safety of our prisons.

Since 2009, we have endured the increasing influence of new politically correct guidelines but was ultimately given one that was simply too offensive to the men and women in key administrative and mid-level supervisory positions, creating a mass exodus of qualified people through early retirements or resignations.

In the meantime, we are under assault of more PC directives that are insufficient to protect the lives of staff and inmates and directly impacts good public safety. We should all take notice. The director took a sworn oath of office to uphold the state constitution and the US Constitution. This oath has been denigrated and indicates that the governor needs to re-evaluate his positon on public prisons and remove the current director from office.

A purge of experience is never good. If it continues, what will the agency be like in a few more years?

Whenever this matter comes up, the union and every officer, are told not to talk to the media or press about the staff shortage situation as well as the deterioration of the agency from within as infra-structures are seriously suffering major damages and no repairs are in sight for such recoveries. They are purging everyone and if you want to keep your job just keep your mouth shut. Now this trend appears to be accelerating.

Since Charles Ryan took office, former Governor Brewer and present governor Ducey have given him free rein in destroying the agency for the betterment of privatization. The more the public prisons failed, the better the private industry looks from their view. Things have gotten so bad during this purge that people are starting to speak out about the atrocities and mismanagements when silence was kept intact before.

Today there is a deliberate attempt to reshape our prison systems and the change or reform will be justified through administrative or management failures. Every day, they are removing those who don’t follow or adhere to the new policies written to appease failure. This administration protects their own with stalled requests for public document information and investigations.

 In an election climate that reeks of economic chaos, we may be overlooking a greater threat to our future. Diversity has been replaced by division of the rank and file. Employees wounded or injured in workplace violence or attacks are being denied reasonable accommodations to heal and return to full duty in an effort to identify as the workplace violence as an acceptable condition of employment. This includes blunt trauma, sharpened instruments or prison made knives, rapes, physical and sexual assaults and many more.

Under the leadership of Charles Ryan, the agency has suffered as never before. He instituted an insane policy which has caused an unprecedented number of staff and inmate suicides and PTSD rates among our state employees and depression and anxiety in their families. The public is unwise and heeds no attention to the failures related to the Parsons vs. Ryan healthcare lawsuit but the families of these victims have reached out to many legislators, attorneys, or some news reporters, to have someone help their sons and daughters inside prisons.

The officers are being grossly neglected. They haven’t received a raise since 2007 and more cuts are coming, and the administration actually admits losing more than 500 officers in the past years and re-arranges staffing patterns to pat the numbers on paper but leaving officers dangerously low or short on shifts. This loss is blamed on legislative cuts but in all reality, the culture of the agency drives people away and hampers legitimate recruitment attempts to hire new employees.

Just as frightening is the lack of experience or expertise in the agency. Leadership is lacking and poor decisions are made by those on the front lines responding to critical incidents that result in life and death situations.

Through their silence on the matter, a majority of the media are complicit in the cover-ups of events happening inside our prisons. Add those legislators who turn a blind eye to the matter and we should think, that should be enough – and refusing to at least give it a shot to investigate this deficiency in our state prison system is scandalous.

Should Scottdale college be examined for bullying, belittling and brating students.

http://www.12news.com/news/investigative/bullied-belittled-and-berated-did-scottsdale-community-college-turn-a-blind-eye/207602847

As a former instructor of students in the criminal justice system, I found this report by Ms. Halloran disturbing and shocking that nothing was done before a death occurred. I honestly feel that if there was some type of intervention was taken by the college, prevention of a suicide was possible. Certainly, as a former chief of the basic training section at a Nationally Accredited Corrections Academy, I saw deep flaws in the entire performance of this teacher. 

First and foremost, much sympathy to the family of this beautiful child. Wendy Halloran humanized this story to the point that the viewer can feel the pain of this gross mistreatment by an instructor who is best identified as an ‘abuser’ rather than a teacher.

The details of her death comes to a sad conclusion that she was driven by various factors to her desperate state of mind when she decided to commit suicide. Factors that are clearly describing a pattern of behaviors that should have been observed and managed by her supervisors and the college, who are ultimately, responsible for her actions and ‘enabling’ her to act out in ways, that destroys, damages or leads to a serious mental status that is similar to humiliating someone to death. Being “direct” does not include being abusive. In fact, had the college cared enough about their own credibility, integrity and abilities to teach young adults the art of equinox training, they would have seen an incompatibility in this instructor from the beginning rather than “enabling” her to act like this.

