State audit of Michigan prisons finds security and safety failures

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Audits of three prisons in Michigan found significant gaps in security, from falsified cell-check records to auditors being able to get scissors through the metal detectors.

The audits, aimed at evaluating security and safety standard compliance at the Ionia Correctional Facility, Baraga Correctional Facility and Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility, found some overlapping issues with security that State Auditor General Doug Ringler said in the reports could lead to harm for those who are incarcerated, as well as staff and visitors.

The reports each offer recommendations and possible remedies to the issues presented such as evaluating procedures by the Department of Corrections, or MDOC, on metal detector usage, and improving safety checks for those in the prison.

While the shortcomings outlined in the audits are serious, they are fixable and MDOC has started to address the issues outlined and take proper measures for accountability from the employees who falsified records, MDOC Legislative Liaison Kyle Kaminski told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary Thursday.

“We’re not trying to minimize the findings of those audits. We take them very seriously. We’re going to learn from them.. We agree that those findings are problematic,” Kaminski said. “We had started to institute some changes even before the audit was done… While it covers three facilities, we take it as a lesson that we need to apply to all 26 facilities.”

Lawmakers on the committee expressed sympathy for the national staffing shortage state prisons are facing, noting that lawmakers have been confronted in recent years with the task of creating policies to alleviate some of the strains that sector of the workforce endures.

Corrections officers have incredibly difficult jobs, but these lapses in performing duties to ensure public safety can’t stand, House Appropriations Chair Rep. Ann Bollin (R-Brighton Township) said in a statement Friday.

“These findings are deeply troubling and highlight a dangerous lack of oversight in our corrections system,” Bollin said. “When officers are failing to conduct thorough searches of inmates, vehicles, and staff entering the prison, it creates a major security risk…We must prioritize improving staffing levels while also ensuring that all security measures are enforced consistently.”

About 38% of the prison cell searches correction officers logged at the Ionia Correctional Facility that auditors reviewed between May and June of 2023 were falsified, meaning no officers even entered the cells they said were checked, according to an audit report. And still, officers only documented about 80% of the minimum number of cell or bunk checks, with about one third of actual checks performed lasting less than one minute, calling into question the thoroughness of the checks performed.

Issues with falsifying records of checks, not performing the appropriate number of checks and the reality of those checks being done in a matter of seconds, were cause for concern for audits, especially as they were able to carry contraband through all the metal detectors they tested.

Auditors were able to carry in a pair of 6-inch needle nose pliers, a 7-inch pair of scissors, a 3-inch seam ripper and 4-inch seam ripper, according to an audit report.

At the Richard Handlon Correctional Facility, also in Ionia, auditors were able to get a welding rod, a flat piece of stainless steel and a 5-7 inch-long piece of scrap metal through metal detectors in July of 2023, according to an audit report.

Auditors found that corrections officers at Baraga Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula falsified cell search records about 25% of the time and nearly half of the cell searches that were observed were completed in less than a minute in an audit.

The falsification of records is not reflective of the majority of corrections staff, Kaminski told lawmakers Thursday, though the issue is being taken seriously and those scenarios were referred for investigation and potential discipline. 

“That type of falsification certainly will not be tolerated and at the same time, it’s resulted in us changing some of our internal quality assurance processes to say, ‘Okay… we can no longer feel like… just because it’s documented, that it’s sufficient, that it occurred, we’re going to have to go back, look at video, do other things to try to determine exactly what was done and how well it was done,” Kaminski said.

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