Latest news with #AlaskaDepartmentofCorrections
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Anchorage senator proposes expanding the Alaska parole board size, representation and transparency
Goose Creek Correctional Center is seen in fall. (Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Corrections) An Anchorage senator has proposed expanding the Alaska Board of Parole, and widening the range of experiences of its members, citing the board's workload and importance of fairness and accountability in its work. The parole board has granted far fewer people parole from state prisons in recent years. Since 2021, the board granted parole on average 25% of the time, with the other 75% denied or continued, according to a legislative audit last year. According to the ACLU of Alaska, the board has released 79% fewer people and held 75% fewer hearings than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Advocates argue the high rate of denials is contributing to overcrowding and a sense of hopelessness, also contributing to higher rates of suicide. There have been at least 67 deaths in Alaska since 2020, with 17 reported as suicides. Senate Bill 62 expands the board of parole from five to seven members, 'to help address a substantial workload' and 'process parole applications in a fair and accountable manner,' according to a statement by the bill's sponsor, Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage. 'This precipitous decline in successful parole applications has created this climate of hopelessness,' Tobin said in an interview. 'It has created this dynamic where people don't know why they should be involved in treatment, why they should be trying to rehabilitate. And that, to me, is very concerning.' Tobin said she frequently hears from concerned residents with family members who are incarcerated. 'For every person who is behind bars, there are people outside who love them and who are concerned about their health and safety,' she said. Tobin said she wants to expand opportunities for parole, also because as a Christian she believes in redemption. 'Some folks have done terrible, terrible things, but that is not the whole of who they are,' she said. 'There is an ability for them to be redeemed, and I believe that we should offer that path of redemption.' The five-member parole board is appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and reviews applications for parole, which totaled 181 applicants last year. That review process includes whether they've taken part in educational and rehabilitation programs, as well as the person's suitability for release, the nature of their offense, and behavior while incarcerated. The board also takes into consideration statements from any victims or their family members. Parole can be granted for those who are elderly, or with a severe medical diagnosis, with some exceptions for serious crimes. The parole board sets conditions of release like terms for work, housing, and sometimes further behavioral health treatment. The legislation would create selection criteria for the expanded seven-member board, and limit members to two five-year terms. Four of the seats would require certain licenses or expertise: one for a licensed physician, psychologist or psychiatrist; one for a victim of a crime, a family member of a victim, or member of a victim advocacy group; one for someone with expertise in addiction recovery; and one for a member of a federally recognized tribe. The bill would remove the only current specific experience requirement for board membership: that at least one has experience in criminal justice. It would keep a provision that the governor appoint people 'on the basis of their qualifications to make decisions that are compatible with the welfare of the community and of individual offenders' and who are able to consider 'the character and background of offenders and the circumstances under which offenses were committed.' The tribal affiliation requirement is aimed at addressing the disproportionately high number of Alaska Native people incarcerated — the largest ethnic group in state prisons, at 44% in 2024, Tobin said in the sponsor statement that accompanied the bill. The legislation would also require the board of parole to submit an annual report on parole decisions, and reasons for granting or denying parole. Advocates, including with the ACLU, have complained that the current board's decision process for discretionary parole is opaque. A legislative audit last year found 'the board was unable to provide specific reasons why its parole approval rate decreased.' 'It's hard to know if you're going to be a successful applicant for discretionary parole, if you don't know how the board of parole makes their determinations and decisions and why someone might be denied parole,' Tobin said. Tobin questioned Leitoni Tupou, the board chair, directly about some of these issues at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 26. Tupou has worked in Alaska corrections starting in 2000, and was appointed to the board in 2020. He's up for another five-year term. When asked about the decline in numbers of parole applications granted, Tupou rejected the premise of the question. 