Tag Archives: BOP

New DOJ Sheriff Vows To Clean Up Bureau of Prisons – Update for January 16, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

AG NOMINEE COMMITS TO CORRECT CORRECTIONS

sheriff170802During Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi’s otherwise predictable Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday – where Republicans lobbed softball questions and Democrats demonized President-elect Donald Trump – it was noteworthy that in her brief opening statement she devoted several paragraphs to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

“Making America safe again also requires reducing recidivism,” Bondi’s statement asserted. “We must fix the Bureau of Prisons and follow through on the promise of the First Step Act by building new halfway houses. The Bureau has suffered from years of mismanagement, lack of funding, and low morale. Federal corrections officers serve in challenging conditions on minimal pay and need more support. Our prison system can and will do better.”

She noted Trump’s “leadership on criminal justice reform” in securing passage of the First Step Act during his last Administration, a piece of legislation with which the President-elect has had a love-hate relationship ever since. Her statement argued that First Step “demonstrates what is possible when a President is unafraid to do things that have been deemed ‘too difficult’ and to reach across the aisle to bring about real solutions. Like the President, I believe we are on the ‘cusp of a New Golden age’ where the Department of Justice can and will do better.”

Further First Step Act success requires reducing how many prisoners commit another offense after they are released, she said. She vowed to reverse the “years of mismanagement, lack of funding and low morale” that plagues the BOP.

Bondi told the Committee, “We have to fix the Bureau of Prisons, and I am looking on both sides of the aisle.”

If Bondi convinces the incoming President that further implementation of First Step can burnish his image, he is likely to support efforts to expand halfway house resources and clean up BOP. This is a President who can be mercurial on criminal justice. Just last weekend, Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) told Fox News that Trump was “absolutely… supportive” about her set of bills that could have child sexual predators facing the death penalty and would even sign “an executive order levying the death penalty for pedophilia-related crimes but that it would likely be impossible to accomplish that way.”

death200330One can only hope that the incoming President’s grasp of the federal system of governance is sufficient to understand that he cannot change criminal penalties at the stroke of a pen.

Writing in Forbes a week ago, Walter Pavlo noted that Trump’s “hallmark criminal justice reform law, The First Step Act, is still struggling to gain traction. The BOP has accomplished much under Director Peters to implement the program but there are still problems. There is insufficient halfway house and many case managers, the primary BOP employees implementing the program, remain confused over the exact interpretation of the law.”

Opening Statement, Pam Bondi, Nominee for Attorney General of the United States (January 15, 2025)

Washington Times, Pam Bondi, AG nominee, says she will ‘fix’ the Bureau of Prisons (January 15, 2025)

Roll Call, Pam Bondi tells Senate panel she would end ‘partisanship’ at DOJ (January 15, 2025)

Forbes, How Trump Can Shake Up The Bureau Of Prisons (January 6, 2025)

Fox News, Pedophiles could see death penalty under new House GOP bill: ‘Taken off the streets permanently’ (January 14, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

A Fortnight of Clemencies? – Update for January 14, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

BIDEN’S LAST WEEK (AND TRUMP’S FIRST ONE)

imouttahere250114Although time grows short, the White House has not yet walked back Biden’s promise to issue additional pardons and commutations before he leaves the White House for the last time.

Last week, Truthout.org called on Biden to include in his clemency announcement people serving life sentences under Sentencing Guidelines that have been changed (but the changes not being retroactive). Truthout said, “According to the Sentencing Project, ‘one in seven people in U.S. prisons is serving a life sentence, either life without parole, life with parole or virtual life (50 years or more), totaling 203,865 people’ as of 2021. This is the highest number of people in history — a 66% increase since 2003, the first time the census was taken. Many of these people facing ‘death by incarceration’ were sentenced under guidelines that are no longer used.”

