An open letter to Arizona Lawmakers

What is a Consent Decree?

After working for 25 years in the prison systems of New Mexico and Arizona, as a senior prison administrator, it is with a high probability that Arizona legislators will soon be facing a Federal Court consent decree that will deploy numerous court monitors into their statewide prison operation. It is without any doubt that court-mandated inspectors will begin an independent review of all prison operational systems including the mental health and medical services bureaus as related to the pending consent decree.

What is a Consent Decree? A consent decree is an agreement or legal settlement reached between parties that allow for a dispute to be resolved without liability or an admission of guilt. In the criminal justice system, they can be used to settle a class action suit against a correctional system by a group of inmates and are most often about abridgment of civil rights.

If the Ryan vs. Parsons lawsuit is not met to a satisfactory level, a consent decree is the next order of business by those attorneys representing the inmates. At the moment private prisons are not included in the current lawsuit. The court may or may not order private prisons to be included but regardless of scope in the order, many significant changes will be directed to be done. If included, the costs will multiply exponentially for the taxpayers.

Prison officials and legislators will have to lay out additional costs for these court-appointed monitors, not employed by the state, to review documentation and practices on every specific flaw or deficiency discovered in the Ryan vs. Parsons lawsuit and it will also include all state-related lawsuit settlements to be included in the evaluations and checklists.

This will not only incur a very heavy operational burden on the labor of the state but on the finances of the state budget as well. The state budget is already the largest of the state and will soon grow exponentially to meet federal demands of the state prison administration to come into compliance of the order. This order is a living order, it will change based on findings and does not just address operational or procedural matters, but staffing, physical plant and other logistic improvements including computer use of databases and inmate programs.

The state can expect court monitors to particularly pay close attention to the existing protocols and verify that all documentation required is done in a legitimate verifiable manner.

Correctional officers and employees who work in the statewide prison system will be subject to training and remedial training as findings are disclosed. The same applies to nursing and mental health staff who will be drawn away from their primary care responsibilities and spent most of their time focusing on the legal environment rather than the custodial care standards. That is certainly the case when it comes to consent decrees. These legal injunctions can involve any area of incarceration with a primary focus on standards of delivery services related to mental health and medical health care.

To be sure legislators and taxpayers understand the consequences of a federal court order, they must prepare to carry additional financial and logistical burdens, not in the present budget. The chain of events is both laborious and complex. Attorneys will demand access to many areas of the consent decree with permission of the court to conduct inspections.

Court monitors are appointed by the presiding judge and are usually national experts in the area they will review. Because consent decrees often involve a wide array of processes and functions in a facility, there is usually a team of monitors appointed in a settlement. Sometimes lawyers for the plaintiff will accompany the monitors during the visit.

Monitors periodically survey care delivery to determine that the stipulations of the decree are being met. They will likely review written documentation and take actions such as:

a.    Examine, review and amend Director Instructions, Institutional policies, and procedures, post orders

b.    Recommend Inmate Programs for higher quality inmate improvement activities

c.    Inspect mental and medical records (current and closed)

d.    Inspect and review legal access

e.     Administrative Segregation

f.     PREA assault/ physical and mental abuse records

g.    Review due process of the disciplinary systems and inmate grievances

h.    They will also interview managers and frontline staff about current and past processes.

i.      Inspect living conditions including sanitation, temperature controls, repair orders and other function related to occupational building codes and standards

j.      Visitation and legal visits, phone calls

k.    General inspections of Classification and placements

l.      Food service, nutrition, hydration

m.  Library access (non-legal), mail and recreation / exercise

n.    Not limited to these areas above as any finding can change the course of action to be taken and correct the procedure immediately

Expect frequent unannounced tours of housing and medical units and inmates questioned about current security practices related to their availability to quality improvement activities and health care processes such as how they request to see a health care provider and whether security (custodial) system are user-friendly to such arrangements or appointments.

During tours, officers may be questioned about every aspect of their post assignments including suicide precautions or emergency medical procedures. If suicide or inmate safety is at issue, housing areas may be viewed for structural conditions that could be unsafe. Under a consent decree, expect physical plant changes to be made to comply with the standard or court-ordered expectation.

Once a site visit is completed, monitors report to the court on compliance or improvement toward compliance for the specifics of the consent decree to the judge. This may be in the form of a verbal report but most definitely in writing. Continued compliance will lead to the lifting of judicial oversight.

However, history shows that such lifting of oversight does not occur for many years and often with many additional modification and changes ordered to be covered by the state. It took the State of New Mexico to get out from under the Duran Consent Decree for more than 12 years. Cook County Jail was released from federal oversight after 40 years of monitoring and changes.