'Every hearing is an individual hearing,' he said, and noted higher approval rates for drug offenses and property crimes. When asked about demographic data of parolees being removed from the parole board website, Tupou said that data was not required to be public under current law. For medical or geriatric parole, there were no applications granted in 2024, according to state data. When asked about these rates, Tupou said the board is confined to follow current law. 'If the law allows the parole board the discretion to apply the law of mercy, I believe we can do that,' he said. 'So my recommendation is we look at the current law when it comes to medical parole. Because there are times we'd like to release these folks, but our hands are tied. They do not meet the criteria set by the law to allow them to be released.' He cited a recent case of a 94-year-old applicant for parole that the board denied. 'Can you imagine the kind of expenses that we spend to take care of this person?' he said. 'At the same time we had to look at the seriousness of his offense. He committed one of the most heinous crimes. At the same time, what is he going to do? He's 94 years old. But the laws basically tell us he's not qualified. So as lawmakers, I think that is something that needs to be reviewed.' Tupou told the committee more addiction treatment and rehabilitation programs would benefit people who are incarcerated, as there can be waitlists or lack of programs offered at certain facilities. In some cases, he says the parole board 'continues' the application, to allow people time to get off waitlists and into those treatment programs. 'Because it appears to us, the only way we can help these folks is (for them) to participate in some programs,' Tupou said. 'We cannot just let them be released to the community and have the parole officer in the community supervise them, without them being part of some kind of a program. Jobs are great, but programs (like) substance abuse treatment programs, sex offender treatment programs, mental health programs — those are the programs that have to be available for these folks to go to. And looking at the risk of them reoffending, the possibility will be less.' After the hearing, Tobin said it sounds like 'double jeopardy' for the parole board to put so much weight on the original crime, when someone has already been to trial and sentenced. She also noted it costs the state to keep people incarcerated — at a cost of $202 per day — plus medical care, at the expense of other programs and services. 'The average cost is $75,000 (per person) per year,' she said. 'I'm not saying that this is about cost containment and cost savings, but it's all part of the conversation …. As we give money to our Department of Corrections to keep people incarcerated, we are making choices to not invest in other places, like pre-K (education).' Tobin introduced similar legislation last year that failed to move out of committee. She said the bill this year scaled back some requirements for board seats, with feedback from other legislators. Those included requirements like a required seat for someone with a felony conviction that has been dismissed or sentence served, and limiting seats of former correctional employees. The Reentry Coalitions of Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks support the bill, as well as the ACLU of Alaska. Megan Edge, director of an ACLU project focused on prisons said the move to make the parole board process more transparent, and share decision making processes would also help better ensure support services and lower the rates of people reoffending, known as recidivism. 'Why are they recidivating? Because most people that are making parole, they're excited to go home,' she said. 'Did they have a substance use issue? Did they have a mental health issue? Was it a housing problem? Was it an employment issue? And we just need better data to understand why our recidivism rate is where it is at and how we can improve it.' Alaska rate of recidivism – defined as when someone is paroled and then violates the terms of parole or commits a crime again — was almost half, or 47% of discretionary parolees and 67% of mandatory parolees over the last three years. Edge emphasized that more representation on the board of people with technical and career expertise — in behavioral health and rehabilitation in particular — can help improve conditions of release. 'So I think a properly functioning parole board should be looking at an applicant's ability to be successful once they're released, and so when they're not successful, we would all be served better on knowing why people are failing,' she said. 'It'll make our communities safer.' Expanding opportunities for parole helps unite families, she added, and lessens negative impacts on children especially. She said cultivating hope can also improve prison safety and conditions for inmates, and for staff. 'It's sad. You hear the clink on the door, and you realize all these people are locked in there and like, it's an impossible job,' Edge said, who also worked for the Department of Corrections under Gov. Walker's administration. 'So when you take that hope away from inmates, you're making that a more toxic workplace for your staff. So there's benefits for everybody when people have hope.' SB 62 is being heard in the Senate State Affairs Committee with the next public hearing scheduled for Tuesday, April 8. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Yahoo
