In Anchorage today, state House and Senate Judiciary Committee members listened to recommendations from the authors of a Department of Corrections administrative review.
The independent review, released in November, was conducted at the request of Gov. Bill Walker. It focuses on the failure of state prison policies. A spate of prisoner deaths within Alaska prisons over the past two years spurred the review.
Dean Williams, a special assistant to the governor and one of the review authors, said some DOC policies had not been revised since the 1980s.
“Certainly by what we found, there is a public trust issue here,” Williams says. “We have a ways to go on this.”
Williams said failures of prison policies are system-wide and range from lack of training, or no training at all, for corrections officers to the widespread disparity in interpretation of Title 47 alcohol statutes, which define the parameters for incarceration for alcohol abuse.
Williams’ testimony focused on four cases of inmate deaths which could have been avoided, had prison staff been better trained.
About two years ago, Devon Mosely, a young man who was not charged with a crime but was taken into protective custody on a welfare check, died in a solitary cell after going days without needed medication. Through a series of graphic photos taken from prison video, Williams shows the physical deterioration of Mosely, who died of internal bleeding, without medical attention.
Sen. Lesil McGuire who chaired the hearing, said the legislature will consider an omnibus bill addressing judicial reform, including a comprehensive look at Title 47. She said many people now incarcerated in Alaska prisons have mental health issues.
“It’s been an evolution, it didn’t happen overnight,” McGuire says. “My belief is it is a combination of factors, but certainly the cuts to the community health system have left the mentally ill of Alaska without a home, without a place. At least two of these cases were those who were either had the disease of alcoholism or had a mental illness, and in both cases, neither had been charged with a crime.”
McGuire says at this time there is no indication of a criminal investigation.
“I haven’t seen anything that I have looked at that to me shows and intentional murder. What I think you have is a systematic breakdown. You have lack of training, you have the timing of the training versus when the individual is asked to take the job, you have rules and policies that are arguably not being followed in the best interest of safety.”
She says Devon Mosely’s financee and father of this three children, has requested the legislative package to be named Devon’s Law.
APTI Reporter-Producer Ellen Lockyer started her radio career in the late 1980s, after a stint at bush Alaska weekly newspapers, the Copper Valley Views and the Cordova Times. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Valdez Public Radio station KCHU needed a reporter, and Ellen picked up the microphone.
Since then, she has literally traveled the length of the state, from Attu to Eagle and from Barrow to Juneau, covering Alaska stories on the ground for the AK show, Alaska News Nightly, the Alaska Morning News and for Anchorage public radio station, KSKA
elockyer (at) alaskapublic (dot) org | 907.550.8446 | About Ellen
