We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
‘WE’VE GOT SOME CONCERNS, DIRECTOR’
The Sentencing Project, which recently reported on the large number of people serving sentences of longer than 10 years (52% of BOP inmates have such sentences, about average for the nation’s prison systems), sponsored a letter last Tuesday to BOP Director Colette Peters.
The letter asked her “to bring the Bureau into compliance with federal law and to lead the Bureau toward a more humane future grounded in transparency and accountability.” It cited “inadequate medical care, overcrowding, staff shortages, unsanitary conditions, violence, and abuse” in facilities across the BOP system. It noted that when “COVID-19 first threatened federal prisons, the Bureau could have embraced compassionate release as a tool to reduce the prison population and protect the most vulnerable people in federal prisons. Instead, the Bureau chose to attempt to use solitary confinement and lockdowns to reduce the spread of COVID-19, a practice internationally condemned as torture. Today, COVID-19 restrictions still define life within federal prisons, including 78 level three facilities which remain under intense modifications with minimal access to rehabilitative programming.”
At the end of last week, the BOP reported 477 inmates and 716 staff sick with COVID, spread over 110 facilities.
The letter called on the BOP to “use its power to file motions for compassionate release in extraordinary or compelling circumstances.” As well, it asked the BOP to step up calculating and applying time credits, complaining that agency foot-dragging was “keeping people from their loved ones months after they should have qualified for release to community corrections.” Ironically, this demand came only two days before the BOP issued its memo (see preceding story).
Finally, the letter cited FCI Dublin, USP Atlanta and USP Thomson as emblematic of BOP “of corruption and abuse and inaction.” The letter said, “We urge you to set a new standard and lead the Bureau towards transparency and accountability. The men and women incarcerated in federal prisons deserve safety, health, compliance with federal law, and to be treated with dignity.”
Not mentioned was FCI Carswell. Last week, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) urged the House Committee on the Judiciary to hold a hearing in North Texas to investigate sexual assaults in federal prisons, in response to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigation into systemic sexual abuse and cover-ups at a federal prison in Fort Worth.
The paper reported that its request to interview Director Peters about Carswell had been denied because her schedule “is very full her first few months, but we can re-visit this request in the future.”
No doubt she’s quite busy, but with all due respect, the issues being complained about are serious and may be system-wide. Being unable to find a few hours to prepare and sit for an interview with a newspaper that is laser-focused on the issue (one which is attracting some Congressional concern) seems somewhat short-sighted, even if only from a public relations angle.
Sentencing Project, How Many People Are Spending Over a Decade in Prison? (September 8, 2022)
Sentencing Project, Formerly Incarcerated People and Advocacy Organizations Urge Reform of US Bureau of Prisons (September 6, 2022)
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Congressman calls for federal investigation into ‘horrors’ at Fort Worth women’s prison (September 7, 2022)
– Thomas L. Root