We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
BOP ANNOUNCES IT IS NEW AND IMPROVED DURING AN OTHERWISE BAD WEEK
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters last week unveiled new BOP core values, mission and vision statements even as the rest of last week’s news seemed to describe the same-old same-old.
Last week a BOP jargon-heavy press release crowed that with the COVID-19 pandemic waning, the Bureau’s
executive team began examining the Bureau’s strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. Rising up to the 40,000-foot level and beginning to discuss, ‘Where do we want to go?’ and ‘What could the future look like?’ allowed those conversations to be leveraged as the executive team reviewed the Bureau’s existing mission, vision and core values. New thoughts began to unfold and take shape.
Seriously? 40,000 feet? Leveraged conversations? Thoughts unfolding like some origami business plan? One observer complained to me that it was “management gibberish.” Another noted, “Typical BOP management. From 40,000 feet, no one can see what’s happening on the ground.”
The BOP is not deterred. It says its “new mission” is “[c]orrections professionals who foster a humane and secure environment and ensure public safety by preparing individuals for successful reentry into our communities.” This compares to the old mission of “protect[ing] society by confining offenders in the controlled environments of prisons and community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens.”
Vive la différence!
The BOP’s new “Vision Statement” is “[o]ur highly-skilled, diverse, and innovative workforce creates a strong foundation of safety and security. Through the principles of humanity and normalcy, we develop good neighbors.”
A Federal News Network commentator suggested last week that there’s a real gulf between the BOP’s aspirations and reality that may be 40,000 feet wide: “Pay is low. Turnover is high. Many move on to better federal law enforcement jobs. Imagine the choice: Reporting to ADX Florence versus, say, Denver International Airport each day. At least TSA officers can stroll over to Panda Express for lunch.”
Gretta Goodwin, the GAO manager supervising justice issues, noted that despite a hiring initiative announced over two years ago, the BOP still has more than 5,000 vacancies out of a staff authority of 40,000. “Staffing problems stem from the BOP’s general shortfalls in planning, programming, and program assessment capacity,” FNN said. For example, Goodwin observed, the “BOP remains unable to provide a simple list of ‘unstructured activities’” that qualify for FSA credits. “She wonders whether officials count staring at a cell wall as an unstructured activity,” FNN said.
Last week, BOP wardens from the system’s 122 facilities gathered outside Denver for the first nationwide training since the FCI Dublin sexual abuse revelations became public.
Abuse so pervasive that it involves a warden is rare, Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department Inspector General, said, but “clusters of allegations against correctional officers and other staff are more common… One of the challenges the BOP faces is making sure that when you have a cancer in your institution, you get it out right away. Because if you don’t take steps to stop it, it spreads and grows.”
The training took place as The Appeal reported that sexual abuse at FCI Tallahassee, which “has escaped serious scrutiny,” is described in “more than a dozen civil and criminal cases filed against FCI Tallahassee staffers over the past decade, which contained disturbing allegations consistent with the incarcerated women’s accounts. Sources provided nearly uniform descriptions of the climate at the prison, often sharing painful details about the experiences of their fellow prisoners.” Sexual abuse there has been “rampant,” the online newsletter reported.
Meanwhile, in Alabama, a federal grand jury indicted former BOP correctional officer Robert D. Smith with two counts of sexually abusing (raping) two female inmates at the FCI Aliceville in 2018 and 2019.
It’s not just sexual abuse. Last week, the Kansas City Star reported family abuse as well. “Nearly two weeks after her son’s death in a Leavenworth federal prison, Tracie Washington still doesn’t know what happened to him,” according to the Star. Trenton Washington died on April 15 after he was found unconscious in his cell the day before, according to a news release from the USP Leavenworth.
Multiple family members have called the prison dozens of times, left voicemails for the prison chaplain, waited on half-hour-long holds and endured rude comments from staff, according to the report. BOP officials the family spoke to “gave conflicting information on details ranging from Washington’s time of death to where officials found him, Tracie Washington said. ‘I was never told anything,’ she said. ‘So, how do you go on and bury your child, but you don’t even know what happened to your child?’”
Finally, NPR reported last week on the pending rulemaking that may adopt a rule requiring that 75% of all the money family and friends send an inmate go to pay outstanding debts.
The BOP “is considering the rule change after a Washington Post investigation raised concerns about high-profile people, like sex offender and former rap artist R. Kelly, keeping large sums of money in their prison accounts rather than paying restitution to their victims,” NPR says.
Sending money to prisoners is “already an impact to families like myself that are supporting their loved ones,” one family member said, “but then to do something like this it’s only making it more challenging.”
The BOP would only tell NPR that commissary accounts are a privilege and that the Bureau remains committed to assisting inmates in paying their financial obligations. Officials say they will be reviewing public comments carefully, and that there isn’t a deadline for a decision on this rule being made.
BOP, BOP Announces New Mission, Vision and Core Values (April 28, 2023)
Federal News Network, How Bureau of Prisons can escape its own cage (April 25, 2023)
Federal Times, Federal prison sex abuse must be rooted out, Justice official says (April 27, 2023)
The Appeal, Women Report ‘Rampant’ Sexual Abuse at Federal Prison Where Ghislaine Maxwell is Held (April 25, 2023)
US Attorney ND Ala, Bureau of Prisons Corrections Officer Charged With Sexually Abusing Two Female Inmates (April 27, 2023)
Kansas City Star, ‘Never told anything’: Family searches for answers after man dies at Leavenworth prison (April 28, 2023)
NPR, Federal prisons want inmates to pay victims, before making phone calls or buying shoes (April 28, 2023)
– Thomas L. Root
COVID is largely dead and gone, having been demoted from pandemic to endemic, allowing for a sober review of the BOP’s response. Last week, Stat – a Boston Globe health science publication – ran a statistics-based study of how BOP managed the pandemic. The review wasn’t pretty.
Commentators have complained for several years that the BOP’s COVID stats were deeply flawed, especially because of the agency’s practice of deleting from the total number of inmates who caught COVID people who were subsequently released or transferred to another facility. To this day, no one outside the BOP has any idea of the extent of the pandemic from April 1, 2020, to May 11, 2023. As of the last day COVID stats were reported, the BOP said it had 43,681 inmates who had recovered from COVID. At its peak, the BOP reported more than 55,000 cases.