It is hard for the college to admit they abused this student. Just like it was hard for the student to admit to anyone she was shamed into a despicable state of despair and hopeless mindset by a form of mental torture that resembles a ‘boot camp’ mentality but in this case, the teacher forgets or neglects to build these kids back up after tearing them down. I heard nothing that was labeled or tagged positive reinforcements for their accomplishments.

We have to ask – why did the college give this instructor so much control and why didn’t they ‘rein her in’ when she demonstrated harsh and ‘direct’ dialogues with people vulnerable to such bullying and attending school to seek life quality improvements rather than punishments. They had the power over the teacher but did nothing to stop her. So you have to ask – who was in control? Because they let her get away with her sadistic mannerisms, she created pawns in her hand rather than students wanting to learn and not be afraid of failure or admonishment for falling short of the teacher’s expectations.

This instructor was a manipulator. She manipulated these kids for her own ego and narcissistic needs. She might have appeared normal but she needs help badly. Her obsessive control shows in her mannerism of teaching class. Perhaps she sees her students as she sees these horses, mindless and in need of strict control.

I think she scared the hell out of everybody, perhaps even her own supervisors. Her insecurity lashed out on her students who were very young, impressionable and eager to please adults especially their teachers. They followed her will and she took advantage of that relationship.

To shame someone that they aren’t good enough hurts deeply and creates an abyss of hope and promise that success is even possible. It cuts so deep, they feel through the manipulation, torture and constant abuse, they aren’t worth the time, effort or even the attention to be someone that is able to learn anything, whether it be a horse or another vocation.

This is absolutely an abuse of authority. I can’t even begin to rationalize what would drive a teacher to abuse a student like this except to believe perhaps, at one time in her life, she was abused and now has the authority to ‘get even’ with others.

In some ways, she deserves sympathy for the pathetic person she is or has become. Her future as a teacher in now in deep doubt as the college will have to decide to retain her or fire her. This relationship by the instructor and her students was most unnecessarily rude in nature and unmannerly as an employee or educator. The college was left with no other choice to defend her actions because to fire her, would be an admission of guilt that they failed to act to protect the students and that’s a gross violation of trust and integrity for educators.

Let me list the factors of shaming this student to her death – she was likely a very bright girl and threatened the teacher’s own intelligence or control of their conversations. This caused resentment and more abuse because the student had the power instead of the teacher.

Since this relationship was based on power and authority rather than intellectual or educational grounds, the teacher wanted to take control and she did by being direct and harsh and at times, intimidating and cruel.

Tantrums in the classroom are very disruptive and the student usually gets the blame for any interruptions due to the manipulation factor. I am certain that this teacher never attempted to fix any flaws but rather, focused on flaws and shamed her by bullying her in front of her classmates or when isolated.

She not only shamed her to death, she scared her to death. She knew the student needed her approval to successfully finish the college course and move on. When the teacher took control and exerted her power over her, she threatened the student with failure and that’s a no win position for the student.

This entire episode is about abuse and control. Sad it had to end like this.  However, Wendy Halloran did a fantastic job revealing the background factors that gave me insight on this instructor. I might be wrong on some of my comments but overall, this teach was unfit and unqualified to teach our young people in a structured and what was supposed to be an educational environment. 

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Spontaneous and Solicited Boredom inside prisons

Spontaneous and Solicited Boredom inside a Prison

 

Without getting into the morality or veracity of how prisons are being run or operated and whether or not they are within our legitimately statutory or constitutional guidelines in reference to human rights and confinement conditions decreed by the courts, it has been widely expressed that under the dehumanizing conditions of prison life, it is reasonable to say that the state of boredom has come to pervade the experience of everyday life inside the penitentiary.

This collective boredom can be the trigger mechanism to spawn not only moments of illicit excitement (as prisons are schools of enhanced criminality as well as a house of repentance) but larger arenas of short-lived crimes committed against boredom itself, but a stimulus for a larger flow or migration of political and cultural rebellion spread out over time sentenced and served.

Thus it is safe to describe this collection of boredom inside a large jail or prison as an institutionalized form of boredom due to ambient beats or tones in relationship to its various sets of rules and cultural behaviors in various levels of societal expectations or innovations.

Every penal system has a brand or culture of its own and fosters daily under the pressure of mental stress, intellectual excitement (thrill seekers or adrenalin junkies) and therefore offers a rebellion of its own at times. Hence, a collective or institutional boredom is an overall form of a human(s) engagement(s) with time, space, rules, criminality and other factors explored to determine what prisoners do when they get bored.

