In a filing Tuesday, the attorneys said a takeover is urgently needed because the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry lacks the leadership to comply with changes ordered by a judge in a 2012 lawsuit over the quality of medical and mental health care for prisoners.
Lawyers for 25,000 people incarcerated in Arizona have asked a judge to take over health care operations in state-run prisons and appoint an official to run them, saying the state is not capable of fixing deep failures in care even though it has been required to do so over the last decade.
Lawyers for prisoners pointed to a recent report from a court-appointed expert who said health care for prisoners “remains poor, has shown little improvement since the start of the Injunction, and continues to place the residents at significant risk of serious harm, including death.”.
In a blistering 2022 verdict, U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver ruled that the state was violating prisoners’ constitutional rights by providing them with inadequate care, knew about the problem for years and refused to correct it.
She also said prison health care deficiencies resulted in preventable deaths and issued an injunction requiring corrections authorities to fix the constitutional violations.
