When Gov. Katie Hobbs was first sworn into office in 2023, she promised to fix Arizona’s prison system after “years of failed leadership” from her GOP predecessors.
“The system is broken and will require a committed, long-term plan for implementing fair standards to improve the health and safety conditions for correctional officers and incarcerated individuals,” Hobbs said in a press release a week after taking office. “My administration is committed to ensuring Arizona’s prison system operates within constitutional requirements.”
Commitment aside, reforming the system has proved an overwhelming task.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry is still violating the U.S. Constitution by failing to provide adequate health care to inmates, and the judge ordered an independent takeover of the health care system.
In response, the Hobbs administration is downplaying the still-terrible conditions and doing damage control ahead of the approaching gubernatorial election in November.
U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver’s February ruling is especially remarkable because it orders an outside party — called a “receiver” — to take over the department’s health care system. The decision comes 14 years after the case was originally filed and after the department, under multiple governors and directors, has failed to achieve “a semblance of compliance,” Silver said. Silver issued injunctions in both 2022 and 2023 for the department to fix the constitutional violations. But after three years of inadequate progress under Hobbs, Silver has had enough.
“This approach has not only failed completely but, if continued, would be nothing short of judicial indulgence of deeply entrenched unconstitutional conduct,” Silver wrote in a 83-page ruling.
The Hobbs administration’s response?
Ignore the noise.
Hobbs' Department of Corrections1 Director Ryan Thornell called the receivership order “unnecessary” and “exorbitantly expensive” in a written statement, noting that the department will appeal the decision on account of the progress the Hobbs administration has made.
He posted the statement on LinkedIn, also implying that his team was unbothered by the ruling’s “noise.”
That rhetoric contrasts starkly to the promise Thornell made during his first months on the job in an interview with former Arizona Republic reporter Jimmy Jenkins.
“We will come into compliance, I can assure you of that,” Thornell said at the time.
Hobbs also came out fiercely against the order, which she said “imposes unrealistic demands and timelines” in a written statement.
The governor didn’t directly dispute that the department isn’t meeting constitutional requirements. Rather, she reframed the situation to boast of her administration’s accomplishments.
Specifically, Hobbs pointed to $1.3 billion of investments to improve health care, staffing, and programming and claimed that her administration had increased staff by 68% — “things that federal overseers just don’t understand,” in her words.
Silver’s viewpoint is different.
Her ruling notes that the department admitted that its contractor for staffing — NaphCare — ”has not met even the staffing requirements of the current contract and offer(s) no plan” to make significant increases to staffing and meet those requirements.
She added that only 61% of physicians employed are actually board certified, and that NaphCare is offering “woefully insufficient” salaries, according to court monitors.
Hobbs, in her statement, tacitly noted that the staffing problem is still a headache.
“Recruiting and hiring difficulties are especially significant, when compared to private care providers with highly competitive hiring practices,” Hobbs said. “Arizona’s corrections system is on the right path, and we will not let this decision derail the important work being done to improve outcomes for those in our care.”
While the department claimed to the court that it was “closing in on 100%” compliance with its orders, Silver noted that wasn’t true — citing that 97% of referrals to off-site specialists were “not timely” or never occurred at all.
Ben Jeffrey, president of Mobilize America’s Commitment to Veterans Foundation, called that “unconscionable” — especially for the more than 2,000 veterans in the prison system who often struggle with substance abuse or mental health issues and face elevated suicide risks.
“That isn’t a minor administrative problem. That’s a systemic collapse in access to medical care,” Jeffrey said. “The ruling doesn’t describe minor problems. It describes violations that were systemic, pervasive, and unconstitutional across the prison healthcare system.”
Before Hobbs took office, the Department of Corrections signed a contract to staff the state’s prisons with employees from NaphCare — a private, for-profit health care provider with estimated revenues nearing $1 billion, according to the Business Journals.
There were signs outsourcing health care to the company wasn’t a great idea.
A 2020 Reuters investigation found that jails where NaphCare operated had the highest death rates from 2016 to 2018 for private providers.
And in 2021, Pima County contracted NaphCare to do the same job — though a 2023 audit showed that the provider was chronically understaffing the prison and failing to meet standards.
Silver said in her ruling that, while the department has paid NaphCare more than $300 million per year, it “makes little effort to enforce NaphCare’s obligations.”
In devastating fashion, the ruling also details dozens of cases in which inmates with health problems were underserved by NaphCare — including the eight Arizona inmates who died in 2023 and 2025 — and paints a picture of systemic failure.
But those cases are among the worst — and inmates’ loved ones suggest neglect is even more widespread.
Diana Figueroa, a senior vice president of marketing at Education Forward Arizona, told us that she has a nephew in the prison system whom she has to keep a close eye on to ensure he doesn’t die on the inside.