'Not safe': The decisions and delays that preceded a fatal beating at Anchorage's jail
Mar. 15—The lives of William Farmer and Lawrence Fenumiai ran parallel before merging with deadly consequences at the Anchorage jail in December. Both men were diagnosed with schizophrenia in their 20s, their relatives say. Both families struggled to find help. And both Farmer and Fenumiai ended up in Alaska's correctional system, where people with mental illness make up nearly a quarter of the in-custody population but can't always get the therapeutic support they need. On Dec. 17, less than 24 hours after the men began sharing a cell, Alaska State Troopers say Fenumiai fatally beat Farmer, who died in early January. Now Fenumiai faces first-degree murder charges as both families question the way the Alaska Department of Corrections handled the challenge of housing two people with diagnosed mental health disorders in a crowded jail cell. Why were Farmer and Fenumiai placed in the same cell to begin with? Why was that cell in a transitional intake area rather than the jail's designated mental health unit? And why was Fenumiai still there after a judge dismissed the case against him a week earlier? Farmer's twin sister, Robin, said her brother had been struggling with mental turmoil and hallucinations and couldn't always make choices that were in his own best interests. "I remember thinking, 'Well, at least he's safe,'" she said of his arrest in December. "That's not true. You're not safe in jail either." 'They set him up for failure' The Department of Corrections is conducting an internal investigation that is ongoing, state officials said this week. Such investigations are standard for any death connected to a DOC facility. "We want folks to come into our system and leave our system better, and to have a negative outcome like that, it bothers all of us," said Adam Rutherford, the department's deputy director for health and rehabilitation services. "None of us want to see that type of event occur." Farmer was 36 when he died. He came from an Anchorage family with deep Alaska roots that included a few generations of bush pilots and ownership of a Mat-Su lodge. Police said Farmer had just entered the jail after a string of robberies at several Midtown businesses in late November and early December. He was placed in a cell with two other men. Instead of a bunk, he was provided a plastic "boat" on the floor in a cell designed to hold two people. Fenumiai, a 33-year-old former football standout at Juneau-Douglas High School, was already in the cell when Farmer arrived. He was awaiting release after a judge found him incompetent to stand trial. Fenumiai had entered the correctional system in May when he was arrested in Juneau after an outburst at his family's home. He hit his father in the head, destroyed his iPhone and damaged a cabinet, according to a police report summary included with a criminal complaint. Fenumiai's mother, Simeona Galletes-Fenumiai, said she doesn't understand why their son was in a shared cell when he was held alone in Juneau over concerns he could hurt himself or others. "They set him up for failure," Galletes-Fenumiai said. She said she prayed for Farmer's recovery in the days before he died. An ill-equipped provider The fatal beating is the latest example of the struggle within Alaska's criminal justice system to address the needs of people contending with mental illness in some form. The state's only psychiatric hospital, Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage, has come under fire for years for a lack of beds that keeps mentally ill defendants waiting in jail for evaluations or facing monthslong wait lists for treatment. The state's overall lack of mental-health treatment capacity bleeds into the correctional system, officials say. About 22% of people in the state's jails and prisons "suffer from a severe and persistent mental illness," according to Rutherford, the deputy state corrections director. Corrections officials would rather see many of those people treated by professionals in the community, rather than behind bars in an environment not designed to be therapeutic, he said. "We're the largest behavioral health provider in the state, and we shouldn't be, and we don't want to be," Rutherford said. When December's encounter occurred, Farmer and Fenumiai shared a two-person cell with a third man on an intake area known as Alpha mod. The unit includes 16 double-occupancy cells on the east side of the Anchorage Correctional Complex. Alpha mod is considered a "specialty management" open population housing unit, according to Department of Corrections spokesperson Betsy Holley. The area houses people with mental health or addiction issues that may set them apart from the