New state reports out Thursday list concerns with three of Michigan’s prisons. The Michigan Office of Auditor General reported issues at the Richard A. Handlon, Ionia, and Baraga correctional facilities.
Ionia and Baraga both hold a combination of level five prisoners, which require a high level of security, and lower-level inmates. Handlon just holds lower risk inmates.
The problems observed and level of severity differed between the three, but generally they involved the prisons not always properly inspecting arsenals, keeping inventories of tools, or screening vehicles coming in and out.
The reports also allege that prison guards were falsifying logbooks for cell searches and not taking enough time to fully conduct them.
“The surveillance video footage showed corrections officers conducted 32 (46%) of the searches in less than one minute, raising concerns about the thoroughness of the searches,” the report into the Baraga prison read.
In its preliminary responses, the corrections department agreed with the reports’ findings and promised to do better in the future.
In many cases, the department offered a list of potential reasons for the problems, like cells being empty and guards not being familiar with the task or needing more training.
“While the Department agrees there were issues with tool inventories and documentation, there were no instances of missing tools, or critical incidents stemming from missing tools during the audit period. This was more of a training and paperwork issue,” the department wrote to address other concerns at the Baraga facility.
In a statement provided to the Michigan Public Radio Network, department spokesperson Jenni Riehle said the department is still dedicated to effectively carrying out its “core missions of public safety and preparing people for success.
“The audits show that greater consistency is needed regarding certain custody functions, which the department agrees with and takes very seriously. We are committed to continuous improvement as evident by steps taken before and after the initiation of these audits, such as improving department policies, utilizing interdisciplinary teams to conduct process improvements, and making record investments in staff, technology, and enhancements to facilities to make them safer. The department remains confident that all three facilities will continue to operate effectively and in a way that protects the public,” the written statement from Riehle read.
Representative Bradley Slagh (R-Zeeland) chairs the House sub-committee that helps write the corrections department’s budget. He said there’s going to need to be accountability for the system.
“We're going to have to figure out who those individuals were, and we're going to have to bring some sort of ongoing, either retraining, reassignments, punishment of some sort or another,” Slagh said Thursday.
He said the issue of corrections officers not doing their jobs as often as they should have might go deeper than a need for more training.
“It’s about probably a willful desire to try and either move forward on something else, do something else that they like to do better, whatever. It looks like there's an ongoing problem of the monitoring side of this more than it is of the training side,” Slagh said.
