[From Final Straw radio show broadcast, 25Feb18]
The Corrections Institution Inspection Committee works for the Ohio General Assembly, the Ohio legislature. It’s job is to act as a kind of watch-dog agency, keeping the Ohio prison system honest.
I don’t want to turn this into a civics lesson, but the idea behind the Corrections Institution Inspection Committee, or “CIIC,” is that somebody from the legislative branch has to keep a “check and balance” on the possible abuses of the executive branch. So, the CIIC has a civilian staff to monitor the prisons and investigate claims of abuses. Anyway, that’s the poor, deluded hierarchs’ “bunny rabbits and rainbows” theory behind the CIIC’s existence.
Here’s the blurb straight out of the CIIC’s correspondence to prisoners, describing how the CIIC understands its own mission:

“The Corrections Institution Inspection Committee is a legislative committee that inspects the prisons of Ohio and evaluates programs, operations, conditions, and the grievance procedure.”

That’s a pretty straightforward mission statement. The CIIC inspects prisons and evaluates programs, operations, conditions and the grievance procedure.
In doing all of this, we must assume that the CIIC probably has priorities of what’s more important and what’s less important. For instance, if you or I inspected prisons and evaluated conditions, probably we’d want to address the issue of safety and security related to the prisoners. That is, things like recreational programs or even the food should take a backseat to serious and chronic patterns of rape or assault or suicide. So, it would make sense that addressing violence and assault would be a high priority, given the CIIC’s mission.
Yeah. It would seem.
But, check this out. I’m currently held at Warren Corruptional, which has the unenvious distinction of being the second-most violent prison even though there are three prisons with a higher security designation. That means that there are, by the ODRC’s own account, at least two prisons with more dangerous prisoners… but those prisons are less violent than Warren Corruptional.
Curious, huh?
But, wait. There’s more. Consider also that there are a number of other Ohio prisons of the identical security designation– Lebanon, Mansfield, Trumbull, Ross, Madison, and maybe even a few others –and all of those prisons are less violent than Warren. So, of all the Level 3 prisons, Warren is the most violent… and it’s even more violent than a Level 4 prison and a Level 5 prison.
That seems like something that should be investigated, right? Something that should be evaluated?
I drafted a couple of letters in other prisoners’ names and contacted the CIIC to ask them for all of their information on the violence here at Warren Corruptional, the state’s second-most violent prison. If anyone could get to the bottom of this inexplicable level of inordinate violence, it would be the watch-dog agency, the CIIC, charged with inspecting and evaluating. Right?
Darin Furderer, the civilian head of the CIIC, responded to both of these letters by saying that the last year that the CIIC had any data on Warren Corruptional violence was 2014.
Yeah. 2014.
That means this watch-dog agency has no information on prison violence for Warren from 2015, or from 2016, or from 2017.
It occurs to me that, in the three years that this “watch-dog agency” wasn’t paying attention to something so fundamental as prison violence at Warren, Warren became the second-most violent prison. And it makes me wonder: What in the hell has the CIIC been inspecting and evaluating for the last 3 years if they haven’t so much as monitored something so fundamental as prison violence? What are these people doing to earn their salaries?
In both responses from Darin Furderer, he advised the prisoner to contact the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to obtain information on prison violence for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Hmm.
Isn’t a watch-dog agency supposed to gather its own information? Isn’t that the point of being a watch-dog? What kind of watch-dog relies on the agency it’s watch-dogging in order to get information? That doesn’t make any sense. If the CIIC can trust the prisons to accurately report information and if the CIIC is just going to accept whatever they say about themselves, then shouldn’t Darin Furderer and those other clowns pack up the contents of their desks, including that cute little capaccino machine, into a cardboard box and then go get jobs as night managers at Wendy’s? What kind of watch-dog is totally clueless about the agency they watch, relying on the agency’s self-reporting of information?
So, look. The CIIC is symbolic of a chronic problem in hierarchy, emblematic of a thoroughly corrupt and useless swindle where foxes guard the henhouse… and where the wolves rely on the foxes’ official reports that the foxes do a phantasmorific job of it. It makes sense to these whack-a-doodles and jack-wagons to keep manufacturing worthless level of so-called supervision, layer after layer of overpaid pom-pom squads that collect pay-checks for ignoring systematic abuses, assaults, and even domestic torture happening right under their noses.
You can contact Darin Furderer of the CIIC by phone at (614) 466-6649. That’s (614) 466-6649. Or send him faxes at (614) 466-6929. That’s (614) 466-6929.
I think we have a responsibility to the future to drive the CIIC out of existence once and for all.
This is Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain from Warren Corruptional. If you’re listening, you ARE the resistance…

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Sean Swain
DOC #A243-205