general population. It's designed for people who may need more support or observation when they enter custody, according to Holley. Nursing staff visit that part of Alpha mod at least three times a day, corrections officials said. Mental health staff visit at least once a day. The mod is not, however, part of the jail's designated mental health unit. Perpetual purgatory Robin Farmer said her brother was a bright person fascinated by aviation and the kind of animal lover who adopted senior dogs at the shelter even though he knew they might not live long. His personality started to change when they were in their 20s, she said. William Farmer found their mother dead when he and his sister were both seniors in high school, Robin Farmer said. It was a week before final exams, a pivotal time in both their lives. She now wonders if the trauma of that time served as some kind of trigger for the mental illness that was coming. The family noticed that William's community was shrinking as it became harder for him to stay engaged, she said. "These symptoms and hallucinations, over time, kept increasing more and more and more," Farmer said. "That kind of ended up leading to him being in and out jail, in and out of API, on and off medication." The family struggled to find treatment, but occasionally found success, she said. During one period in custody, her brother spent three months at API and was moved into transitional housing. "That was something that was really great: to see him get healthier, get happier and just get more back to himself," Robin Farmer said. Several years later, by December, he was back in jail on robbery, theft and assault charges. Police said he stole merchandise from three stores and used or brandished pepper spray before fleeing. Less than 60 seconds The jail cell assault happened very quickly, according to official accounts. The third man in the cell said Farmer was lying on the floor, talking to himself with phrases like "shut up" followed by an anti-gay slur, when Fenumiai came off his top bunk, according to a sworn affidavit filed with murder charges by the Alaska State Troopers. The other cellmate told investigators Fenumiai told Farmer to "shut the f--- up" before he started punching him in the head, according to the affidavit. The smaller man was unconscious in under a minute, troopers wrote. Corrections officers couldn't safely get into the cell to intervene right away, the affidavit said. When they did, Farmer was limp on the floor. He was rushed to Providence Alaska Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. The family didn't get to see Farmer until more than 24 hours after the assault, his sister said. His eyes were blackened, his face was swollen, and he was breathing with help from a ventilator. His feet were handcuffed to the bed even though he was unconscious, she said. Christmas week passed with no change in his status. The hospital classified Farmer's condition as critical. Robin Farmer said the family made the decision to take her brother off the ventilator on Friday, Jan. 3. William Farmer wanted to be an organ donor but too much time lapsed between the ventilator's removal and when his heart stopped beating, his sister said. He didn't die for another three days, nearly three weeks after the attack. "We had to go through the trauma of experiencing the fact that somebody did this to him and killed him but we also had to go through the weight and heaviness of having to choose to let a family member go," Robin Farmer said. "Both of those things are pretty unbearable on their own, let alone compounded on top of each other." She visited daily and stayed in her brother's hospital room until 10 p.m. on Jan. 5. He died early the next morning. Their mother's ashes sat nearby. Sharing a crowded cell Various decisions and delays factored into the paths that put Farmer and Fenumiai together in that cell. After his arrest in May, Fenumiai was housed in a segregation unit at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau, Department of Corrections records show. He was flown to Anchorage in June for assessment and stayed in custody in Southcentral after that. None of the three men sharing that Anchorage cell on Dec. 17 met the criteria for segregation at that time, according to Holley. Asked how any decisions to house Farmer and Fenumiai together were made, corrections officials said they couldn't provide specifics due to confidentiality requirements and safety policies. Generally, decisions about where to house inmates are made by mental health clinicians who assess people in custody and then make recommendations in collaboration with security staff, Holley said. Given the limited number of jail cells and the fact that prisoners in specialty management can't be housed with others, prisoners with similar custody or segregation levels often end up together, she said. "We do try to avoid assigning three prisoners to a cell but occasionally it happens, especially in specialty housing situations," Holley said. Released too late A Juneau judge dismissed Fenumiai's charges in a hearing Dec. 13 but the paperwork ordering his release from jail and transport out