Tag Archives: BOP

BOP Officers Union Fakes Out NBC, Washington Post, With Inmate Luxury Story – Update for January 10, 2019

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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.

UNPAID BOP WORKERS CLAIM THAT INMATES HAVE IT SWEET TURNS OUT TO BE “FAKE NEWS”

NBC News reported last Sunday that the partial government shutdown that continues without an end in sight has “created a delicious irony at federal prisons — inmates dining on lavish holiday meals in front of disgruntled staffers forced to work without pay.”

prisonfood190110Several BOP food service employees complained to NBC News that the Christmas and New Year’s Day meals inmates traditionally receive “aggravate[ed] staffers who were already fretting about bills to pay and children to feed.: The report cited steak and shrimp served Jan. 1 at FCI Pekin, Cornish hen and Boston creme pie at MDC Brooklyn, and “heaping plates of chicken wings” served at an unidentified federal prison in Minnesota.

“You’re giving a gift to somebody who committed a crime, but yet you won’t pay the people who are supervising them?” NBC quoted a food service foreman at FMC Rochester complaining. “It’s frustrating and maddening.” In addition to working without pay, many of the prison staffers, including correctional officers, were ordered to cut vacations short or face a loss in wages and possible administrative punishment, including suspensions.

fakenews190110Well, it turns out that the “several BOP food service employees” who complained were part of a well-orchestrated union campaign, one the news outlets swallowed hook, line and sinker. Reason.com reported on Monday that in order “to make themselves look like the victims in this government shutdown, union officials shopped around a story to multiple media outlets about criminals being treated like kings while prison guards have to freelance as Uber drivers.” Reason said

It’s a bit amazing (and disappointing) how many outlets ran with this tale in exactly the form union reps likely preferred. Over at USA Today, Kevin Johnson described these meals as a “display of culinary largesse.” Cleve Wootson, Jr., at The Washington Post called it an example of the “hypocritical” or “ironic” moments of the federal shutdown. NBC called it a “delicious irony” that unpaid staffers had to feed “fancy” food to the inmates. Characterizing this series of parallel-but-unrelated events as a role reversal suggests that we should be treating prisoners poorly. The reporters can take solace in knowing that, generally, we do.

Adding to the staffers’ bitter feelings, NBC News said, “the working inmates were still drawing government paychecks for their prison jobs, which include painting buildings, cooking meals and mowing lawns.”

NBC News, Hard to digest: Inmates eat holiday steak during shutdown while prison workers go unpaid (Jan. 6)

Reason.com, Prison Guards Orchestrate Media Campaign To Complain About Inmates Getting Edible Food for Christmas (Jan. 7)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP’s Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week – Update for November 29, 2018

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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.

BOP WALKS INTO BAD PRESS BUZZSAW

baddayA181130BOP Acting Director Hugh J. Hurwitz probably felt more like the dinner than the diner by the time Thanksgiving rolled around a week ago, after the beating his agency took in the media in the preceding days.

First, the New York Times published a long story detailing the sexual harassment suffered by female BOP staff. “For women who work in federal prisons, where they are vastly outnumbered by male colleagues and male inmates,” the Times wrote, “concealing every trace of their femininity is both necessary and, ultimately, futile… Some inmates… stare… grope, threaten and expose themselves. But what is worse, according to testimony, court documents, and interviews with female prison workers, male colleagues can and do encourage such behavior, undermining the authority of female officers and jeopardizing their safety. Other male employees join in the harassment themselves.”

The Times found that women who reported harassment “face retaliation, professional sabotage and even termination,” while the careers of many male BOP harassers and those who protect them flourish. The Times named names.

But The Gray Lady wasn’t done with the BOP. Two days later, the paper ran a detailed piece questioning how Whitey Bulger ended up at Hazleton general population, where he was promptly murdered. The Times reported, “Several prison workers questioned why so many people at Coleman and in the Texas office would have approved a transfer of Mr. Bulger to Hazelton, a facility that houses some inmates tied to organized crime and that has a reputation for being dangerous for snitches. The workers also questioned why staff members at Hazelton would have approved placing Mr. Bulger in the prison’s general population. Mr. Bulger was the third inmate to be killed at Hazelton this year.”