Like out in the streets, institutional boredom can be destructive in nature and needs to be addressed to avoid social disruptions or criminal activities from taking over their efforts to do their time constructively and with some acceptable form of rehabilitative efforts to come out a reformed person.

Anyone who denies that boredom does not impact criminality, violence, property destruction, disturbances or other negative environmental dynamics has not studied the mannerism of those incarcerated for a lengthy amount of time and how they do their time. take into consideration a few other factors to add to the triggers of boredom and you have yourself a collective cause that are the basic foundation of crimes, riots, looting and destruction of property when activated under another reason or pretense.

Boredom can be quickly accelerated into a vested ‘interest’ to participate and cause or create a larger scene. One can invest in the act of incitement by merely shouting encouragement or actually act out with their own activities or engagements demonstrating approval, cohesion and rebellion.

This is how the boredom is quickly and spontaneously spread into an organized or collective effort to exhibit a sense of approval, whatever the cause, grievance or complaint might be at the time of such demonstrations. Even tacit approval, by silence, can bring a collective effort to its peak or climax if the tone and energy afforded and applied matches the wills of those participating.

Encouragement can come in many forms – (chants) talk along, mocking or repeating, laughing and yelling or some other form of human engagement that displays some sort of anthem or affirmation of something e.g. allegiance through a show of cohesiveness and heavy taunting. This is especially true in gangs.

Realistically, through some common or conflicting gang audiences, this method of communicating, may in fact be translated into lyrics, or [rap] songs that represent their moods or ideologies with a pretense or disguise these lyrics are just that, songs, but in reality their mantra for behaviors and claiming or expressing their membership of the gang.

Such collective boredom strategies may be a form of organizing or dis-organizing illicit or unauthorized gatherings while reinstating their presence and body of force and power / control on those present at the time including correctional staff. In a prison setting this could be done even when every individual is locked up in a single cell as they collectively chant or taunt those who oppose them. Thus the freedom to join in these impulses is solicited and inviting a common cause or resistance.

Moreover, such activists or instigators are in reality a symptomatic example of other problems that should not be ignored in everyday existence. Remember that everything in human life exists within the boundaries of buying and selling; a web of exploitative and demeaning activities and behaviors that undermine the security and order of any facility.

By their mere example of behavior, they could trigger or force a demonstration of resistance that threatens the everyday routine of any large jail or prison and if not picked up, could cause apocalyptic consequences. Most people would heed such a warning and alert those in charge something is happening and the place is filled with a banner of subversive activities. A ghost of things to come that is ever present in every penal institution everywhere.

This cultural undercurrent must be observed or detected to avoid a more aggressively animated unexpected uprising. The disregarding of such behaviors allows tension and other stressors to percolate and if it remains unaddressed, it serves as a fuel by creating an incendiary cultural dogma of the group’s desired wishes or demands to be heard or mediated with in order to resolve any undetermined grievances before the place blows up.   

One cannot deny that whenever such howling incantations of these type of activities are present, there is in fact a critique that turns out or reveals that boredom or too much leisure time was directly involved in such demonstrations. Hopefully, nobody will say that boredoms are minor details and address such conditions in a timely manner with secondary points of interest to discuss or mediate for resolution.

Boredom is the tool of insurgents. The politics of boredom straddle criminality and excitement. Boredom may be displayed as graffiti, vandalism, fights, theft, sexual assaults and much more. With the agenda of mass incarceration and overpopulated jails and prisons, boredom has emerged as some sort of motive for aggression and a conceptual building block for activism and critique of the environment. This by itself allows boredom to expand into broader social and cultural condition at the whim of the activists or demonstrators.

Keep in mind, revolutions are real or imagined creations for the possibilities to change social and political justice. There is a strong relationship between boredom, revolutions or disruptions and criminality. Having the condition of boredom multiplies exponentially the reasons for incitement, excitement and is implicit in institutionalized worlds like prisons.

Merely based on penitentiary related customs and practices, there is a precarious tradition to destroy or riot whenever conditions are unsatisfactory or when faced with any other pragmatic situation that may need attention.  

Boredom as defined inside a large jail or prison could encompass features such as bureaucratic rationalization, too much efficiency, excessive routinization, excessive or insufficient regulation, too much standardization and others familiar to stifle the human engagement to be productive or creative whenever incarcerated for a long period of time.

The more repetitive the environment is, the more boredom is created and thus the population senses no progress and becomes idle and frustrated. In plain English – whenever overcome by the dulling sameness of the day, the more boredom is created.

Here at last is the paradox of boredom and institutionalization – the agency wants regulation and consistency in their programs – the population suffers on sameness and dullness. Thus the challenge is to emerge with some human measures of worth, values and address the quirks of individualities and create some incentive to provide a personal innovation to combat boredom.

