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COURT-APPOINTED SPECIAL MASTER DECLARES BOP MANAGEMENT OF FCI DUBLIN ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’
There are no cute spotted puppies in Special Master Wendy Still’s 101-page report on FCI Dublin, made public last week in the class action case pending in Oakland, California, federal court against the Bureau of Prisons.
US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the report released at an August 2 hearing where BOP attorneys argued the suit should be dismissed. Gonzalez Rogers has yet to issue a ruling on that request, but the report was unsealed last week.
Still’s report had very little good to say about Dublin or the BOP, finding an “unconscionable” pattern of derelict care and oversight at the now-closed women’s prison and “rais[ing] the alarm that similar problems may be plaguing other federal prisons across the nation,” according to the San Jose Mercury-News.
Special Master Still, a veteran corrections professional, listed a litany of policy failures at Dublin, including inadequate medical care, improper investigations into sex abuse reports, unnecessary disciplinary measures, lack of FSA and RDAP programming and a completely broken administrative remedy system. “The cascade of failures in operational practice has led to staff and [adults in custody] becoming discouraged and to lose confidence in the ability of the BOP to protect/support them,” Still wrote.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers appointed Still as the first special master of a federal prison in history after the Judge made an unannounced visit to Dublin in February and declared the prison to be “a dysfunctional mess.” Still had only been on the job 10 days when the BOP announced Dublin would be closed and started hustling prisoners out the door, a fall-of-Kabul-style evacuation that was halted by Judge Gonzalez Rogers only after Still called the Court to report that the buses were loaded and idling in the parking lot.
Still’s report chronicles systemic failures at Dublin from sexual abuse recordkeeping to boilerplate BP-9 responses to medical care to the second worst short-staffing in the Western Region. She singled out medical care, noting that “nurses and doctors at the prison often failed to adequately examine inmates “even when the patients presented with symptoms of serious medical conditions,” the report said. Patients were denied timely access to care for physical ailments or mental illness, with Still finding “serious deficiencies” in the prison’s specialty care medical records.
The failures Still noted were not limited to Dublin. She wrote
In addition to the dysfunction noted by the Court, the [Special Master] found numerous operational, policy and constitutional violations as outlined in the body of this report. This included the failure of Central Office and Regional Office management to correct significant and longstanding deficiencies that had previously been iden[ti]fied in multiple audits and investigations. Furthermore, management’s failure to ensure staff adhered to BOP policy put the health, safety and liberty of AICs at great risk for many years. It is unconscionable that any correctional agency could allow incarcerated individuals under their control and responsibility to be subject to the conditions that existed at FCI-Dublin for such an extended period of time without correction.
This Special Master continues to have concerns that the mistreatment, neglect and abuse the AICs received at FCI-Dublin not be repeated at the facilities where these individuals are being transferred to as many of the conditions that existed at this facility appear to be longstanding and systemic in nature.”
Still’s report said that more than 600 women removed from Dublin have filed reports in court of similar problems at other prisons. “It is critical to note that some of the deficiencies and issues exposed within this report are likely an indication of systemwide issues with the BOP,” Still wrote, “rather than simply within FCI Dublin.”
“What happened at Dublin did not happen in a vacuum — it was extremely open and obvious what the warden and others were doing at the time,” said Kara Janssen, an attorney helping to oversee the class-action lawsuit. “Until they fix the broken system, we’re just waiting for the next Dublin. They’re being caused by the failures at the top” of the federal Bureau of Prisons.
In an email, BOP spokeswoman Randilee Giamusso said the agency “welcomes the report and will work with Still on her findings and recommendations.” Of course it does, just like Ms. Giamusso probably welcomes a root canal without anesthetic.
Courthouse News Service, Unsealed court monitor’s report describes ‘cascade of failures’ at Bay Area women’s prison (August 5, 2024)
San Jose Mercury News, Federal prison leaders excoriated for ‘unconscionable’ conditions at shuttered FCI Dublin women’s prison (August 6, 2024)
Case No. 4:23-cv-04155 (NDCal), First Report of the Special Master Pursuant to the Court’s Order of March 26, 2024
– Thomas L. Root