Raising Arizona’s commitment to a safe and healthy prison system fundamentally requires several steps: (1) reducing the size of the incarcerated population; (2) treating all people who live and work in these facilities with dignity and respect; (3) shifting from a punitive culture toward a rehabilitative approach; (4) providing sufficient funding to support safe physical conditions, access to physical and mental health care, rehabilitative programming, and adequate numbers of well-trained staff; and (5) ensuring meaningful and permanent independent oversight of the prison system.

This essay explains what is meant by the term “oversight” and frames it as an umbrella concept encompassing many distinct functions, including regulation, audit, accreditation, investigation, legal, reporting, and inspection/monitoring. The piece calls for a robust system of correctional oversight that is multi-faceted and multi-layered.