We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
BITTERSWEET ANNIVERSARY FOR PREA
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters last week commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Prison Rape Elimination Act in a statement that acknowledged “our dedicated employees who have worked diligently over the last two decades to uphold the letter of the law” while she hinted at PREA’s rocky ride with the BOP culture over the past two decades.
“The culture of the past which tolerated abuse and failed to meet the promises of PREA,” she warned, “will be met with swift justice. All individuals in our custody have a right to be physically, mentally, and sexually safe.”
Putting an ugly asterisk on her statement, former BOP employee Gregory Barrett, described by the Lexington Herald Leader as a “senior officer at a federal prison in Lexington” (the FMC Lexington minimum security prison camp for women) pled guilty to sexual abuse of an inmate multiple times between June and July 2022, according to the plea agreement. Last October, Barrett threatened and intimidated an inmate witness to the crimes, telling her to “keep her mouth shut” and suggesting retaliation if she reported the crime.
Washington Post columnist George Will, writing about the doctrine of qualified immunity a week ago, said, “Americans would gag if they had an inkling of what occurs, unreported, in prisons. Americans should, however, be sickened when judges, with hairsplitting misapplications of qualified immunity, openly abet governmental malfeasance that allows prison violence. When prisoners depend on protection by governments that cannot be held accountable for culpable indifference, mayhem proliferates, lethally.”
BOP, PREA 20-Year Anniversary (September 1, 2023)
Lexington, Kentucky, Herald Leader, Former federal prison officer in Lexington pleads guilty to sexually abusing an inmate (August 29, 2023)
Washington Post, Four prison murders lead to a sickening ruling on ‘qualified immunity’ (August 23, 2023)
– Thomas L. Root