The Director “Chuck Ryan " is supposed to be at Lewis Complex, today, for one of his famous dog and pony shows. These are the days when we don't pull anybody out of the control room; we have enough staff to "PRETEND" that everything is running just fine. The truth is that we always run short we always collapse post or we are always getting cross leveled.

Here is the truth, most of all inmate porters have been pulled out the last few days to get the yard ready for the "Director" they were out today before "Day Shift" arrived... To give the appearance that everything is just fine. Well it’s not.

Perryville and other prisons across the state are falling apart. "And you know this"

Here is what Director Chuck Ryan had to say in today’s paper about the Perryville incident.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles/2009/09/22/20090922inmate-death-ON.html

"This is the most significant example of abuse that I'm aware of that an inmate had to endure," Ryan said. "Frankly, that's just unconscionable. That is an absolute failure on the part of the department and its employees."

Maybe, just maybe the inmate could still be alive if we had enough officers. The ratio of 1 officer for every 200 inmates is so far out of balance. Inmates are not getting what they have coming and if you think the Perryville incident is bad, just wait till one of our Officers gets killed. DOC has never been proactive / DOC is reactive. So everybody just wait till someone else dies then DOC will make the adjustments.

Example 1: Perryville, Lady Inmate dies. Result. New drinking fountains / new water jugs / new thermometers / new misters systems in holding areas / new shade cover in holding enclosure/ new air condition enclosures /new policy / new post orders.... this is what we mean by "Reactive" and I’m sure that these new improvements came with a big price tag because it had to get done ASAP. $$$$$

Example 2: We know that we run the units with minimum staff / one officer in a building, running both control rooms. We know that inmates have the ability to pop their own doors, but until some inmate get murder, maybe then and only then will we stop collapsing control rooms.

If there is anything we as a department can learn from the "Perryville" incident is that the DOC needs to be more proactive than reactive.