A representative from the Michigan Department of Corrections faced questions from state lawmakers this week, amid reports of violence at a state prison in St. Louis. A state House lawmaker expressed concern that the MDOC is not providing enough information on violent incidents.
In July, the St. Louis Correctional Facility saw 15 assaults on staff and 25 on prisoners. Under state law, critical incidents must be reported to the legislature within 72 hours. The Department of Corrections has reported around 65 incidents so far this year.
State Rep. Bradley Slagh (R-Zeeland) said that isn't enough information.
"If things are going to be able to get written in the newspaper…then we probably should have known about at least some of that beforehand I guess is my thought," Slagh said.
Kyle Kaminski is the department's legislative liaison. Kaminski spoke to the state House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary Tuesday. He told lawmakers that violence at the facility is moving in the right direction.
"We did see improvement in August,” he said. “Not to say that we did not see any misbehavior we certainly do see ongoing misbehavior at facilities from the population, but certainly not on the level that we saw in July,” he said.
Kaminski said that September was also off to a less violent start. “We have seen a few scenarios at Saint Louis, but nothing of the significance that we saw in July,” he said, acknowledging there was a “multi-prisoner assault” and a “small prisoner fight.”
Kaminski, who personally sends the reports to lawmakers, says the department is following the law but is open to changing the parameters for what constitutes a critical incident.
"We are complying with the current boilerplate, but we also recognize that, boilerplate is crafted with a goal, but it maybe doesn't always achieve that goal from the perspective of the subcommittee," Kaminski said.
Currently, critical incidents are considered ones that result “in a serious physical injury to staff,” along with a few other parameters like overdoses, facility disruptions and deaths.
“The physical injury language in the boilerplate…has a significant impact on what actually ends up being shared. So, I think that might be a place for us to start the conversation.”
Byron Osborn is the president of the Michigan Corrections Organization, the union that represents prison staff. He agreed that the incident report system needs change.
“When we generate a report…we encompass any type of staff assaults, whether it's people resisting being restrained, punching, kicking, spitting, throwing liquids on us, we report it all,” he said. “In our mind, an assault's an assault. All of those scenarios are definitely not reported to the legislature,” Osborn said.
Osborn added that violence does go up and down at prisons, but there was still a persistent statewide issue with violence at facilities.
“This violence problem and drug problem in the prisons is statewide. St. Louis was just an example,” he said.
