Hoarding Power - Charles L Ryan

Arizona Corrections ~ Ryan, Hoarding the Power

By Carl R. ToersBijns

 

 

If we were to look into the future and look back how the Arizona prison system grew and floundered under the leadership of Charles L. Ryan you will undoubtedly find a conclusive description of what can be said is a compulsion to hoard power and build a base of power within that resembles a dictatorial and adversarial method of prison management. Unfortunately, he did this for the sake of evil rather than the good for many. Surely this qualifies him to be unprecedented in such accomplishments of power grabbing everything within his reach or span of control.

 

This is happening as the criminal justice system is cycling hundreds and even thousands of prisoners through its prison system without any inquiries or curiosity by elected officials nobody is asking how this agency spends its billion dollar budget.

 

Daily, he seeks ways to set up control within every aspect of the agency’s individual departmental responsibilities that ranges from custodial care to medical and mental healthcare provisions ruled under one man and one rule.

 

In other words, Mr. Ryan makes decisions for every aspect of custodial, medical and mental health care as well as contractual services rendered and prison policies. He is the sole decision maker that writes his Director Executive Orders whether he is qualified to make these decisions or rarely seeking advice from others more qualified in such special areas.

Working with what can be described as an unprecedented amount of money provided by the legislature and the governor, Ryan has managed to set up a power base that spans from controlling and expanding public prison beds, commissaries, food and medical contracts to private prison beds and other profit making schemes. One would think this strategy was done for the best interest of the state but rather the opposite is true.

 

The public has been hoodwinked into thinking their prison system is well and intact but in fact it is dilapidated and in dire need of attention. Nobody has noticed the growth as they feel it is just and unworthy of criticism as well as oversight.

Ryan has hired and re-hired former colleagues and hand-picked friends to control the tight niche circle of power as well as maintaining a silent and firm control on all internal environmental issues with effective damage control at the correctional officers’ expense through unwarranted discipline and compromising their safety.

 

As their staffing patterns dwindle, their bed capacity increased. Double bunking without adding staff is a dangerous practice especially at level 5 units where the propensity of violence and misconduct is the highest.

Mr. Ryan has abandoned all practical and safe correctional practices for the sake of expansion and more prison money allocated to a system that is already demonstrated to be weak in security and public safety. Specific by-products of this management style are more violent offenders, higher death rates, increased suicide risks and continued staff assaults with and without weapons.

 

Correctional best practices are waning as a thing of the past as good security is now rare and vanishing quickly. Today, the prisons are run by those in orange jumpsuits rather than those wearing the badge, the brown khaki shirts and BDU pants.

 

His latest project of expanding maximum custody bed to construct a Special Management III in the Lewis prison complex is the latest example of his expansion plans.  Asking the governor for $50 million dollars to build a complex for Level 5 inmates is hardly necessary if Ryan would allow the prison management team to do what is called the inmate classification process. Meddling with the risk assessment tool, he has altered the entire population by ignoring risks and threats within.

Since day one he took over, he has focused on locking up and locking down prisoners with discretionary powers to hold them at the higher levels for reasons that are based on repetitive misconduct charges that elevates the custody score and increases risk to the general population setting.

 

He has effectively manufactured a higher risk group through administrative means and justifies asking for more Level 5 beds through his own self fulfilling prophecy of increasing detention beds and max custody beds over the last three and a half years.

 

He accomplished this plan by executing a three stage process that first included segregating all severely mentally ill prisoners at a higher custody level mixing them with anti social behavioral prisoners so that the chaos and violence would increase and the justification would show good reasons for such placements thus justifying the means at the end. This method allowed him to classify Arizona prisoners as more violent than ever before.

 

Second he destroyed the inmate employment program and reduced both work hours and wages through an austerity program leaving thousands of inmates idle and without a job to earn their commissary or other costs. In other words, he effectively destroyed the prison economy and created the same conditions that exist in the free world where crime is based on the need or the greed of individuals with a criminal mind. These created an unbalanced and predatory living environment to cope within as it became the “only the strong survive” culture and the weak pay for protection.

 

Lastly he eliminated self help programs and substance abuse studies that effectively created an uncontrolled drug infested prison environment unprecedented in modern penology and Arizona prisons and allows the presence of drugs to maintain the instability to keep the prisoners divided and the staff in danger. This created a drug infested culture that became more violent and more addicted than ever before posing threat to the staff that work there and the public safety.

He has facilitated this growth in drugs through his permissive attitude of allowing prison gangs to exist. He has forsaken good and effective searches to find the drugs and has basically allowed the “inmates to run the asylum.” This reduction in the inmate’s income resulted in more misconduct that included theft, assaults, gang violence, extortion and other criminal behaviors.

 

His goal is simple; infuse more money giving him more power. No matter. The taxpayers are picking up the tab for this most volatile environment as the prison system, although not managing what they already have, keeps growing and becoming more unstable in unbelievable epic proportions statewide.

 

Taxpayers have no idea how these “covert” ideas has fragmented the agency and don’t seem to care how their tax dollars are being spent. In fact, it is safe to say even the legislators haven’t the faintest idea what it actually costs to accommodate Ryan’s plan and the governor isn’t interested in asking either.

 

In the meantime, you pocketbook will continue to write blank checks and receive nothing in return.

At a cost of over one billion dollars, you would think that somebody in Phoenix government would be keeping an eye on how this money is spent and how many lawsuits have been paid out to avoid bringing this horrific prison management situation to the attention of the public.

 

December 11, 2012