Lawmakers press DOC for clearer reporting after constituent-services team logs 4,042 inquiries

Ms. Johnson presented the Department of Corrections’ constituent-services summary for January–March and said the office fielded 4,042 inquiries in the quarter. The top inquiry categories were inmate wellness checks, facility concerns (phone/tablet/property/packages/conditions), inmate safety, inmate health and general information requests; the team’s average resolution time was 1 day, 14 hours and 9 minutes.

Lawmakers repeatedly asked what the office means by “resolution.” Representative Hill and Representative England said a logged response is not the same as a substantive fix in cases involving safety or health and asked the DOC to publish more detailed metrics that show whether complaints were substantiated and what concrete steps were taken.

Ms. Johnson said complaints initiate investigations and that records indicate whether issues were resolved, substantiated or unsubstantiated. She acknowledged some sensitive information cannot be public but agreed to work with lawmakers to develop a redacted reporting format that shows outcomes and the quality of responses rather than only counts and average times.

Representative Hill said: “A resolution that says ‘yes, he has been’ is really not a resolution” when a constituent reports a threat; lawmakers asked DOC to include follow-up actions such as welfare checks, transfers, healthcare referrals and disciplinary steps in future reports.

Committee members requested a future report with counts broken down by substantiation status and a short description of the types of follow-up taken. DOC staff agreed to produce more granular, redacted metrics for the next briefing.