PRISON OVERSIGHT ACI commission cites heavy workload BY STEVEN STYCOS

As inmate complaints stream out of the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston, the House commission investigating the Department of Corrections is struggling.

One hundred and sixty three inmates wrote to the commission during a 10-day threshold period in January. The most frequent complaints, according to a commission subcommittee, were an unfair grievance procedure (45 percent), poor medical care (34 percent), verbal and physical abuse (26 percent), inadequate rehabilitation programs (26 percent), and abuse of power by correctional officers (22 percent).

"The basic problem is too much power concentrated in the hands of prison staff with no accountability," summarizes subcommittee member Pastor Carolyn Soares of the Ministers Alliance. The letters reveal a pattern of abusive behavior by some correctional officers, she says.

The commission, however, is off to a slow start. It has neither determined how it will investigate complaints, nor interviewed a single inmate. Its findings are due March 13, but vice-chair Charles Levesque says the panel will ask the House for an extension.

DOC recently blocked the commission from investigating alleged abuse of inmate Roberto Collazo. Collazo is mentally ill, his mother Rosalina Collazo told commission members, and is confined to segregation. She has been unable to see him, she says, but received a letter with three-inch lettering, stating, "Help me Mommy. They’re going to kill me." Robert McCutcheon, the DOC’s departmental grievance coordinator, declined to discuss the issue, citing confidentiality concerns.

In a previous commission meeting, McCutcheon said a minimum of six commission members would be required to visit the ACI to investigate emergency complaints. But on January 30, when six commission members gathered to speak with Collazo, DOC denied them entrance. Citing the 2002 House resolution establishing the commission, DOC spokesman Albert Bucci says talking with an inmate about an alleged assault is beyond the commission’s scope. According to the resolution, the commission’s purpose is to study the inmate grievance procedure, the effectiveness of rehabilitation, ways to encourage accountability, and whether DOC is complying with state and federal laws and regulations. The resolution also states the commission may tour the ACI and interview inmates.

At a recent meeting, commission chairman Joseph Almeida promised to meet with DOC director A.T. Wall to resolve the problem.

Meanwhile, two Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees told the Phoenix of other alleged assaults. On February 17, about 40 detainees gathered in the dining area of Medium II, according to Anderson Cesar of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Henry Nimmo of Woonsocket, getting ready to move to the Donald Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls. When a group of guards swarmed another detainee about 30 feet away, Nimmo says, he was ordered to sit down. Before he could, he says, he was punched from the rear by a guard, grabbed by the ankles, dragged to the floor and Maced in the face.

"They didn’t give me a chance [to sit down]," says the five-foot, four-inch, 150-pound Nimmo. "I wasn’t resisting at all," Unlike Wyatt guards, ACI guards are "very excessive," he says.

Correctional officers overreacted, agrees Cesar. "It was a bad scene," he notes.

Bucci tells a different story. A fight broke out between Nimmo and staff when Nimmo refused to put on handcuffs, he says, and to subdue him guards used pepper spray. "The use of force," he says, "was in accordance with our policy."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred all detainees from the ACI, says Bruce Chadbourne, ICE field office director, because the number of New England detainees decreased from 1200 to 1000, and other facilities offer transportation services to immigration court hearings in Boston. He received no complaints about the incident with Nimmo, Chadbourne adds.

Almeida, however, says he has a different problem, in the form of complaints: "My mailbox at my house is starting to tilt."