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IG REPORT ON BOP COVID RESPONSE FINDS NUMBERS WERE JUST AS FUNNY AS EVERYONE SAID THEY WERE

The Dept of Justice Office of Inspector General released a report last week on the BOP’s COVID response, containing little of any surprise to those who lived through it (especially when it came to the Bureau’s incomplete and misleading daily COVID data).

A common complaint by the media (including this blog) during the pandemic related to the BOP’s manipulation of COVID numbers to make the pandemic look less pervasive in the prison system. The BOP reported on the total number of inmates who had tested positive for COVID at a given institution and system-wide, but sometimes the number actually fell from day to day. It turned out the BOP would deduct from the total inmates who had been released, as though their COVID cases never counted because they had never been there.

Complaints at the time that the BOP was cooking the books fell on deaf ears. But now, the IG has placed its seal of disapproval on the BOP’s voodoo medical accounting:

[BOP COVID] active case counts do not include inmates or staff who recovered or died, and the recovered case counts do not include inmates or staff who die, inmates who have subsequently been released from BOP custody, or staff who have left BOP employment. These omissions mean that the BOP’s publicly posted data does not represent the full extent of cumulative COVID-19 cases among inmates and staff over the course of the pandemic. Further, the BOP website does not mention that the staff and inmate recovery data presented excludes inmates who left BOP custody or staff who left BOP employment, which could lead stakeholders to draw incorrect conclusions about the BOP’s data.

The IG noted that “similar issues exist with the BOP’s publicly posted data on testing, which also includes only inmates currently in BOP custody” and which omitted many local tests. BOP vaccination data was also flawed: “BOP does not publish data that allows stakeholders to see the proportion of vaccinated individuals at any of the facilities, as the published data displays only the cumulative number of BOP-administered vaccinations completed at each facility.”

In fact, this blog noted that the BOP’s misleading cumulative numbers had some facilities showing that well more than 100% of the inmate population had been vaccinated. The IG dryly observed that such reporting “could lead stakeholders to draw incorrect conclusions.”

No kidding.

The Inspector General also criticized the BOP’s opaque communications on CARES Act home confinement. The Report “observed that the BOP’s communication with the public regarding home confinement only restated the criteria in the Attorney General’s memoranda without clarifying them in plainer language or describing how the BOP was interpreting or implementing the criteria. For example, while the BOP provided a Frequently Asked Questions section on home confinement on its public website during the pandemic, the section did not mention the additional time-served criteria the BOP was using to determine eligibility for home confinement. Clearly stating to the public how and why the BOP was implementing and prioritizing its expanded home confinement authorities could have helped the BOP be more transparent with inmates and other stakeholders at a time of high stress and uncertainty.”

DOJ Inspector General, Capstone Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic (March 20, 2023)

Govt Executive, Here’s How the Prisons Agency Fared During the Pandemic (March 21, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root