Writing in Forbes, Walter Pavlo last week suggested that consistent with Trump’s desire to trim federal spending, he could double down on First Step Act implementation. Pavlo said, “Trump will likely be frustrated that more has not been done on the First Step Act since his first term in office… The purpose of the First Step Act was to put more minimum-security offenders back home sooner but that has not occurred to the level it could. More prisoners in the community means less reliance on aging facilities that Congress seems unwilling to fund to bring up to acceptable standards.”

creditsign181227Pavlo suggested increased Bureau of Prisons’ use of for-profit halfway houses, besides the network of nonprofit halfway bouses now relied on, and updating the BOP’s security and custody classification system to no longer exclude noncitizens and non-contact sex offenses from camps. As well, he said that the Trump Administration urge Congress to broaden FSA credits to include some of the 68 categories of offenses now prohibited from credits, including some sex offenses, some terrorism charges, threats against government officials and 18 USC § 924(c) gun charges.

Finally, he proposed expanding RDAP eligibility to include those without documented prearrest drug and alcohol use.

Pavlo argued, “The BOP’s challenges are unlikely to be solved through increased funding alone. Instead, the focus should be on fully implementing existing programs like the First Step Act and RDAP, revising outdated policies that hinder efficiency and working with Congress to make targeted legislative adjustments.”

All of this is so, but as a Federal News Network reporter noted a few weeks ago, “I don’t think [the BOP] is high on the Trump team’s agenda, but [it] is a deeply distressed agency.”

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas last week argued that some of the targets of Trump’s desire to save money “are familiar, but one that is never mentioned is the amount of money that could be saved by releasing or not incarcerating nonviolent offenders in the first place… That prison reform has not been on a top 10 list of issues for Republicans is no reason it can’t be added now. Saving money and redeeming a system that no longer benefits the incarcerated or the public is a winning issue.”

Last week, Fox News contributor Jessica Jackson wrote that in 2018, “Trump signed the First Step Act into law, delivering long-overdue reforms that both political parties had failed to achieve at the federal level for decades. It was a landmark moment… Now, as Trump returns to the White House, he has a historic opportunity to finish what he started. Two key reforms he could champion — modernizing federal supervision and expanding second chances — offer a chance to cement his legacy as the leader who transformed America’s approach to justice.”

trumpimback250114However, as of right now, the only criminal justice promise Trump has made is to promise to grant clemency to some or all of the 1,580 people charged or convicted of crimes arising from the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill.

Truthout.org, Biden Should Go Beyond Commutations for Death Row and Commute Life Sentences Too (January 8, 2025)

Forbes, How Trump Can Shake Up the Bureau of Prisons (January 6, 2025)

Federal News Network, Countdown to Trump II, and what to expect (December 26, 2024)

Washington Times, Prison and sentencing reform: Saving money in an overlooked place (January 6, 2025)

Fox News, Trump defied the odds to win a criminal justice victory in his first term. Could he do it again? (January 6, 2025)

Washington Post, The fate of nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants depends on Donald Trump (January 6, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

Keeping Score – Update for January 2, 2025

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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

funwithnumbers170511The 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

prisoners221021Federal 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.

longodds191008While 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

Goodbye to 2024 (and Good Riddance, the BOP says) – Update for December 31, 2024

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BOP’S BUMPY END TO 2024

No doubt Colette Peters will be glad to see the last of 2024, even if 2025 and the advent of a Trump presidency makes her continued role as Bureau of Prisons director uncertain. Just in the last few weeks:

deathholiday241231• Death Does Not Take A Holiday: 28-year-old Keenan Byrd died on December 18th at FCI Bennettsville of yet-unannounced causes, 50-year-old Michael Miske died of an overdose of synthetic fentanyl at FDC Honolulu on December 1st, Juan Parrado died last Thursday at FCI Thomson of undisclosed causes, and on December 6th, 41-year-old Jonathan Strader died at FCI Lewisburg died.

NTD Television reported that an “Associated Press investigation uncovered deep-seated problems within the BOP, including rampant sexual abuse, staff criminal conduct, escapes, chronic violence, and severe staffing shortages, which have slowed staff responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides;”

• The Rap Sheet: Former BOP lieutenant Daniel Mitchell pled guilty last week in federal court to conspiracy to violate an inmate’s civil rights by getting another officer to assault a SHU inmate for exposing himself in front of a female BOP officer. The offense carries a 10-year statutory maximum sentence.

