Judge may decide if Arizona law requiring private prison health care is a problem
A federal judge on Friday suggested she may consider overriding an Arizona law requiring the privatization of prison health care so that prisoners can start receiving the level of care required by the U.S. Constitution.
In April, U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver issued a permanent injunction ordering the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry to increase health care staffing and improve service delivery.
The order stemmed from a lawsuit running for more than a decade that claimed Arizona was providing such inadequate health care that prisoners were being subjected to inhumane treatment.
In court Friday, third-party monitors said that though they have seen some improvements in Arizona prison health care since the injunction was issued, the department was still having problems increasing staffing, which had led to continued poor medical and psychiatric treatment.
Both sides agree that relying on a private company has made meeting court-ordered staffing levels challenging.
Throughout the case, the plaintiffs have criticized Arizona's private prison health care model and its for-profit incentive as counterintuitive to improving treatment. On Friday, an attorney for the Department of Corrections admitted the agency was having issues getting its health care contractor, NaphCare, to increase staffing.
Attorneys for the plaintiff class of prisoners told Silver she did not need to rule the Arizona law that mandates private prison health care unconstitutional. Instead, they said, she could order a case-specific waiver of the law if privatization has impeded the rights of incarcerated people. That would allow the Department of Corrections to take control of health care and eliminate the issues it's having with NaphCare, they said.
Plaintiffs argue that little has changed since the case was filed despite multiple health care contracts with several companies over the years. NaphCare took over providing health care in Arizona prisons in 2022. The company did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
"Here we are, 20 months after you found the health care and the conditions and isolation unconstitutional, and we're hearing about the new company," said Corene Kendrick, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the prisoners.
Silver did not make a decision on the privatization issue on Friday. Instead, she directed the Department of Corrections to apply more pressure on NaphCare to meet court-ordered staffing levels by imposing greater penalties.
"I do not want to run this prison," Silver said.
The case was scheduled to return to court on May 17. Silver said she would consider at that hearing whether the Department of Corrections has done enough to comply with the injunction.
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Reach the reporter at miguel.torres@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Judge may override Arizona law to improve health care in prisons