of custody didn't get to the right desk for days. Juneau District Court Judge Kirsten Swanson found Fenumiai was not competent to stand trial in the assault case involving his father and dismissed the charges effective Dec. 16, according to a signed order. She wanted Fenumiai released to his family in Juneau instead of in Anchorage where he didn't have a support network, state courts officials say. Such a transport would generally involve at least one escort on a non-commercial flight. While releases like this usually take two or three days, the court system and Department of Public Safety court services officials were still coordinating Fenumiai's transport several days later, according to Alaska Court System spokeswoman Rebecca Koford. Any delays in Fenumiai's release were due to the challenges of arranging transport, Koford said. The original release order was emailed on Dec. 13 to the Department of Corrections, she said. The judge canceled the transport order on Dec. 19 — two days after the assault. 'Other people's beloveds' Fenumiai's mother believes the system failed both her son and Farmer. Fenumiai, one of six siblings, was a Juneau high school athlete whose football talents earned him a full ride to Arizona Western College, his mother said. It was while he was away at school that his family realized he had changed, keeping to himself and exhibiting signs of paranoia, according to Galletes-Fenumiai. The changes led to Fenumiai's schizophrenia diagnosis. Fenumiai left college and lived with his family in Juneau, staying in a room they built for him to provide some privacy as well as supervision. The family managed her son's diagnosis by trying to keep him on his medication, providing support, and remaining sensitive to his moods, Galletes-Fenumiai said. When he started getting irritated or ramping up, they would let him be alone until he was ready to rejoin them. Galletes-Fenumiai said during December's competency hearing process, the family was told her son needed treatment. There was a 140-day waitlist to get into API. She and her husband traveled to his home country of Samoa for an important ceremony after the mid-December competency hearing. They had listened in by phone from Juneau. They didn't realize he wasn't released. They were excited he was coming home. Galletes-Fenumiai learned about the December assault from an Anchorage Daily News reporter. She said she is struggling to come to grips with the circumstances that left her son in a position to hurt someone so badly. There's a word in Samoan that means "other people's beloveds," Galletes-Fenumiai said. "These people that work at DOC, in mental health and all that, this is what they have," she said, becoming emotional. "I wish they would just take that thought of other people's beloveds that are in their hands. Because this could have been avoided."
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Family, ACLU sue Alaska Department of Corrections for man's death due to untreated ear infection
Goose Creek Correctional Center is seen in fall. (Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Corrections) The family of Lewis Jordan Jr. and the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska filed a wrongful death lawsuit this week against the Alaska Department of Corrections and several staff. The lawsuit filed on Tuesday charges that antibiotics and medical care for an acute ear infection would have saved the life of the 53-year-old Jordan, while incarcerated in Goose Creek Correctional Center in Wasilla in March 2023. The lawsuit alleges that corrections staff displayed 'deliberate indifference,' repeatedly ignoring Jordan's pleas for medical treatment, leaving him in extreme pain with flu-like systems for several days. His condition progressed into a fatal case of bacterial meningitis — he was hospitalized, in a coma for several weeks, until his family removed him from life support, according to the lawsuit. The family said Jordan was otherwise in good health. A spokesperson with the Department of Corrections declined to comment, and said the state's attorney will respond in court. The lawsuit is filed in federal court by the estate and family members of Jordan, represented by the ACLU of Alaska and Colorado-based attorney Zachary Warren. 'He was a son, a sibling and a cherished member of his family, and he unfortunately got tied up in the criminal legal system,' said Megan Edge, director of the ACLU of Alaska's Prison Project, in an interview Thursday. 'When he was returned to custody, it was for a traffic infraction, and they revoked his parole,' she said. 'And that's such a ridiculous thing to have to die for. His family is absolutely devastated.' The family is seeking justice for his death, including compensatory and punitive damages, as well as raising awareness around systemwide concerns with DOC policies and treatment of inmates, Edge said. Edge emphasized people in prison are at the whim of corrections staff in accessing medical treatment. Although Jordan repeatedly submitted requests to visit the medical unit and receive evaluation and treatment, he was never permitted the opportunity to see a medical provider, according to the lawsuit, which charges staff with a pattern of 'gate-keeping medical care.' 