The paper quoted one unnamed worker who said, “That was a monumental failure and a death sentence for Whitey.”

The Times said the BOP issued a statement saying that Bulger’s transfer to Hazelton was made in accordance with its policy, including a review of whether inmates there were known to be a threat to him.

mental181130Meanwhile, The Marshall Project suggested that the BOP’s 2014 policy that promised better care and oversight for inmates with mental-health issues was a fraud. “Data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that instead of expanding treatment, the bureau has lowered the number of inmates designated for higher care levels by more than 35 percent.” TMP says prison staff are determining that prisoners—some with long histories of psychiatric problems—don’t require any routine care at all. As of last February, the BOP classified just 3% of inmates as having a mental illness serious enough to require regular treatment. By comparison, more than 30% of California state prisoners receive care for a “serious mental disorder.” In New York, its 21%, and In Texas, it’s about 20%.

TMP says that when BOP changed its rules, “officials did not add the resources needed to implement them, creating an incentive for employees to downgrade inmates to lower care levels.”

The New York Times, Hazing, Humiliation, Terror: Working While Female in Federal Prison (Nov. 17, 2018)

The New York Times, The Whitey Bulger Murder Mystery: Two Assailants and a Prison Full of Suspects (Nov. 19, 2018)

The Marshall Project, Treatment Denied: The Mental Health Crisis in Federal Prisons (Nov. 20, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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#themtoo: BOP Not Doing Right By Female Inmates, DOJ Says – Update for September 26, 2018

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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.

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A LITTLE BIT OF NOTHING FOR THE LADIES

womenprison170821Sure, they’re all inmates. But only the most callous observer would suggest that forcing female inmates to undergo strip searches in front of male Bureau of Prisons personnel is all right, because, after all, “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime…” and all that claptrap. It turns out that a critical shortage of BOP correctional officers is having a disparate effect on the 10,567 female inmates held in the system, the Dept. of Justice Inspector General reported last Thursday. “The lack of sufficient staff is most noticeable at larger female institutions,” the OIG Report said.

As of September 2016,  female inmates represented 7% of the BOP sentenced inmate population of 146,084. The OIG review was sparked in part by Congress and public interest groups raising concerns with DOJ about deficiencies in BOP’s current management of female inmates.

magicrabbit180927Although BOP policy requires that female prisoners can only be searched by female correctional officers, the BOP is unable to ensure a female officer is available at each post where such searches are required, the report says. The report also concluded that 90% of the female inmate population would benefit from trauma treatment, but staffing shortages make it nearly impossible to provide eligible inmates with the care they need, according to the report.

In a response attached to the report, Hugh Hurwitz, acting BOP director, said he agrees with the IG’s recommendations and vowed to improve both staffing and training.  How he is going to pull that off in light of the BOP’s budget reductions ought to be a neat trick.

Washington Times, Staffing shortages blocking female inmates from critical services (Sept. 18, 2018)

Dept. of Justice Office of Inspector General, Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of Its Female Inmate Population (Sept. 17, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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We’ve Got the Shorts – Update for September 7, 2018

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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. Today, a couple of short takes from last week’s federal criminal news…

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AND YET THEY LOCK UP THE INMATES…

Frank Lara, BOP’s Assistant Director for Correctional Programs until his resignation earlier this year, is now working at director of operations of private prison-owner The GEO Group. The company is one of the largest private prison contractors housing federal inmates, having received $147 million in BOP awards during fiscal 2017.

conflictmix180907In a January 24, 2018, memo entitled “Increasing Population Levels in Private Contract Facilities,” Lara directed wardens to identify inmates for transfer to private facilities, saying it would “alleviate the overcrowding at Bureau of Prisons’ institutions and maximize the effectiveness of private contracts.” The memo mentioned only one facility by name, Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, N.C., which is owned and operated by the GEO Group.

Government Executive magazine reported that The GEO Group did not respond to several emails, and when asked about the hiring over the phone, a company official hung up.

A correctional officers’ union local leader called Lara’s move “the biggest damn conflict of interest that I’ve ever seen.”

