LANSING — Audits released Thursday point to significant security failures at three Michigan prisons.
Corrections officers apparently falsified cell search records and frequently took less than a minute to search cells when they did so, Auditor General Doug Ringler said in the reports. Also, many vehicles and people were not searched upon entering Ionia Correctional Facility, Baraga Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula, and Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, Ringler said.
Ringler also called for an evaluation of the department’s metal detector policy after auditors at Ionia were able to carry metal items through all four walk-through metal detectors there, including a six-inch needle nose tweezer and a seven-inch pair of scissors. Metal detector lapses were also found at the Handlon prison, according to that audit.
Lax security measures “could jeopardize the safety and security of staff, prisoners, and members of the public,” the audits said.
In responses included with the audit, the Michigan Department of Corrections agreed with the auditor general’s recommendations, though it said clerical errors were mostly to blame for apparent falsifying of records by corrections officers.
But Kyle Kaminski, the MDOC’s legislative liaison, told lawmakers Thursday that any falsifying of records is “unacceptable,” and the department is investigating the incidents Ringler flagged for possible discipline, as well as improving its quality assurance measures.
“We agree that these findings are problematic,” Kaminski said at a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary.
The audit comes amid chronic understaffing at Michigan prisons that the union says is endangering safety and as Director Heidi Washington seeks legislative approval of the department’s proposed $2.2 billion budget for 2026.
Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization union, said the audits should not come as a surprise because “corners are being cut” throughout the prison system.
“We simply do not have enough officers to run these prisons safely or effectively and the MDOC has gotten away with it for so long that it is now the accepted norm for them,” Osborn said.
“Exhausted officers that are working on shifts in these prisons with far less officers than are required to be there are of course going to make occasional clerical errors on searches,” he said. “They’re also not likely to spend as much time on searches because they’re picking up the extra workload of the partners they’re supposed to have with them that are not there to help.”
Ionia Correctional Facility
The auditor found that at the prison that houses hundreds of Michigan’s highest security-level inmates, corrections officers “likely falsified cell search logbooks 38% of the time,” and did not complete more than 20% of the required daily cell searches the auditor general reviewed.
The audit randomly selected 60 required cell searches from 2023 and found that officers logged 47 of the searches as completed. Yet in 18, or 38% of those cases, video showed no officer entered the cell during the relevant time.
Also, “31% of the cell searches we observed on surveillance video footage were completed in less than one minute, bringing into question the thoroughness of the searches,” the report said. The average search time was two minutes and 10 seconds, the audit found.
In its response, the department mostly blamed clerical errors or training issues for the apparent falsification of records and said searches conducted in less than one minute likely involved vacant cells or ones with very little property in them.
A review of surveillance video also found that nearly 30% of the time, prisoners were not subjected to metal detectors, as required when entering certain areas of the prison, or were not searched when flagged by the detector.
The department blamed training issues.
The audit also found that 64% of the time, items in the auditor’s sample were not fully searched when entering the facility through the sallyport — an entrance used to deliver supplies to the prison — and that 55% of the vehicles and 24% of individuals passing through the sallyport were not fully searched.
The auditor found that in one instance, a forklift with a pallet of boxes entered the gate, but none of the boxes were opened and searched.
Corrections Department officials have mostly blamed visitors, prison mail, and items containing contraband being thrown over the fence for the prison system’s significant problems with narcotics and other banned items. The auditor’s findings point to other potentially significant factors, including corrections staff, though the Ionia audit did find that 98% of required daily employee searches selected for review were documented as completed.
More: 4 Michigan corrections officers charged in severe 2024 beating of inmate
In its response, the Corrections Department again blamed training issues for problems with searches at the sallyport, though it said searches of sealed items carried in state vehicles are “very time-consuming” and block the sallyport for extended periods.
Baraga Correctional Facility
The auditor found that cell search logbooks appeared to be falsified about a quarter of the time and nearly half the cell searches that were conducted took less than one minute.
The prison did not always complete required interviews or document all necessary approvals for prisoners placed in solitary confinement, the audit found. Also, when a committee extended a prisoner’s time in solitary, it did not document a reason in 15% of the instances reviewed, the audit found.
Facility-owned vehicles were allowed to pass in and out of the prison sallyport without a gate manifest — listing the items carried — in 28% of instances reviewed, the audit found.
Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility
The audit found that corrections officers likely falsified cell searches about 4% of the time and more than one-third of the cell searches surveyed took less than one minute.
The prison did not complete 15% of required daily tool inspections and 23% of required monthly tool inspections reviewed.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Audits point to significant security lapses at 3 Michigan prisons
Read the full article here
