Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry
The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry operates Arizona's state prison system. Entries naming it record conditions and medical care within its facilities and its compliance with court orders governing them — the only state corrections department registered as an actor in the archive.
2026 Events (2)
Arizona prison agency defied inmate-healthcare injunction for 3 years and sought to hire unqualified doctors, federal judge found
U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, in a July 16, 2026 order, denied a motion by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) to weaken a 2023 permanent-injunction requirement that prison physicians be board-certified or board-eligible in internal medicine or family practice. Silver found that ADCRR "has utterly failed to comply with the Permanent Injunction's requirements and [has] aggressively opposed its enforcement" over the three years since the injunction issued, and that the agency never made a good-faith effort to raise physician pay despite repeated recommendations from court-appointed monitors.
Federal judge stripped Arizona prison agency of control over inmate healthcare, ordering receivership
On February 19, 2026, U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver ordered Arizona's prison healthcare system into court receivership, finding the Department of Corrections had violated 131 of 154 standards required under a 2023 permanent injunction and that 14 years of litigation, contempt fines, and monitoring had failed to produce compliance. The 83-page order authorizes an independent receiver to take over healthcare operations across Arizona's nine state prisons, with authority to hire and fire staff, renegotiate or terminate the roughly $300 million NaphCare contract, set budgets, and override department administrators. ADCRR called the order "exorbitantly expensive" and "unnecessary" and said it would appeal.
2022 Events (1)
Federal judge found Arizona's prison healthcare system unconstitutional after 15-day trial
On June 30, 2022, U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver ruled that the Arizona Department of Corrections had "failed to provide, and continues to refuse to provide, a constitutionally adequate medical care and mental health care system" for the roughly 34,000 people in its custody, violating the Eighth Amendment. The 200-page ruling followed a 15-day bench trial in a class action originally filed in 2012, after Silver rescinded a 2014 settlement in 2021 upon finding the state had committed "pervasive material breaches" of its terms.