Meanwhile, the 9th Circuit last week upheld an 18 USC § 922(g)(8) conviction of an FDC Seatac CO who carried a gun for his private security gig after a domestic protection order was entered against him (the same offense that brought Zackey Rahimi low);

medical told you I was sick221017Finally, former BOP Lieutenant Shronda Covington was found guilty on December 21 of violating an FCI Petersburg inmate’s civil rights by showing deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs. Covington and nurse Tonya Farley, R.N., were both convicted of lying to federal agents about the inmate’s death. Another BOP Lieutenant, Michael Anderson, previously pled guilty to his role in the same death and has been sentenced to 36 months;

unionpicket241231• Union Unrest: I previously reported that the AFGE Council of Prison Locals filed an unfair labor practice claim against the BOP for violating its labor-management agreement with the union by closing FCI Morgantown. It now appears that the ULP claim covers 401 employees at all seven camps being closed, Some employees will be reassigned to other facilities, while others face being let go. The ULP claims the BOP “is obligated under the law to notify and bargain with the union on these changes to working conditions and employment” and asks the Federal Labor Relations Authority to order BOP to halt the closure and to bargain with the union.

Meanwhile, workers at FPC Duluth are mobilizing to prevent the standalone camp’s shutdown. BOP employee and union rep Tanya Gajeski has been garnering support from local congressional leaders like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who said she has spoken to BOP Director Peters about her opposition to the closure, and Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), who questioned the reasoning behind the closure in correspondence to Peters.

WBTW, 28-year-old inmate dies at Bennettsville prison (December 20, 2024)

NTD Television Network, Hawaii Crime Boss Dies of Opioid Overdose in Federal Custody (December 26, 2024)

WQAD, Male inmate dies at FCI Thomson; FBI notified (December 27, 2024)

Sunbury Daily Item, Lewisburg federal inmate dies (December 7, 2024)

United States v. Shuemake, Case No 22-30210, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 32685 (9th Cir. December 26, 2024)

WBTW, Federal prison lieutenant could get 10 years for role in North Carolina inmate’s assault (December 28, 2024)

U.S. Attorney, E.D. Virginia, Former Federal Bureau of Prisons employees convicted of charges arising from their failure to obtain medical care for an inmate who later died from his injuries (December 24, 2024)

AFGE Press Release, AFGE Files Unfair Labor Practice Against BOP for Displacing 400 Workers Without Bargaining with Union (December 23, 2024)

St. Paul Pioneer Press, Duluth Federal Prison Camp workers seek allies in push to save jobs, facility (December 24, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Proposes Kinder, Gentler Money Grab – Update for December 30, 2024

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

BIG MONEY

Remember money160818two years ago, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in response to the 20 inmates out of 150,000 plus who had big money in their commissary accounts? Of course you do, because you’ve read all 1,701 of the LISA Foundation’s posts.

But for those who came in late, in January 2023, the BOP responded to a Washington Post series that revealed that a few high-profile BOP inmates – serial gymnast molester Larry Nasser and sex predator R. Kelly – had very large inmate trust account sums while not paying restitution to victims. The Post reported that “20 inmate accounts [held] more than $100,000 each for a total exceeding $3 million,” but not necessarily that most or all of those people were shirking court-ordered payment obligations.

So 0.013% – that’s thirteen one-thousandths of a percent – of federal inmates had whopping inmate account balances, but not all of them necessarily owed any obligations for which the BOP could take their money. No matter. The BOP responded to this shocking situation by proposing an amendment to its rules that would require the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program to take 75% of anything inmates received from outside sources (such as family and friends) and to apply that seized money toward restitution, fines, child support, tax and other obligations.

Last week, the BOP showed a little Christmas spirit (or maybe common sense), issuing a Supplemental NPRM asking for comment on a softer standard. The agency now proposes a rule that would take none of your outside money if your commissary account is under $250.00; 25% if your account balance is $250.00 but under $1,000.00; 35% for accounts from $1,000.00 but under $2,500.00; 55% from $2,500.00 but under $5,000.00; and 100% of outside money when your balance is over $5,000.00.

IFRP-SNPRM241230Of course, an inmate may refuse to participate in the IFRP program, but doing so today denies an inmate anything more than about $5.00 a month pay for work, a severely limited commissary list from which to buy food and consumer goods, no RDAP “year off” credit, and no halfway house or home confinement (among other restrictions).

