Senators, ACLU frustrated with lack of progress in state’s prisons – Lincoln Journal Star

The latest incident at the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center in Lincoln underscores the need for fixing a prison system that seems to keep sputtering under its current leadership, some senators and observers outside of state government say.

They had already been questioning why progress of Nebraska's crowded prisons seems so elusive. Friday night's disturbance at the Lincoln prison, which included a fire and assaults on three staff members in a unit that houses violent and sometimes aggressive inmates, brought more concerns, especially in light of threatened lawsuits by ACLU of Nebraska because of crowding and conditions for inmates.

"There has to be progress. We have to see progress," said Omaha Sen. Bob Krist, who hasserved on two corrections investigative committees the Judiciary Committee and the Justice Reinvestment Oversight Committee.

Taylor Gage, spokesman for Gov. Pete Ricketts, said Saturday the department is continuing to make steady progress in a number of areas.

ACLU of Nebraska plans an announcement as early as next week related to its promised civil rights case, Director Danielle Conrad said Saturday.

"If state officials continue to fail to act and will not lead, we will," Conrad said.

"We are saddened by the continuing violence and destruction in Nebraska's crisis-riddled and severely overcrowded prisons," she said. "In the final analysis, these disturbances are due to a failure in leadership by state officials."

The organization renewed its call for Ricketts to exercise the authority he presently has to declare an emergency, to put public safety first and to bring the appropriate people together to develop solutions.

"The time is now," she said.

Gage noted Friday's incident was resolved quickly and without significant injury.

Krist said Saturday the department's lack of control and safety in the prisons are not helping the state avoid action by the Department of Justice and the ACLU. There now have been three incidents in two years of inmates taking control of housing units for hours. In two of those, a total of four inmates were killed. Last year, an escape from the Lincoln Correctional Center endangered public safety for days.

It may be time, he said, to attempt to suspend the rules and reinstate the Department of Corrections special investigative committee.

"There's some tough questions that need to be asked and there's accountability that needs to be assigned," he said.

The excuse from Ricketts and Corrections Director Scott Frakes seems to be that these inmates are bad people, he said.

"We get that," Krist said. "But what can we do and who's accountable for making sure these bad people don't do harm to our corrections officers?"

Last year, the number of assaults on staff causing injuries increased 57 percent over the previous year, and 141 percent over two years, according to a report by Inspector General for Corrections Doug Koebernick.

The number of inmate assaults on staff requiring urgent medical attention, such as stitches, broken bones, concussion or partial or full loss of consciousness reached 224 in 2016, compared with 143 in 2015 and 93 in 2014. Assaults without serious injuries also increased over those two years.

In August, nine staff members at the Lincoln Correctional Center were assaulted at one time. Koebernick said the prison was understaffed at the time, compared to recent recommendations from a staffing analysis.

Gage said the call for another oversight committee is coming from the same senators who proposed last week to cut the agency's budget request funding key reform.

Ricketts and Frakes had requested additional money for staffing in the 2017-19 budget that is being wrapped up now by the Appropriations Committee and will be debated by the full Legislature in the coming weeks. Ricketts asked for about 96 new protective-services positions at a cost of about $11 million. Last week, the Appropriations Committee reduced that number after looking at a vacancy report for the department that showed 148 unfilled positions, said Lincoln Sen. Kate Bolz.

"In a tough budget year, it's not logical to fund positions that are not likely to be filled," Bolz said.

The committee decided it was willing to fund 50 of those positions over the two years at a cost of $4.5 million.

Frakes said at a news conference the next day he was disturbed by the reduction, because senators have been asking for two years for the department to tell the Legislature what it needed, and when it did, senators reduced what was requested.

The governor encourages the Legislature to fully fund the corrections budget, Gage said.

The Legislature's Justice Reinvestment Oversight Committee sent a letter to the Appropriations Committee last week questioning the department's request for additional staff in light of the high vacancies. The existing positions should be filled, the oversight committee said, before funding any more. It recommended diverting some of the department's appropriation to other critical needs such as merit pay to help retain current employees.

Frakes told the Judiciary Committee at a recent hearing that staff could benefit from increased pay. Some received pay increases last year.

At that hearing, Sen. Ernie Chambers told Frakes that when Frakes took over in 2014 he walked into a different set of circumstances in the department than he thought existed when he agreed to take the job.

That was true, Frakes told him, in terms of employment issues and the depth of dysfunction within his agency.

"If you could pay more money, do you think you could attract more people?" Chambers asked him.

"Potentially so," Frakes told him.

Frakes said the department has a reasonable and competitive starting wage.

The Legislature has danced for four years with the Department of Corrections and heard all the excuses and that"things will be better on the other side of the rainbow," Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus said at the hearing.

Still, he had great empathy for Frakes, he said.

"I think he has skills. Lots of skills. I think he has a great background. I think when he came to Nebraska he hit a set of circumstances that makes anybody who has any empathy at all for him ask, "Why does he continue on here?'" Schumacher said.

Frakes is like a mechanic, who knows perfectly well what's wrong with the engine, and could fix it, but is told he cannot have a tool box, Schumacher said.

The senator said there's probably only one cure for this problem.

"And that's going to come by way of a federal court order," he said.

That experience will be miserable, he said, and should be avoided if at all possible.

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Senators, ACLU frustrated with lack of progress in state's prisons - Lincoln Journal Star