Taking into consideration that obedience to rules and regulation is rationalized as success, this process takes away the independence of minds and creates problems for the rulebooks due to misbehaviors and other resistance motives. Therefore, an unusual rise or growth in disciplinary or misconduct is a red flag for potential disruptions within the population.

Success should be measured in defusing or recover a sustainable balance for moderation and at the same time, find things to do in everyday life to counter-point the dullness and make the individual existence meaningful with some kind of approved democratic participation in the construction of their everyday life.

The administration should find a balance between legitimate mental exertions and physical or labor interests inside their facilities eliminating or reducing negative forces that exert hate or discernment, personal discouragement and irrational thinking and emotional disruptions which do not escape and escalate with due time.

Today, public schools serve as rehearsal halls for mental hospitals and jails/prisons emerge as training centers for boredom through the enforcement of a tedium agenda. To repeat this trajectory from schools to prisons is a dangerous path to continue on as it has an emotional buildup that is rarely addressed through constructive means or programs.

Children today are being programmed and orientated into a state of disciplined efficiency. Working assembly lines or fast food franchises are mass-producing instruments of boredom and when re-instituted inside a jail or prison, the process is continued without any freedom for individuality to appear and invigorate the mind and body onto a new path.

One can begin to see how the mechanics of conformity create a schedule of dullness and sameness to a large degree in the everyday life and more so inside a prison. This would be a positive attribute if the population was to remain under some level of mind control or a rigid trained insightful means of behaving but the fact is, in order to prepare them for release, we have to find ways to cut out the rigidities of their sameness and create individuals who may think and behave to conform to society’s rules which are much more liberal and filled with more freedoms than inside the joint.

As an alternative, we must seek an open circle of control rather than the closed circle they [prisoners] have been orientated under and conformed to strict rules while incarcerated. This could be addressed through custody levels as the lower custody levels allow more individuality than the higher more rigid custody levels.

Research shows that boredom creates alienation, estrangement of relationships etc. as their minds are not adequately occupied. It would appear that if there was some change infused into the everyday life the monotony is reduced, and relief is found making it more bearable and creative that may even include some excitement for the lack of a better word.

Delving into the emotional aspect of boredom, we find despair as one fatalistic element as well as resistance. This would be exasperated for those who are mentally ill and contemplate suicide. One can create radicalism through boredom as those who resist boredom seek alternatives that are either constructive or destructive in nature.

Sabotage is another aspect of boredom. The idea to interrupt the normal or sameness experienced daily becomes a challenge to disrupt to interrupt life’s mind-numbing repetition. Researchers argue that boredom is indeed a counter-revolutionary device meaning it might mean a fight against the dehumanizing process of standardization.

The advantage of some traditionally situated individuals who serve in the armed forces is the fact that they may be sparked or stimulated by the chance of war, deployment, combat or anything else that differs from everyday life. Thus life is calculated by situations that produce risks and uncertainties.

Love Yourself First - Fake people, fake world

Real World, Fake People – Talking to the Mirror

Desperate times call for desperate actions or so we are told. So many are so desperate to be liked or socially accepted, they engage in counterfeit behaviors and personalities to become more about them then themselves. Once involved in this bogus promise to be someone else, you lose all your social safety nets and expose yourself to sorrow and pain at a dime’s notice. In other words, you become a controlled puppet of false expectations.

So you become a lying hypocrite begging for more attention and self-importance as you dwell into the jungle of delusional manipulators who have nothing in common with you except your ego. Day after day, you promise yourself to maintain the unjustified status of your falsehood and fakery to please yourself and ignoring the facts around you that you are a lie to everybody around you.

You believe they love you and accept you for who you are when in fact, you have lied about everything that you pretended to be. As you seek unflinching support around you, your social circle narrows down to a few who call you a friend but somehow, you are something or someone they need in their fake lives as they leech off others fakery to justify their own.

Some seek the help of anti-depressants and others go to therapy to deal with their problems but in the end, the only solution left on the table is to get away from the garbled rants and raves of those you associate with daily and stop the needless spending of those luxuries that are not the necessities you need in life to be happy.

Through the medication or fake relationships, your ego is satisfied they love you for who you are and that they are with you because you told them what they wanted to hear as in reality, nothing genuine has been said or done. Finding yourself deeper in vanity’s debt, you become aware that this debt can never be paid off, which in essence is the fall of your own existence as a person.