The Supplemental NPRM proposes adding to that list no FSA credit, meaning that an inmate would be stripped of the ability to take up to a year off his or her sentence and to get substantial amounts of halfway house or home confinement time.

The current limitations are listed in 28 CFR § 545.11.

paytheman240822The public may comment on the proposed rule by letter or electronic comments by February 18, 2025, through the regulations.gov website or by mail to:

Legislative & Correctional Issues Branch, Office of General Counsel, BOP, 320 1st Street NW, Washington, DC 20534.

Federal Register, Inmate Financial Responsibility Program: Procedures (December 17, 2024)

Forbes, New Rules on Federal Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (December 21, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

Thanksgiving Week: Stuffing Goes With Turkey – Update for November 26, 2024

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STUFFING

Walter Pavlo reported in Forbes last weekend that the Bureau of Prison – despite being told by Congress in the First Step Act almost six years ago to expand halfway house capacity to accommodate prisoners using FSA credits, has increased contracted-for halfway house bed space by a paltry 1% in the last 6 years.

stuffedturkey241126The BOP Office of Public Affairs reported that as of January 1, 2019, the BOP was contracting for 10,408 halfway house beds. As of two months ago, the BOP contracted for 10,553 halfway house beds. Pavlo wrote that “the BOP is now telling some halfway house providers… that they are canceling some solicitations for additional capacity because of ‘budgetary and staffing considerations.’”

Pavlo reported, “Many prisoners and their families are telling me that case managers are telling them that there is no room at halfway houses, and the result is that many minimum security prisoners spend a greater portion of their sentence in prison rather than in the community… BOP notes that ‘many of the unfilled beds in a halfway house are at locations that are hard to fill or are outside of the release residence area of individuals requesting community confinement placement’.”

So the Bureau argues to prisoners that the halfway houses are stuffed without room for people, who therefore lose the benefit of their FSA credits. Pavlo says that’s a myth. He and former BOP Director Hugh Hurwitz surveyed halfway houses and BOP usage of them, finding that only 82% of the BOP’s contracted halfway house capacity is being used. What’s more, the halfway houses have even more space open than that, space the halfway houses would like to fill but is not under BOP contract.

halfwayhouse241126“BOP could look to modify those existing contracts to increase the number of beds available,” Pavlo wrote.

For now, it appears that the halfway house shortage has less to do with stuffed beds and more to do with BOP unwillingness to fill them.

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Halfway Houses Must Change Due to First Step Act (November 23, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

Home Confinement Authority Gathers Dust – Update for November 8, 2024

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HOME CONFINEMENT AUTHORITY AS ‘SHELFWARE’

shelfware241108ABack in the days of the dinosaurs, when computer programs came on CD-ROMs or (even more antediluvian), on stacks of mini-floppies, many of us were familiar with the concept of “shelfware.”

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo reminded us that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has its own version of “shelfware,” a provision in 18 USC § 3624(g)(3) that lets prisoners spend their First Step Act credits – days earned for successful completion of programming under 18 USC § 3632 – on sentence reduction, halfway house or home confinement.

When a prisoner has earned enough FSA credits to where his or her remaining sentence equals the number of FSA credits earned, § 3624(g) requires that the BOP use those credits for one or more of the three options provided. The BOP’s practice is to first apply credits to sentence reduction: up to 365 credits can be used to reduce a sentence by a like number of days. The BOP has been diligent about this, and prisoners have been able to watch their sentences shorten on a monthly basis as FSA credits are earned.

Once the sentence reduction has been maxed out at 365 days, the balance of the credits is to be applied to additional halfway house or home confinement. Pavlo points out that “[t]he First Step Act gives the BOP a lot of discretion to place prisoners in the least restrictive, and least costly, confinement.” While the BOP has sole discretion to decide what that confinement will be, but it must be one of the two.

nobrainer241108A BOP decision to use its home confinement authority should be a no-brainer: The halfway houses are filled, causing prisoners to be denied the use of their credits despite their absolute statutory right to them. Home confinement, however, lacks the space limitations (at least not to the same degree).

Unsurprisingly, the BOP has left it home confinement authority on the shelf. As Pavlo observes, the BOP’s “interpretation of the First Step Act at every turn has been to minimize the use of the law to return prisoners to society sooner. The BOP has the law behind it to move thousands more prisoners into the community and to home confinement, if it only had the will to do so.”