The Arizona Department of Corrections will lose all control of local and statewide functions under a consent decree. Simply states, the department is expected to do their job to the best of their ability and abide by court-ordered changes or modifications. Although you will hear a theme that monitors, and administrators are on the same team, they are not. It is a silent competition to either comply or defend with existing practices. This results in a structured procedure that will include but not limit to:

• To review policies and procedures to be sure staff is correctly following them. Changes will be made to address findings.
• Do ensure valid documentation is kept and maintained with good supporting documentation available for submission to the courts.
• Mandate additional or special any staff training that may occur in preparation for a monitor visit.
• Expect staff to honestly answer any questions from a monitor team member.
• Look for documentation consistency and determine if there are falsified or altered documentation. This includes deadlines and other specific policy related standards.

As legislators and gatekeepers to the budget, it is in your best interest to get involved in the litigation process before Arizona is engaged and ordered into a consent decree. The expense, burdens, and liabilities are endless when you submit the entire corrections system to the oversight of a court, judge, and monitors who get paid for finding faults with your systems.

Respectfully,

Carl ToersBijns

Ripples and Smoke on the Water: The Fear of Death

Ripples and Smoke on the Water: The Fear of Death: The fear of death It is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), and is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specifi...

The Fear of Death

The fear of death

It is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), and is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specific fear of death or dying persons and/or things (i.e. others who are dead or dying, not one's own death or dying). To this date, nobody in their right mind would tag me to be an obsessive-compulsive disorder person or OCD as it is commonly called. On the other hand, people who know me well can see that there have been times where I dwelled on the fears of death or experienced a death related anxiety in my life. 

Whether there is a correlation between these two disorders is anyone’s guess but I am sharing mine with you to demonstrate that death does play a significant part in my life as well as your life, whether we like to admit that or not. Death is a reality we rarely prepare for properly and without careful planning or assessments. Some have said that ‘death is the worm at the core’ of every human being using the apple as a metaphor. 

As we are born, we are literally taught to die. Either through cultural means or religious practices, we are taught to prepare for death in many ways depending on your social upbringings as well as your life experiences. These lessons taught to us come in many forms; art, literature, scriptures, etc. thus it can be said that death anxiety is really a positive experience or coping mechanism to prepare yourself for the end days. So when we are born, we are arguably preparing to die.
My life experiences include many facets of death. As a teenager, I experienced death by the unfortunate and dreadful hanging of a good friend in his dad’s garage because he was gay and couldn’t cope with the ridicule and bullying at school. An unforgettable event, it lingered with me forever. Seeing his lifeless body hanging from the rafters was an experience that I could have never prepared myself for thus it was most shocking to me. 

Drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War, I was trained to be a medic and earned my combat medic badge within months of arrival in that country. Seeing men wounded, sometimes fatally and sometimes slightly caused me to think about death even more. The longer I remained in that combat zone, the more death played a part of surviving the chaos and ordeals around me. You could say that it was the fear of death that allowed me to survive. 

Spending more than twenty-five years as a correctional employee, working positions from the basic ground floor of a correctional officer to the top echelon position as a prison administrator, death became a partner for me on a regular basis. Death inside a prison came in three venues, natural death, homicides and suicides. In my experience, death inside a prison was no anomaly and as often as it occurred, I never really got used to it. Faceless, nameless and sometimes, just a forgotten moment, it always came up at the worst moments in a flashback of the experience. 

So to reiterate my position or experience a little, the fear of death is tangible. Although it may not consume all your conscious time on this earth, it does play on your mind at times when you are reminded of the loss of a family member, friend or foe, that death is imminent and a really large or significant part of your life whether you admit that or not. The fear of death is real. Historically, cultures have recorded vast religious or social practices to address the awareness of our own mortality, either consciously or unconsciously. So we experience the form of death either in a tangible or intangible manner throughout our lives. As we grow, our knowledge about death grows. That’s a natural progression we cannot stop or interfere with regardless how hard you try. 

Does death bother me so much I suffer insomnia about the worry of dying? Not hardly but for many, the fear of death lies at the heart of many sleep disorders for someone who has experienced a life changing event e.g. heart attack, cancer, wounded in a war or in a domestic relationship. The list is endless as even normal routines can bring about the worries or fears of death. That is a normal and acceptable fact. 

Do we take extra precautions or security routines to minimize the fear of death? Not really but we do socially or physically adjust and adapt our life’s routines to avoid the heavier risks of death by changing our life styles, social events and hangouts in unfamiliar places. I am certain that the worry of death or the potential to reinforce the fear of death as a cause for mental disorders. 

