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Ryan Thornell acknowledged that Randy Wassenaar had his custody reduced from maximum security to “close custody’’ late last year despite the fact he was serving 16 life terms for a 2004 incident in which he and a fellow inmate took and held hostages at a state prison for 15 days.

And Thornell said none of that changed despite the fact that Wassenaar had boasted earlier this year of having killed his cellmate. There is no hard evidence Wassenaar was involved in that death, with the official autopsy report showing the cause was inconclusive, Thornell said.

But the questions about the April triple homicide were just an entry point for members of a special legislative panel to air concerns about whether Thornell — hand picked in 2023 by Gov. Katie Hobbs to run the state prison system that houses more than 35,000 inmates — is qualified to do the job.

“This committee’s role is not to dwell on blame but to examine what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what must be done to prevent such failures from happening again,’’ said Rep.Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, who co chairs the special panel formed specifically to look at prison security.

And Sen. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria, the other co-chair, said he wants answers to “thousands of inmates being downgraded into lower custody levels, officers being assaulted at alarming rates, inmate homicides reaching record highs, and a mismanaged medication assistance program that appears to lack any safeguards to assure its effectiveness and efficiency.’’

The hearing featured several former staffers, including people who had been wardens and employed for decades, who told lawmakers that Thornell is not up to the job.

Travis Scott said out that Hobbs plucked him from Maine where he was running a prison systems 25 times smaller than the one here.

Scott told lawmakers the prison system has always had high staff turnover. But he said that under Thornell’s tenure “it’s gotten dangerous’’ with more assaults on staff.

Staci Ibarra cited the fact there have been nine homicides in Arizona prisons so far this calendar year, more than any full year.

And Rodney Carr said that there has been a particular rise in violence in “close custody’’ yards.

All that goes to the issue of why Wassenaar was placed in that classification.

Thornell acknowledged Wassenaar’s conviction and 16 life sentences due to the 2004 hostage incident. After that, Wassenaar was shipped to out-of-state prisons, the most recent being New Mexico before being returned to Arizona in 2018.

He told lawmakers there were no records from that state of behavior problems.

Thornell said Wassenaar originally was classified for maximum custody. That means 23 hours a day in a cell and escorted everywhere by staffers.

In March 2024, however, he was reduced to close custody. That means being able to socialize with other inmates in the yard, with Thornell saying that matched the expectations based on his behavior.

As part of the transition, Wassenaar was not given a cellmate. And when he was, that other person died.

Wassenaar boasted that he had strangled him. But Thornell said that’s not what the medical evidence showed and so Wassenaar was left where he was.

So why, asked Rep. Neal Carter, R-San Tan Valley, would Wassenaar make that claim.

“Mr. Wassenaar has shown repeatedly, especially in the last several months, that he wants to get as much credit, fame and claim as he can,’’ Thornell said. But the director said even that did not cause him to believe that Wassenaar should be placed back in maximum security.

What is the issue, said Thornell, is the inmate’s overall behavior — and over what period.

More to the point, the director said, none of what happened can be laid at his feet.

“A lot of people claim that I came in and changed the classification policy and process,’’ he told lawmakers.

“I did not do that,’’ Thornell said. “What we did here is follow the classification policy and process that’s been in place for I think more than 15 years, maybe even more than that.’’

Policy aside, Thornell told lawmakers that maximum security was never meant to be for lengthy periods of time.

There are constitutional issues. And he said it makes no sense to keep someone locked up like that all day given that, at some point, they’re going to get released. And going from maximum security to total freedom, Thornell said, is not a good transition.

That possibility of someone like Wassenaar serving a full sentence in maximum security, however, did not seem to bother Nguyen. He asked Thornell why, given Wassenaar’s record — particularly the escape attempt and rape of a female prison guard, he didn’t “lock him up somewhere in the dark’’ instead of allowing him into close custody.

It was that classification that in April allowed Wassenaar to kill three other inmates, using a rock he had picked up in the prison yard and a knife he had found buried in the yard.

“Mr. Wassenaar had gone a lengthy period of time, several years, without infractions, without negative behavior interacting with his unit team as he did,’’ Thornell said.

“I acted on their recommendation, I supported their decision,’’ he said of the staff decision. “And he was moved down to close custody.’’

Sen. Mitzi Epstein of Tempe, one of two Democrats on the panel, said that policy that Thornell followed makes sense.

“Maximum custody is not a place where human beings are supposed to be kept for the rest of their lives,’’ she said. “It is against the Constitution to, as our chair (Nguyen) said, lock them up in the dark for years.

“That’s my personal opinion and I stand by that,’’ Nguyen responded.

That, said Epstein, still doesn’t make it legal. She wants a prison system “that follows the Constitution.’’

Nguyen said that ignores the reality of what happened — and why the panel was meeting.

“We’re here today because something failed, people died,’’ he said. Nguyen said it would be better to have someone “locked up somewhere’’ than what happened with other inmates being killed.

Thornell said the prison system has gotten better since his arrival, with the number of vacant positions for corrections officers falling from more than 1,500 to below 1,000. Still, he acknowledged high vacancy rates do remain at several facilities, including in Tucson where Wassenaar killed the other inmates.

As to Wassenaar, Thornell said he often asked whether, if he could go back in time, he would have moved him to a close-custody unit.

“And my answer always is: Hindsight’s 20-20,’’ Thornell said. Still, he said that doesn’t mean that the entire classification system failed.

Republicans on the panel remained dissatisfied, citing data about increased assaults on inmates since Thornell’s arrival. He countered that assaults were down before that at least in part because COVID required the prison system to be pretty much locked down.

Epstein, however, remained defensive.

“I’m just not seeing a failure of leadership,’’ she said.

Thornell acknowledged his move to Arizona put him in charge of a much larger system than the one he ran in Maine. He also said the system here is different in everything from the makeup of the inmate population, including gangs, to the climate.

But Thornell said that size is not an issue, saying he faces the same issues here as his counterpart in Texas where 120,000 inmates are behind bars.

Christian Slater, the governor’s press aide, lashed out at the committee as “nothing more than a partisan hit job from legislators who time and again prioritize headlines and political posturing over doing what’s right for the people of Arizona.’’ Nor, he said, is Hobbs unhappy with her choice to head the agency.

“The governor stands by Director Thornell and won’t be intimidated by politically motivated attacks on an agency that has made important progress after years of disastrous mismanagement under her predecessors,’’ Slater said.