Collateral Damage in Arizona Prisons

Arizona‘s prison system is suffering from collateral damage as it continues to fall into a financial abyss created by poor leadership and wasteful spending since 2009. The writings have been on the walls for many years but everybody in state government has either been looking the other way or failing to read the signs. That is with the exception of Chad Campbell, a leading Democrat lawmaker who recognized this failing performance by our prison agency leader and director, Charles L. Ryan and therefore calling for his resignation on Tuesday, July 23, 2013

State legislators, the governor and the public should not be surprised at this announcement to remove Director Ryan. It has been long coming and if your look back to the infamous Kingman prison escape, I have been calling for his resignation from that moment as he has done nothing to fix our state’s public safety issues and manage our prisons in a sound and responsible manner while bolstering the private prison industry inside our state. Today the state suffers severely from collateral damage and changes must be made immediately.

Collateral damage is politically harmful in many ways. First and most it implies urgent and serious ethical implications of not doing your job as you had sworn to do when you take the oath of office. Second it is harmful to innocents and this is a most coincidental side effect that can run a course of destruction. It basically is a statement of not doing your job with due care and commitment.

Collateral damage consists of at least four categories of failures with a doctrine that shows negligence, oblivious to the truth, malevolently knowing what wrong and reckless behavior is as you ignore these warning signs. Since taking office, the director has created an order of chaos that is not morally permissible under the rule of law and moral standards.

He has implemented a personal doctrine that has had a double effect. The first being a negative and wasteful prison system failing to perform up to legal and moral expectations as a government service and the second is the increase reliance and use of private corporate prison contractors to fill in the voids of his failing prison policies and send unlimited state funding into a hybrid governance doctrine that is without scrutiny or reviews.

One could argue that this double doctrine should be permissible but the loss of human lives, the destruction of internal personnel procedures and performance / disciplinary structures, the excessive litigation related to medical and other essential services as well as the higher costs associated with such inefficient operational methods are not feasible at a time of responsible fiscal constraints and higher taxes to run government. This is especially true when other states have demonstrated lesser spending with better prison management alternatives than Arizona has and this is highly noticeable at the budget hearings in Phoenix.

The question is whether this call for his resignation is legitimate or politically motivated. It is my trust if Governor Brewer would consciously and deliberately review his record of performance she would agree it is time for change in leadership.

Good change can bring Arizona prisons back into the spending commitments of lawmakers and the return of rule of law back to those relatives that rely on ethical decision making to keep their incarcerated relatives safe from excessive suffering, physical and mentally incurred harm and a high risk of accidental or natural caused deaths that includes suicides that rank as some of the highest in the country. After all is said and done, our leaders must recognize that collateral damage is in no way permissible and tolerable in good government practices.