John, we found some incredibly troubling allegations in records we obtained:

Arizona Department of Corrections officials repeatedly failed to protect inmates from COVID and denied them necessary health resources.

In 2022, we filed a records request in response to reporting that Arizona inmates were not receiving adequate COVID care from healthcare provider Centurion, which received a contract with the state after it donated to Governor Doug Ducey and other politicians.

Sure enough, the records we obtained show allegations of egregious failures and abuses against Arizona inmates during COVID:

– Staff allegedly withheld masks and laundry access from prisoners
– Inmates were given “fake” health checks and do-not-resuscitate status against their will
– Staff failed to wear masks and ignored rules for quarantining and social distancing
– Whistleblowing inmates filed complaints against about poor living conditions, including lack of soap and adequate food

According to the documents, the circumstances were evidently exacerbated by prison workers – both Department of Corrections and for-profit prison company staff – though many workers also expressed frustration with the lax protocols in various public correctional and GEO Group facilities.

You can read the four-part series on the treatment of Arizona inmates on our website.

When we sent our records request, we were looking for evidence of a politician coordinating with a corporation that had donated to them and then failed to do its job adequately. And what the records revealed was just how severely inmates in Arizona paid the price for a lack of transparency and accountability during a deadly pandemic.

The records also revealed the low standard of treatment at private prisons. GEO Group, which came up a lot in our investigation, is one of the country’s largest private prison companies, and previously housed those detained under Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy that separated children from parents at the border during his administration.

Since then, private prison contractors like the GEO Group appear to have growing government contracts, despite President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order opposing the practice for federal prisoners.

We’ve been tracking GEO Group for years. We reported that GEO Group was the first corporation to max out to Trump’s 2024 campaign. We’ve advocated for reforms that would make private prisons subject to the same disclosure laws as their federally-run peers. And we reported on GEO Group’s apparent lobbying and influence strategy back in 2019.

Sometimes, our investigations take us in new directions, like reporting on allegations of abuse in prisons, and sometimes those investigations lead back to entities that we’ve long had our eyes on.

If you can contribute to help us continue our investigative work, please click here to make a donation →

Thank you,

CREW HQ