“I have had to call them and email them at least 20 times over the past few years to give him his daily potassium and magnesium that’s needed in order for him to live with the rare kidney disease he has,” Figueroa said of NaphCare providers. “He’s just one example. I can only imagine all the other people who don’t have an aunt like me to advocate on their behalf.”
Some critics note that while prison health care might be improving a little, they hoped for more under Hobbs.
Cordero Holmes, for instance, spent time in prison starting in 2009. Now, he’s the director of operations for a nonprofit that works with youth in the criminal justice system.
“I think everybody expected Katie Hobbs to be transformational, and maybe she just couldn’t do that,” Holmes told us. “This is an election season. This isn’t the first thing that I think a lot of people feel Katie Hobbs has been slowfootin’ — especially when it comes to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.”
Others like Jeffrey have criticized the Hobbs administration’s dismissive response to the court’s ruling.
“I want to be clear about something. I’ve supported Governor Hobbs, and I want her administration to succeed,” Jeffrey said. “But describing this ruling as judicial overreach ignores the central issue.”
Directly fixing the prison system's staffing and healthcare problems isn't the only area progress has been slow.
Hobbs also created an independent oversight commission for the prison system upon taking office, which its members said was not adequate to provide real oversight. Last year, the Arizona Legislature passed and Hobbs signed a bill to create a new and improved oversight commission — but it still can’t do any work because lawmakers didn’t fund it.
Though Hobbs campaigned on overhauling the prison system, it was never going to be easy — and it seems that the governor may be out of her depth as the election approaches.
What was once an issue to pounce on for the governor has now become a political liability — and one that her administration seems determined to minimize as she campaigns for another four-year term.
No Instagram, no evacuation: Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego is pissed that the Trump administration is helping “Trump-aligned social media influencers” escape the war in Iran, while leaving most Americans stranded, per the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen.
“The Administration’s failure to execute (or even develop) a coherent plan for evacuating Americans from the conflict zone is tantamount to abandonment, particularly in the case of hostilities with an adversary notorious for targeting Americans abroad,” Gallego wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Round and round we go: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is taking the lead on a lawsuit filed by more than two dozen attorneys general to stop President Donald Trump’s most recent round of tariffs. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump’s previous tariffs and now Mayes and the other AGs are saying Trump is “breaking the law again.”
Flock you, Big Brother: A bill that would shield data obtained by license plate readers from public view appears to be dead after Republican lawmakers raised objections, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman gave a passionate speech during floor debate about the cameras, many of which are made by Flock Safety and have caused local controversies in cities across the state.
“The Fourth Amendment is not a suggestion. It is a command to the government. You do not search people without probable cause or without a warrant,” Hoffman said. “A government that watches everything controls everything.”
The right to unsubscribe: Arizona lawmakers are trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions, Helen Rummel reports for the Republic. Democratic Rep. Janeen Connolly’s HB2951 would force businesses to make it as simple to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one.
We’re all for making it easy to unsubscribe, but maybe leave your favorite local newsletter out of this one?
Those pesky regulators: While APS is pushing to raise rates by 14% this year, the state’s biggest utility is also trying to get the right to hike rates every year without having to go before state regulators, Audrey Lippert reports for Cronkite News. APS executives say costs are rising for parts and maintenance as the economy is “changing so dynamically” and the utility needs to be able to adjust rates up or down with those costs.
In other, other news
After years of botched executions, Arizona voters may decide in November whether firing squads might be a better idea (Brahm Resnik / 12News) … The City of Phoenix is losing out on $12 million every year due to tax breaks for data centers (Shawn Raymundo and Corina Vanek / Republic) … The Arizona Corporation Commission signed off on a 154% rate increase for wastewater for a retirement community near Eloy (Reagan Priest / Capitol Times) … Protesters in Flagstaff are trying to draw attention to trucks hauling uranium ore from the Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon (Sam McLaughlin / Daily Sun) … And cannabis companies are setting their sights on an untapped market: Delivering weed to senior communities in the East Valley (Morgan Fischer / New Times).
What city in Arizona spends the most per capita on OnlyFans accounts?
Take a guess.
We’ll wait…
Yep, you probably guessed correctly.
It’s Scottsdale, per the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer, who broke down the numbers to announce that residents spent about $4 million on subscription OnlyFans porn, or about $15 per year for each man, woman and child in town.
How very Scottsdale of them.
But “Arizona’s horniest city” doesn’t even come close to topping the list of horny cities, she notes. In Atlanta, they’re spending $52 per person to keep adult content creators in business.
1 Gov. Doug Ducey renamed the Department of Corrections in 2020, rechristening it the much clunkier Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. We’ve referred to it by its shorter name for the ease of reading.