Prison review by federal agency pushed

Top Democratic leader wants ‘truly independent’ look at Tenn. system

NASHVILLE— State House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart on Monday called for a “truly independent,” outside review of Tennessee’s prison problems by the National Institute of Corrections, as opposed to what he called the “routine, preplanned” review by the American Correctional Association announced last week by the state’s prisons chief.

Stewart also called for reestablishment of the legislature’s Corrections Oversight Committee, which Republicans abolished in 2011 after they took control of the General Assembly. House GOP Leader Gerald McCormick of Chattanooga has said that action four years ago was “probably a mistake.”

Stewart, D-Nashville, suggested that the review of the state prison system to be conducted by the ACA won’t truly be a full-fledged, independent investigation. The ACA is composed of prison officials from across the country and is the accreditation agency for prisons and correctional agencies like the Tennessee Department of Correction, which is fully ACA accredited.

The National Institute of Corrections is an agency of the U.S. Justice Department. It provides technical assistance to prison systems upon written request by the state correction commissioner.

Tennessee Correction Commissioner Derrick Schofield announced Thursday that he has asked the ACA to look into issues of violence and understaffing that have surfaced over the last month, as an expansion of the routine audit for reaccreditation that the ACA had already planned.

“I think the best thing the commissioner could do is invite the NIC in to do a truly independent audit.”

Mike Stewart, State House Democratic Caucus Chairman

But Stewart presented internal documents and ACA material indicating that its audits are preannounced and that management at each prison is given time to prepare for the auditors’ visits.

Stewart also distributed documents from the Correctional Accreditation Manager’s Association, an affiliate of the ACA that helps prison officials prepare for ACA accreditation visits. The documents instruct prison managers on what to do for visiting ACA auditors, down to the kinds of hotels and motels to house them, the kinds of vehicles to transport them in and that if gifts are given, to keep them under $25 “and easily carried on a plane.”

“Everything we see about the organization suggests that it is essentially working hand in hand with our correctional management,” Stewart said. “That may serve some purposes, but it disqualifies it as the organization that should be conducting this particular independent review.

“I think the best thing the commissioner could do is invite the NIC in to do a truly independent audit. We don’t have the corrections oversight committee, so unfortunately we don’t have a team of legislative experts that have spent years learning about our prisons like we used to. Let’s get this independent body in here and have them conduct an investigation. Presumably, if a lot of what we’re hearing from the department is correct, then the department will be vindicated. They should have no reason to fear a truly independent investigation.”

Stewart, the secondranking Democrat in the House, called statistics released by the Department of Correction indicating that violence inside the prisons is down “a shell game” because the agency reclassified assaults.

“We’ve been hearing assaults are down. But as assaults went down, related provocations went up, so its pretty obvious that what you’ve got is a reclassification — not a true statistic that shows greater safety,” he said.