We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
SOME NUMBERS TO START THE NEW YEAR
The Price of an Overnight Stay in an Econolodge: The Department of Justice is required to regularly publish figures showing how much it costs to keep a federal prisoner, the so-called Cost of Incarceration Fee.
The DOJ has announced that the average annual COIF for a Federal inmate housed in the Bureau of Prisons or a non-BOP facility in FY 2023 was $44,090 ($120.80 per day). The average annual COIF for a Federal inmate housed in a Residential Reentry Center (halfway house) for FY 2023 was $41,437 ($113.53 per day).
Federal Register, Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration Fee (COIF) (December 6, 2024), 89 FR 97072
Federal Prisoners by the Numbers: The DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics released some interesting numbers on the state of the federal prison population after the fifth year of the First Step Act (for Calendar Year 2023).
As of December 31, 2023,
• the federal prison population had decreased about 2% the year before, from 158,637 to 155,972;
• 8,388 military veterans were incarcerated in the BOP, more than 5% of BOP’s total;
• The number of non-U.S. citizens in federal prison stood at 22,817 (14.6% of the prison population), down from both prior years;
• The average daily special housing unit (SHU) population was 11,974, an 18% increase from 2022 and a total of 7.7% of the BOP population;
• In 2023, BOP staff were physically assaulted by federal prisoners 872 times, resulting in only six serious injuries and only three prisoner prosecutions;
• About 54% of the 143,291 persons in federal prison who had been assessed with the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs (PATTERN) tool were classified as minimum or low risk for recidivism, about 26% as high risk and about 19% as medium risk;
• About 52% of male federal prisoners were classified as minimum or low risk for recidivism, compared to about 82% of female federal prisoners;
• About 60% of black and 58% of American Indian or Alaskan Native federal prisoners were classified by PATTERN as having a medium or high risk of recidivism, compared to about only 36% of white and 25% of Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander federal prisoners;
• 83% of federal prisoners between 55 to 64 and 94% of those age 65 or older were classified by PATTERN as having a minimum or low risk of recidivism.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Prisoner Statistics Collected Under the First Step Act, 2024 (December 11, 2024)
Don’t Like Them Odds: Business Insider has published a remarkable series on prisons, which I will write about in the coming weeks. For now, it’s worth noting the sobering odds against any prisoner success in litigation over serious claims of sexual assault, retaliatory beatings, prolonged solitary confinement, and untreated cancers.
Prisoners lose (either in court or by failing to win any reasonable settlement) 85% of the time.
While nationally, about 75% of all civil suits (and half of non-prisoner suits settle), only 14% of prisoner 8th Amendment cases do. Business Insider said, “Many of the settlements were sealed. Of the rest, none involved an admission of wrongdoing by prison officials. BI was able to identify just six cases that settled for $50,000 or more; half of those… involved prisoner deaths.”
The non-sealed settlements were for “modest amounts,” BI said. “An Oregon prisoner received $251 over a claim that she was sexually assaulted by another prisoner and then pepper-sprayed by a guard. A Nevada prisoner got $400 on a claim that guards beat and pepper-sprayed him while he was in restraints. A New York prisoner won $2,000 for claims that he suffered debilitating pain while prison officials delayed treating his degenerative osteoarthritis.”
In only 11 cases — less than 1% of the 1,488 cases from 2018-2022 that BI studied – did the plaintiffs win relief in court.
Business Insider, The 1% (December 26, 2024)
– Thomas L. Root