Government Executive, Federal Official Boosted Use of Private Prisons; Now He Has a Top Job at One (Aug. 29, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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STUDY UNCOUPLES SENTENCE LENGTH FROM RECIDIVISM

recividists160314A Dept. of Justice-funded study published last month found that the average length of a federal sentence could be reduced by 7.5 months with a small impact on recidivism. The authors concluded from the data that “length‐of‐stay effects do not vary by criminal history, offense seriousness, sex, race, and education level.”

The study concluded that reducing the average length of stay for the federal prison population by 7.5 months could save the BOP 33,203 beds once the inmate population reaches steady state.

Criminology & Public Policy, Relationship Between Prison Length of Stay and Recidivism: A Study Using Regression Discontinuity and Instrumental Variables with Multiple Break Points (Aug. 8, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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BOP Staffing,MCC New York Conditions, Draw Media Scrutiny – Update for June 27, 2018

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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.

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BOP STAFFING, PRISON CONDITIONS TAKE IT ON THE CHIN

Last week was a bad one, publicity-wise, for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. First, The New York Times reported that a shortage of correctional officers has grown chronic under President Trump, leading to an increase in assaults on staff and contraband. Then, a New York City magazine ran a hard-hitting story on the deplorable conditions at MCC New York.

punchinface180423The Times said correctional officer vacancies has ballooned to over 2,100 (about 12% of the CO workforce). As a result, the paper said, “the practice of drawing upon other workers has become routine — many prisons have been operating in a perpetual state of staffing turmoil, leaving some workers feeling ill-equipped and unsafe on the job.”

In Obama’s last two years, the BOP hired 2,644 new Cos in 2016. Last year, the number dropped to 372, with the BOP eliminating about 5,000 unfilled jobs, including about 1,500 CO positions.

Cuts are occurring even though Congress increased the BOP budget for salaries and expenses by $106 million this year, and lawmakers have called for hiring more COs. As of March, there were 15,927 officers in federal prisons.

A BOP press officer said the cuts “will not have a negative impact on public safety or on our ability to maintain a safe environment for staff and inmates.” But assaults on prison staff have risen more than 8% last year over the previous year.

dungeon180627Meanwhile, The Gothamist (a magazine published by public radio station WNYC) last week savaged conditions at MCC New York. The article described “a rat-infested, high-rise hell just yards from the federal courts… That could be exactly the way jailers and prosecutors want it. Pre-trial detention, which often lasts years, can become not only unsafe, but coercive; as a result, individuals are pressured to provide information to prosecutors or accept plea deals in their desperation to be released, say former prisoners.” 

“You want to plead guilty and get out of this dump to a prison,” one former inmate told the magazine. “The feds have a 98% conviction rate for a reason,”, another former prisoner said. “They mentally break you… There are certain things that go on in these places that the government covers so the public would never know.”

The New York Times, Safety Concerns Grow as Inmates Are Guarded by Teachers and Secretaries (June 17, 2018)

The Gothamist, Prisoners Endure A Nightmare ‘Gulag’ In Lower Manhattan, Hidden In Plain Sight (June 19, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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Like a Mouse Between Two Cats, BOP Director Just Got Tired of It – Update for May 30, 2018

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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. 

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BOP DIRECTOR QUIT BECAUSE OF SESSIONS AND KUSHNER

As we reported last week, BOP director Mark Inch quietly resigned, ironically packing up his office a week ago last Friday even as President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was praising Inch’s leadership during a White House conference on prison reform. At the time, no one knew why he quit.

CatChasingMouse180530Now we do. The New York Times reported late last Thursday that Inch, a retired Army major general who had been appointed to oversee the Bureau just nine months ago, felt marginalized by Kushner’s prison reform planning, according to three unnamed sources the Times said had with knowledge of the situation. But even more than his ire at Kushner, Inch – a consummate bureaucrat – was frustrated with his boss, Attorney General Sessions, and believed he was in caught in the crossfire of a turf war between Kushner and Sessions, like Ben Franklin’s proverbial “mouse between two cats.”

Sessions had frozen Inch out of budget, staffing, and policy decisions, the Times reported, refusing even to approve his choice for deputy prisons director, the Times reports. For months Inch pleaded with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to install Sara M. Revell, North Central Region director, as his top deputy. Rosenstein repeatedly told Inch that Sessions had not yet approved the appointment. Inch reportedly resented Sessions’ habit of communicating with him through junior DOJ lawyers.

