Blog #20

The story was hard to read due to the extreme violence that Lois Fraley and Officer Auld went through. This horrible situation was initiated by two men, Wassenaar and Steven Coy. Wassanaar posed as a Corrections Officer by stealing a uniform from a guard that he compromised. Fraley and Auld let this so called guard into their area, and Auld was immediately compromised. From that point 15 days of violence and torture ensued. The beat and rapped Fraley repeatedly over the next 15 day before she was finally released. Her partner, Officer Auld, was released after 7 days to critical injuries. By the 4th day Fraley contemplated suicide, she considered using her badge pin to puncture one of her veins.

Survival is what she strived for and she did all she could to stay strong. She stopped washing so they wouldn’t sexually assault her, and she stopped drinking so she wouldn’t have to urinate in front of them. She claimed that during those times she “laughed, joked, cried, I talked to my picture of my daughter and Tere (her partner for four years), I talked to dead family members, I said goodbye, I prayed….I’m a recovering alcoholic.” When she was finally rescued she was greeted by Dora Schirro the Director of Prisons and Governor Janet Napolitano.
Director Schirro reflects on the situation and confirms that the prison guards were not properly trained. Schirro soon discovered that security inside the prison was “Lax, sloppy, and careless”. She also discovered that the training regime by officers had no uniformity so figuring out what each CO knew was basically impossible. Schirro points out the lack of training by the Corrections Officers that she had inherited within the Lewis prison, 25% couldn’t pass the lowest level of competency tests.

This lack of training is supported by Britton’s ideas. Prison Guards truly believe that they are undertrained when taking on new jobs as Corrections Officers. The articles for this section along with the Britton reading affirm that notion. I like what Schirro is doing by instituting new policies and changes. If something is broke it needs to be fixed and I think Schirro is taking this very same approach. She is a noble person who doesn’t blame any single person from the past. She is soft spoken in regards to her critics as well, saying “If you don’t have something nice to say”. In my opinion Schirro is a great asset to the state of Arizona, and we are lucky to have an individual like her running our correctional system.

Britton makes some useful suggestions that I agree with. He too believes that more training and better policy is needed and that it may avoid future hostage takeovers. Better training is definitely something that wouldn’t hurt. Training would make these officers feel more comfortable and better prepared if these tough situations were to arise. Education, training and a positive outlook towards policy change will all make for a better system. Implementation and follow thru are what we now need to focus our time on.