Oaks is an MDOC facility in western Michigan. Collectively, MDOC is remarkably unorganized and incompetent with many MDOC employees failing to respond to messages and refusing to take phone calls. Several employees have made it clear that they are ignorant of MDOC policies. It is therefore unsurprising that they do not comply with those policies. The few times that I have managed to get in touch with MDOC employees, they appear to be mostly working from home and that is why you can't get them to answer their desk phones and their voicemail boxes are full.
Oaks is a particularly awful MDOC facility. The Resident Unit Managers routinely do not respond to kites (requests for resolution of compliance issues submitted by prisoners) which is such a shame as the RUMs are really the only people that most prisoners have access to and it is their JOB to work with and respond to prisoners. The three staff members at Oaks that I have dealt with - the woman responsible for reviewing/approving visitor applications in accordance with MDOC Policy Directive 05.03.140, the woman in Accounting that I contacted about misappropriation of prisoner funds in violation of a court order and MDOC Policy Directive 04.02.105 relating to Prisoner Funds and the Administrative Assistant to the Warden who declined to meet with me in person on a visitation day and failed to return over a dozen phone messages. Collectively, I telephoned these individuals more than two dozen times leaving detailed messages requesting a return call. I never once received a return call and the officers that answer the phone do not permit the public to contact the warden directly once it has become clear that the facility employees won't do their jobs.
Should you find yourself in a similar situation (having exhausted all administrative options to get resolution at the facility level), the most expedient way to get these folks to do their jobs is to send an email to the facility staff directly or the MDOC Unit in Lansing overseeing the staff member that is failing to do their job (they take the concept of service out of public service) and COPY the Ombudsman at Ombudsman@legislature.mi.gov. The office of the Ombudsman will send an email advising that you lack standing and the complaint will have to come from the prisoner directly, but this process will help get the incompetent/corrupt/lazy MDOC employee to do their job and address identified issues. You can also draft the email for the person and either mail it via snail mail or send it to them via email through JPay.
It must be observed that if the warden ran a better facility, it would not be necessary to involve the Ombudsman. read more