Trust the BOP to mismanage things. Pavlo notes that

[p]risoners with 18 months of First Step Act toward prerelease custody should be sent directly to home confinement but they are languishing in halfway houses using resources they do not need. Other prisoners who are not First Step Act eligible and who have longer prison terms, are being passed over for placement in halfway houses in favor of those on First Step Act. The costs are now higher because a prisoner is staying in a higher security prison because there is no halfway house and a minimum security prisoner is stuck in a halfway house when they could be at home.

What he does not mention is that other prisoners entitled by law to the benefit of FSA credits they have earned are being denied halfway house placement because the places are full, in part with prisoners the BOP could move to home confinement.

The BOP could save money, too. When halfway houses monitor people on home confinement, it charges the BOP about half the cost of keeping them in halfway houses. According to the BOP, an inmate in home confinement cost an average of $55.26 per day as of 2020 —less than half the cost of an inmate in secure custody.

Moneyburn170208President-elect Donald Trump, as one of his plethora of promises made during the campaign, said he would slash federal spending. His disdain for anything related to the DOJ is well known. In a November 7 Forbes article, Pavlo said, “[L]ook for an unhappy Trump look for more ways to cut costs at the BOP. In 2018 when Trump made the cuts the BOP’s budget was $7.1 billion. The BOP has asked for $8.6 billion in FY2025 and another $3 billion to bring its facilities up to date. Spending at these levels is simply not going to happen.”

The BOP is required to let prisoners spend their FSA credits. It may be compelled by circumstances and budget to push FSA credit users, especially those who are minimum security and recidivism risk, to home confinement. Even now, doing so would make good sense, which leads commentators like Pavlo to wonder why the agency hasn’t done so.

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Could Do More To Send People Home, Why Aren’t They? (October 30, 2024)

Dept of Justice, Home Confinement Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, 88 FR 19830 (April 4, 2023)

Forbes, The Bureau Of Prisons Under A Trump Administration (November 7, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

Just in Time for the Holidays: BOP Announces Restrictive Mail Policy – Update for October 25, 2024

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YOU’VE GOT MAIL

Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters announced last week that the agency will introduce new procedures in November 2024 in all prisons other than minimum-security facilities. All general correspondence (including photos and commercial greeting cards) sent to prisoners will be photocopied, and only color photocopies will be provided to the inmate.

mailB241025The new restrictions, which Peters said was a result of “[t]he rise in illicit substances sent to incarcerated individuals through US mail,” will require that all incoming general correspondence must be on plain white paper and in a white envelope. No glitter, labels, stickers, perfume, lipstick, crayon, or marker will be accepted.

Legal and special mail will continue to be opened in the presence of the inmate after BOP investigators verify that the identified sender really is the sender. Peters warned that while efforts would be made to deliver legal mail within 24 hours, that may not happen because “thorough vetting is required to ensure the highest level of security.”

A BOP mailroom supervisor at USP Atwater died last August, apparently from contact with a drug-laden document sent to an inmate by legal mail. Speculation in the media at the time blamed fentanyl for the death, but the three defendants charged in the death thus far have been accused only of a conspiracy to distribute only one named drug, “AB-CHMINACA and MDMB-4en-PINACA, commonly referred to as Spice.”

This is not to say that fentanyl was not a factor, nor that it was uninvolved in the poisoning of a BOP employee at USP Thomson in early September, just that it has not yet been identified as being present. In the Atwater case, it is unlikely that autopsy results will be revealed prior to trial.

United States v. Jones, Case No 1:24-cr-209 (E.D.Cal.)

BOP, Message from the Director and CPL-33 President (October 16, 2024)

AFGE 4070 Press Release, A Correctional Officer was exposed to what was believed to be amphetamines. The staff member was given Narcan before being transported to a local hospital. (September 2, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

Mass Punishment: Always a Bureau of Prisons “Go-To” – Upsate for October 17, 2024

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SWATTING FLIES WITH AN ELEPHANT GUN

BOPemail241017As everyone knows, the Bureau of Prisons’ Trulincs email system was modified on September 30 to limit outsiders (like the LISA Foundation) from sending emails to groups larger than 10 inmates. Previously, the system let an outside user set up groups of up to 1,000 inmates.