'Oftentimes what we see is this distrust from staff to inmates when incarcerated people ask for help,' Edge said. 'But having an ear infection is so common, it is something that we know how to treat. But incarcerated people don't have power over their medical care, and so they are at the mercy of this massive system.' The lawsuit said other detainees pleaded for him to get care, and were also ignored by staff. For days, he became 'visibly weaker, sicker, and unable to even get out of bed.' When he was found unresponsive in his cell, prison staff 'instead fixated on the unsupported idea that Jordan was experiencing an overdose,' administering Narcan, according to the suit. That caused him not to receive the proper diagnostic treatments in the following hours. DOC staff placed Jordan in shackles and a spit hood, despite being unconscious, according to the lawsuit, and transported him to the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center. 'Absolutely dehumanizing,' Edge said of the DOC practice of using the restraint device on unconscious people. 'Unfortunately, this is something that we see. He is not the only person who has passed (in-custody), and who has been transported to the hospital while they are unconscious and shackled and with a spit hood. It's so inhumane and disturbing to visualize.' Additionally, staff's incorrect identification of an overdose severely delayed proper care at the hospital, the lawsuit charges. The severe progression of meningitis led to medical staff to place him in a medically induced coma, with no recovery. His death was 'entirely preventable,' the lawsuit charges. During the several weeks Jordan was in a coma, he was paroled from DOC, which the lawsuit alleges 'uses this power to shield from scrutiny for deaths that are a result of its inadequate medical care.' 'He was paroled while he was unconscious. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that, because it's so hard for people in the state of Alaska to get parole, and especially after a technical violation, but even more so, like, without applying for it. So, you know, we do have questions there,' Edge said. 'What we would like to see is the department taking responsibility for the death of people, even if they're in a hospital bed, even if they're a month later because they've been on a ventilator for a month, but if they die because of what happened while they were in the care of the Department of Corrections, the Department of Corrections should absolutely be taking responsibility for their death.' The lawsuit cites the deaths in outside hospitals that DOC similarly attributed as not being in-custody deaths, including Jimmie Singree and Angelena McCord in 2023. Since 2022, at least 42 people have died while incarcerated in DOC custody, with at least nine identified as suicides, according to the department. So far this year, there have been two deaths — the most recent was announced on Tuesday as Reginald Eugene Childers, Jr. who was being held pretrial at the Anchorage Correctional Complex. 'Our interest is ultimately reducing deaths in-custody,' Edge said. 'And the only way to be able to problem-solve that, is to have an accurate picture of what actually happened. Where are the gaps in care, where are the issues? And then how can we all work together to solve those? Because, like I said, those are valuable people in our community. They're someone to someone.' Edge emphasized the need for further transparency and likely policy changes around the quality of medical care, particularly detox protocols, as well as changes to allow those with serious medical issues to be paroled. 'We do have those mechanisms, but because of how those are designed, they're very inaccessible to people,' she said. 'So there are people who are very sick, who are trying really hard to come home, but their discretionary parole is denied for arbitrary reasons, or they don't know that they can apply for geriatric or medical parole. So I think, like we do have some of the systems, but they need improvements, and they're totally achievable.' This is the third wrongful death lawsuit filed by the ACLU since 2023. The civil rights group is seeking restitution and damages for the families of James Rider and Mark Cook Jr., who died in pretrial custody, without being convicted of a crime. The Department of Law did not return requests for comment about the status of those lawsuits. 'Many of the people that we have seen die are pretrial defendants who are accused of low-level crimes,' Edge said. 'Alaska does not have the death sentence, but by sending people to our jails and prisons, we're sending them to a really dangerous place where death is totally possible for things that are entirely out of control,' she said. 'Overcrowding, staffing shortages, limited access to medical care, and, like, all of that becomes sort of a dangerous cocktail for people that are stuck there. And they have no ability to advocate for themselves for the conditions that they live in.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