On the other hand, some people dare the fear of death by doing just the opposite and expose themselves to the risks of death at a higher degree of risk or exposure. Citing daredevil stunts of heights, speed, and or challenging the elements such as altitude and water, gives them a rush of adrenaline that brings them the satisfaction sought in their lives. 

The one fear of death that bothers me the most is the separation anxiety disorder that may develop if I were to lose someone close to me. Without a doubt, the loss of my spouse would tear me apart. No doubt this connection is special to me and isn’t really about the mortality but rather the intimacy and personal relationship that person holds to me. Even without social disorders, or any other anxiety disorders, the thought of separation through the loss of a loved one will definitely drive up my fear of death, not just for myself but for her as well. This is one intrusion of death I cannot control, no matter how hard I try. 

Strangely, it is the fear of death that rules some rituals in our society that actually cause deaths rather than prevent them. It appears that some people can’t handle the obsession of death and become sufferers themselves in behavioral manifestations that can lead to aggressive obsessions fear that they may inadvertently, in an altered state of their mental awareness, take their own life or the life of a loved one. It appears that during this time, the art of self-preservation is lost and one’s demise or the death of another is certain.

In my case, the thoughts of death trigger my defense mechanisms. Tactics that include the suppression of thoughts of death and focusing on life. Death related thoughts can bring a certain degree of vulnerability to oneself and impact levels of self-esteem or other mitigated fears. This kind of self-control is vital to survival.
At this point in my life, death has not paralyzed me but rather, motivated me to be better prepared to die when the time comes. Although I have experienced many ways to avoid death, I can only dodge the inevitable for a limited amount of time as it will either greet me awake or asleep. 

My concluding comments include the fact that death is imminent and likely to happen sooner than later. Despite all the factors involved in dealing with death, there are no significant levels of anxiety or anticipated obsession levels in my train of thoughts about my death but I can’t say that about the death of others.
Specifically, my spouse’s death would devastate me to the point of unreal pain and anxiety. I suppose that that is the fear I am dealing with the most - despite no increase in fear or apparent perception of threat life as we know it to exist goes on until the end of days on our merciless earth.

A single instinct - Survive the flag of hate

This world is scarce with water and air as the ground and hills are becoming barren wastelands

Running out of clean water and air because of some righteous cause by the elites and climate change fanatics who rule the world

Engaged in thermonuclear battles our body’s soul, mind and hearts are poisoned

Our bones have become brittle as we taste the earth that has soured beyond belief

There are no names or faces in this world afire with a weirdly glow

There are no hearts of love or hurt anymore wherever you go

I exist in a world with only hate – oh how stupid it was to go to war

We are killing each other for no reason at all

Around us are people who are half-dead and half-alive, their bones have been poisoned as the world fell into an inferno of hell

Mankind has lost its mind, they have gone rampantly rogue on all that was right as they hopelessly search for their eternal light

Some spirits are broken while others flourish on the will to kill others

Who are we and what have we become? Who is crazier than me? Where am I going and where have I been?

It’s hard to know the truth as it has been erased by those who detested the past and rewrote the books to annihilate their black darkness of hate and anger.

What have they done to my brain? Why is it so dark inside my mind where it matters who I am and where I am going?

I am not like everyone else yet I act just like them to follow my single instinct to survive this madness.

I cannot feel a thing when others touch me and I cannot see those who may be long dead and gone. I cannot run from the past but the past is now the future and it's repeating itself all over again.

I promised myself not to hate and bring the heat that anger brings when you run from the dead and join the half-living.

Haunted by many, I am hunted by those who want to destroy the past and bring into this world a myth of denial and fakery that spoils the brightness of the sun.

Haunted by those I could not protect, I exist in this wasteland created by false promises of a better tomorrow.

I barely exist to realize that I can only fight those who fly the flag of hate.

Today, after all these battles for good versus evil, a man is reduced to a single instinct – Survive

I am the punisher, I am the redeemer as I bring my eternal claim to a reality of war.

It's by my hand that I shall slay and lay those who failed to protect me and let others die.

For those who join me, I say that’s it's coming, my friends, the world is not going to end like this

It’s coming so get ready and use your addiction to survive to win the battles before you.

It’s true, that my soul has been running on empty. It is true that my heart has died so many times, I feel like the half-dead who are around me. Seeking for love as the universal donor of life, I failed to find the ecstasy of life in the thunder and lightning above in the dark black sky

Thunder up! Thunder up! The call to arms has been given many years ago when they tried to take our guns away and failed. We knew there was an order that needed to get rid of our weapons in order for their New Order to become law.

Straying into hostile country, streets and cities, I come prepared for war so that it would be what is best to be – free and alive again