PHOENIX — Although the Arizona Legislature created a prison oversight office, there’s no money in the state budget allocated to it, according to lawmakers who supported its creation.
Republican Rep. Walt Blackman supported Gov. Katie Hobbs’ signing of Senate Bill 1507 into law on July 1.
The law creates an independent oversight office for the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry that will serve various functions in order to improve the welfare and rehabilitation of incarcerated people.
“The intent was to put funding behind it: $1.5 million to get the doors open,” Blackman told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News on Tuesday. “However, the governor would not sign the budget … with that in the part of the budget.”
Ultimately, lawmakers conceded and Hobbs approved the final budget.
“The plan was to get the policy embedded and then get the money … next session,” Blackman said.
Securing funding for the prison oversight office is essential to avoid costly bureaucratic oversight from the federal government, he added.
“The policy is going to stave off the federal government for a while because they want to come in and take receivership over our prison systems because we have so much issues,” Blackman said. “The policy is to mitigate the issues … so we can’t open the doors, obviously, until we get funding for that.”
How would prison oversight office impact Arizona?
Advocates like Blackman believe having an independent organization acting as a watchdog could help improve Arizona’s prison system.
The purpose of the prison oversight office is to ensure correctional facilities are complying with federal and state laws about the health, safety, welfare and rehabilitation of incarcerated people.
“The intent is to go in and fix our prison systems,” Blackman said. “We are facing multiple lawsuits because of medical reasons in the prisons. We’ve had several deaths in the prison.”
The office would also work as an information hub, investigate complaints and submit annual reports to elected officials.
“This is something that we need. It’s our second largest budget item, just a tad over $2 billion,” Blackman said.
He said the funding is necessary to combat low pay and low retention rates among detention officers.
“As many people in Arizona know, we need to fix this system,” he said. “I’m very disappointed of the outcome because again, it’s just a piece of paper or a policy with no money behind it.”
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