A Nebraska News Service analysis of 10 years of Nebraska’s statewide Prison Rape Elimination Act victimization statistics found on the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services website uncovered mathematical errors in at least three of those years. In 2021, the survey, signed by the PREA Coordinator Danielle Reynolds, underreported the total number of substantiated incidents.
Also signed by Reynolds, the state’s 2017 Survey of Sexual Victimization contained inconsistencies that leave the actual number of staff sexual misconduct allegations unclear.
During a brief phone call in March, Reynolds said she would need department permission for an interview. In May, after four Nebraska News Service requests that the department authorize Reynolds to speak on the data inconsistencies, Dayne Urbanovsky, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, responded via email that the department was unable to dedicate additional time for follow-up questions.
On March 4, 2022, Karen Murray, Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor with KDM Consults, signed the final report for a facility audit of the Omaha Correctional Center. It said the facility exceeded expectations and had no allegations of, or investigations into, sexual misconduct by a staff member at that facility.
But when she signed that, the internal investigation into Cedillo’s relationship with Price had been underway for nearly four months, according to court records.
Murray told Nebraska News Service that if there was an ongoing case at that time, she would only have known about it if the facility reported it to her.
“I’ve been working with these guys now seven years,” she said. “They are very good at investigating false claims, third-party claims, anonymous claims, verbal claims, claims through the grievance procedure.”
Officials with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services declined repeated requests to discuss the inconsistencies.
“Responding to follow-up questions for individual stories is beyond the scope of what we can accommodate,’’ Urbanovsky wrote in an email in April. “NDCS is responsible for the safe management of incarcerated individuals as well as staff members. It is a 24/7 operation that requires constant attention from our facility staff, our wardens, deputy directors and Director Jeffreys.”
But when the Nebraska News Service checked the department’s website about two weeks after questioning officials about data inconsistencies, those reports were removed from the government site.
It remains unclear why the reports are no longer publicly available. However, Nebraska News Service obtained and archived the documents before they were removed and is publishing them alongside this story so the public can still access them.
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"You can't prove that if we delete all of our records!" - Nebraska's Department of Corrections (basically)