Lawmakers set to grill Arizona prison officials about inmate safety

PHOENIX — With a legislative hearing on inmate deaths looming, Arizona corrections officials are now touting the things they’ve already done to improve safety and reduce violence in state prisons.

The agency’s 9,000 corrections officers and staff “remain dedicated to their duties of public safety and rehabilitation,’’ Ryan Thornell, director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, said in a news release Monday morning. It goes on to list a host of changes, including the deployment in May of body cameras, higher pay for officers in higher-risk assignments and more workforce training opportunities for inmates.

And the release even comes with prepared statements from others praising Thornell, the person picked by Gov. Katie Hobbs to head the agency.

But it remains to be seen whether that will blunt any of the questions that state legislators who are members of the Joint Student Committee on Correctional Practices and Facility Safety are expected to ask Tuesday morning at a hearing at the Capitol.

A big question that remains: How was an inmate with a violent history in a position to kill three other inmates in April at the state prison complex in Tucson?

A spokesman for the department declined to comment when asked whether the decision to issue Monday’s news release was in any way linked to Tuesday’s already scheduled hearing.

While it will be Thornell on the hot seat on Tuesday — Republicans Sen. Kevin Payne of Peoria and Rep. Quang Nguyen of Prescott Valley who chair the panel have asked him to appear — committee members said this will be the first of a series of hearings.

In announcing the panel, they said they want to hear from former staff, subject-matter experts and “other stakeholders,’’ particularly on the question of “whether existing protocols adequately protect both staff and inmates — particularly in cases involving high-risk offenders.’’

But there’s something else that lawmakers want to consider to see if it plays a role in prison violence.

“A primary focus will be the growing number of custody overrides, including the reassignment of maximum-custody inmates into lower-security facilities despite documented violent histories or known threats,’’ according to the announcement of Tuesday’s meeting.

That may have been a factor in the incident where Ricky Wassenaar is accused of killing the other three inmates.

ABC-15 reports that Carlos Garcia, who heads the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association, compared Wassenaar to Hannibal Lecter, saying “he should have been locked down since 2004,’’ the year he took hostages during a failed escape attempt.

Garcia said Wassenaar was on an “override,’’ with the station saying that records showed that his classification had been reduced from “maximum security’’ to “close custody.’’

The agency’s own documents say those classified as maximum are the highest risk to public and staff and required housing in a single-cell setting. They have limited work opportunities within a secure permitted, require frequent monitoring and “require escorted movement in full restraints within the institution.’’

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Those in close custody also represent a high risk and require “controlled movement within the institution.’’

And Wassenaar has some history.

He already was serving a 28-year sentence at the state prison at Buckeye in 2004 when he and another inmate attempted an escape. They took hostages but, unable to get out of the facilities, holed up until they surrendered 15 days later in what became the longest prison-hostage situation in U.S. history.

During that time, a female guard was raped.

In that incident he was charged with and eventually convicted of kidnapping, assault, rape, escape and promoting prison contraband and sentenced to 16 life sentences — the sentences he was serving at the time of the triple-killing.

In a comment after the Tucson incident, Thornell called the attack “a senseless act by one person who appeared to be solely focused on seeking to harm these specific individuals without any prior warning.’’

Monday’s news release from the department, however, makes no mention of the issue of custody overrides. Instead it deals with other changes being made or considered.

One of those is what the agency is calling a Violence Reduction Workgroup composed of prison staff and community experts to focus on reducing violence and improving prison safety “with an emphasis on finding and implementing feasible and sustainable solutions.’’

The agency also said it is “upgrading infrastructure to bolster security.’’

For example, it says the department has started to issue plastic fans and smaller, lightweight padlocks to inmates “which are less susceptible to manipulation and being utilized as weapons.’’ It also says the agency is “modernizing’’ the processing of inmates mail and, with both closed-circuit TV and body camera video, conducting enhanced surveillance of close-custody units in real time.

On the staffing end, the department is expanding a program that pays officers more for high-risk assignments and increasing the boost from 95 cent an hour to $2, the news release says. There also is improved training of new correctional officers and a “robust’’ recruitment program, the release says.

One issue that eventually may get the attention of the committee has to do with health care in the prison system.

The state has been under federal court scrutiny for years, going back at least to the administration of Doug Ducey, for failing to provide adequate physical and mental care.

U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver concluded in 2022 that care provided is “plainly grossly inadequate’’ and that state officials were acting “with deliberate indifference’’ to the substantial risk of harms to inmates. She has issued an injunction requiring sweeping improvements.

A court-imposed monitor in his most recent report said the department “remains non-compliant’’ with the vast majority of ordered improvements. A court hearing is scheduled on that next month.