A real person, not someone on a forged expedition in life, and who has a brain, would have to wonder why anyone would ever support such a facile rant or rave to be so ignorant of what is happening. Living with false flags all around them, it becomes harder to recognize the truth as time goes on and somehow, they never learn to pull themselves out of this charade of life.

To call a fake person a dim-wit would be in entirety, an understatement as they left an undeniable trail of fraudulent friends along the way to the realization of who they really are. But just as scary as it is, the bizarre re-entry into the real world when your mind adapts to common sense and allows you to see life as it really exists and brings your feelings and emotions back to where they belonged all the time.

This re-entry shouldn’t be much of a surprise to those who really know you well enough to see how you have changed and now back to where you belong. The sudden emergence of intelligence and sound thoughts enlighten hope that from now on, you will tell people exactly what you want them to hear and not what they want to hear.

Throwing caution to the wind, you have seen the dark side of this journey to the other side where life is nothing but phony and surrounded by die-hard supporters of such behaviors. No longer a great believer in the art of deception you no longer support the chicanery that has mired you for so long in a lost world that never offered you any hope or success of happiness. After surviving your stint in hell, you now feel the genuine concern for other people and their feelings.

Your mind, no longer out to lunch, has learned you possess a verifiable level of competence to be real and sincere in a world that is filled with lies and hypocrisy. You have avoided an inevitable catastrophe to occur as you now live a life that is no longer a lie and the lives of those around you are now recognized to be real as well as a match in made in heaven. This is how the world is, this is how your future unfolds as you stand before the elongated mirror and say to yourself, “mirror mirror, on the wall, who am I, really” and sigh with relief the answer stands right before you.

Stalked by demons - Guarded by Angels

There was a time in my life when I had doubts about God and His Angels were protecting me and offering me their commitment to be my guardians during my troublesome journeys. I had chosen paths that needed extra hands to ensure that I would not be trapped or struck by any evil Demons or stones. I was only 19 and I feared the imminent death that had been promised me by my call to duty as a young person never engaged in anything violent or combat before and I had to learn how to fight even better than before.

For a number of times, I feared the shadow of death as I felt it following me closely and never leaving my side; I could feel the cold and numbness in my hands, my head as it never eased my mind and while I slept, I kept one eye open just in case a Demon had found its way past the Angel by my side.

I questioned my faithfulness; I questioned my heart as the fear tore at me from the inside. I learned to pray on my knees as I asked for blessings of life to keep me going for the following year. A year of hell, no chance I would get a reprieve from the war and pain and sorrow that was threatening to take away my tomorrow. But time gave me hope that I would learn to accept my fate and destiny as God had designed his plan for me and slowly I felt like I was sitting next to a guardian Angel. A comrade in hell who knew me well inside and out, wet or dry, in light and darkness – this Angel stood by me unconditionally.

As the war progressed, the heated battle became worse and darker for me as time took away my emotions and chilled my heart putting out the fire that was my passion of life inside of me. No chance of getting out of my promise or oath of allegiance to carry on the good fight, I dwelled in darkness more than in the light, even with my guardian Angel by my side.

So as I felt the Demons tugging at my heart and soul, I heard the warning signs of God’s power through His Angel who never left my side. When I stood on a narrow ledge, it would hover above me like a shield and when I was wading through the water, it followed me relentlessly no matter how deep it was or how wide we had to travel.

Tired or mentally fatigued to the point of sheer exhaustion, my Angel carried me along until it was time to stop and regroup or turn in for the evening. Closing both eyes tightly, I knew I was covered by His Angel and not scared to rest and do it all over again tomorrow. The lightning in the sky, the thunder of the mass dropped B52 bombs dropping from the air and shaking the ground with deafening explosions afar coming nearer and nearer as the day or night progressed. Never a moment to reap any real deep sleep, my relationship with God grew stronger as His Angel became bolder and carried me safely or protected me from the Demons around me.

Not once did I reach the other side; not once was I tempted to travel the road of darkness as my Angel guided my heart and soul to the light and kept me going towards the end of the valley of death where I no longer feared any evil. If I walked down the wrong path, I often drifted in thought and a force would grab me to get my attention. Sometimes, my Angel carried me to lighten my feet and other times it just found a safe and dry place for me to rest my head under the monsoon rains of the past.

In the end, my tour was over, me and my Angel went home and never looked back to those days in hell and despair. If it wasn’t for my Angel, I would have thought about abandoning God and run away from the spirits that I knew could save me but with the Demons fought off by my Angel, my life turned out right and now I see that it was my Lord and Savior who provided me the protection of a guardian Angel.