Every Sunday night, LISA Foundation would send its newsletter to about 14,000 prisoners. Setting up the email and sending it to 14 separate 1,000-prisoner groups took about a half hour. The system was clunky, but sending the email 14 times was not an enormous inconvenience.

Now, to do the same, LISA would have to send the email about 1,300 times. To do that would take about 68 hours.

Writing in Forbes, Walter Pavlo reported last week that BOP Public Affairs staffer Ben O’Cone told him, “In response to an Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (FBOP) Monitoring of Inmate Communications to Prevent Radicalization (March 2020), the OIG recommended that the FBOP establish controls that mitigate the risk of individuals communicating with unknown and un-vetted parties and take steps, including the utilization of available technological features as found in TRULINCS, to reduce the risk of mass emails being receiving by high-risk individuals, including terrorists. As a result, the FBOP’s Executive Team decided to reduce the number of emails that an outside party could send to a group of incarcerated individuals to ten. This measure was taken to comply with the OIG audit.”

O’Cone was referring to OIG findings that “thousands of communications made by terrorists and other high-risk inmates that were only partially monitored… Overall, we identified more than 7,000 emails that had not been monitored at all, and determined through further testing that some of these emails contained content that needed to be evaluated by the BOP and counterterrorism experts.”

The closest the Report came to recommending the type of group email limit the BOP has imposed was to note that “[w]e agree with BOP staff that reasonable limitations are needed in order to effectively monitor general population emails while also satisfying the monitoring requirements for high-risk inmate communications. The limited time staff has to review emails along with other forms of communication, and the inability to obtain official translations for general population emails without prior approval is concerning because some general population inmates may exhibit radical or other high-risk behavior after incarceration.”

bopproblem241016The Inspector General’s study focused on under 600 inmates identified as terrorist-affiliated and examined a 3-year period ending in December 2017. Now, 7-1/2 years after the study period, the BOP has decided that problems with communications involving one out of 250 inmates ought to result in drastically limiting inmate access to mass emails, many of which are from advocacy groups or news reporting services.

The fly has been swatted.

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons To Restrict Mass Emails To Prisoners (October 8, 2024)

OIG, Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Inmate Communications to Prevent Radicalization (March 25, 2020)

– Thomas L. Root

Senate Passes Bill to Crack Down on Prison Cellphones – Update for October 15, 2024

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

WHO SAYS CONGRESS CAN’T ACT QUICKLY?

quickbunny241015People who have watched Congress let criminal justice reform measures like the EQUAL Act and marijuana reform  – even the two-year trek for the First Step Act – languish for years may be surprised to see that the U.S. Senate can be quick like a bunny when it wants to.

Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) spent two years getting his colleagues to pass last summer’s Federal Prison Oversight Act (S.1401), a bill that tightens Dept of Justice review of prisoner mistreatment. However, when he introduced S.5284 – a bill that makes it a felony for people to smuggle cellphones into prison or for inmates to possess cellphones inside a facility – the Senate only took two days to pass the measure.

cellphonefelony241015The bill passed unanimously. After members return to Washington after the election, the House of Representatives will take up the measure in November. When the House passes the bill (and I expect the House will do so), the bill should dramatically increase prosecutions of inmates and their outside smuggling associates and make the use of cellphones inside much riskier.

Just in the past week, authorities intercept two attempted drone deliveries of contraband at federal facilities, one at FCI Pollock and the other at FCC Beaumont.

S.5284 – Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Stopping Prison Contraband Act

Press Release, Sen. Ossoff’s Bipartisan Bill to Crack Down on Contraband & Organized Crime in Federal Prisons Passes U.S. Senate (October 10, 2024)

DOJ Inspector General, Statement by DOJ IG Michael E. Horowitz on the Senate Passing the “Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Stopping Prison Contraband Act” (October 10, 2024)

KBMT-TV, Jefferson County deputies confiscate drone used to bring contraband into United States Penitentiary (October 7, 2024)

KALB-TV, 2 arrested for flying drone full of contraband into federal prison in Grant Parish (October 10, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root