Inch also told Rosenstein he was tired of the Trump administration flouting “departmental norms,” and he was frustrated by Sessions trying to thwart Kushner’s reforms. This hardly meant that Inch was a fan of the FIRST STEP Act, however: the Times said Inch objected to the Kushner-backed requirement that inmates be placed in prisons within 500 miles of their homes. He also believed the FIRST STEP earned-credits program for more halfway house was impractical, in part because of a lack of available beds in halfway houses.

inch180530Mostly, it seems Inch was offended that he was largely excluded from discussion of prison reform bill. Even that shutout appears to have been engineered by Sessions. Two senior White House officials said Kushner made a point of inviting Inch to prison reform meetings, but Sessions often sent other officials in his place.

The Times said Inch – whose career was spent in the Army criminal justice and prison system – struggled to publicly explain the BOP’s response to sexual harassment, halfway house and staffing problems. Watching Inch testify before Congress was like getting a tooth pulled without novocaine. The director practiced James H. Boren’s bureaucrat’s creed: “When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.”

The New York Times, Turf War Between Kushner and Sessions Drove Federal Prisons Director to Quit (May 24, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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BOP Director Does the Seagull Thing – Update for May 21, 2018

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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. 

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BOP DIRECTOR SUDDENLY QUITS – MARKY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE…

Last Friday, at about the same time Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner was praising Bureau of Prisons Director Mark Inch’s accomplishments at a White House prison reform summit, Inch was signing his resignation letter. What no one knows is why.

Inch180521Inch, who as Commanding General of the Army’s Criminal Investigation and Corrections Commands, was the Army’s top cop. Inch served as an MP for 35 years, being promoted into flag ranks without ever serving in a combat unit. At Congressional hearings, he impressed us as little more than a Power Point Ranger (a derisive Army term for an officer who is more at home delivering Power Point briefings to fellow bureaucrat officers than schlepping his TA-50 and an M4 with a command of soldiers). Inch, whose uniform – bereft of any device suggesting he’d gotten within hearing distance of combat or, for that matter, had any appreciable warfighting training at all –  even drew scorn from members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last April for his lack of information and evasive answers to the committee members’ questions. And these people are politicians who steep in bullshit every day.

seagullmission180521To be sure, General Inch seems to have pulled off a classic seagull mission – fly in, crap all over everything, fly out again. Halfway house  time was slashed during his watch. In the Second Chance Act, Congress increased the amount of halfway house the BOP could authorize for an inmate from six to 12 months. Now, with eight months of Inch’s leadership, the BOP has people who served 15 years plus lucky to get 90 days to transition from prison to self-reliance and employment. Last summer, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III picked Inch to clean up the BOP, but if anything, controversy surrounding the agency only increased since that time. While there has been strong media implication the BOP’s hard times caused Inch’s resignation, there is no direct evidence that this is so.

The New York Times reported that “it was not immediately clear why Mr. Inch, a retired Army major general who had joined the bureau in September, resigned.” USA Today called him “director of the embattled federal Bureau of Prisons.” The Washington Times referred to him as “the embattled director” of the BOP.

The Times noted the BOP “has been the target of a probe by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. For the past year, the bureau has been dogged by sexual harassment staffing shortages. An April USA Today article alleged the bureau had used hundreds of staffers to fill guard posts because of shortages and overtime rules.”

Hugh Hurwitz, former BOP assistant director for reentry programs, will step in as acting director. Hurwitz is pretty much a BOP lifer, having started his career as a law clerk in the Bureau’s office of the general counsel in 1988. 

New York Times, Director of Bureau of Prisons Steps Down (May 18, 2018)

USA Today, Federal prisons chief Mark Inch abruptly resigns from job he took over in September (May 18, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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Congress, Media Force BOP to Back Down on Book Restriction – Update for May 7, 2018

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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. 

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BOP REVERSES COURSE ON BOOK LIMITATIONS

Next to watching the FBI walk a Bureau of Prisons employee off the premises in handcuffs, there is nothing BOP management hates more than congressional heat. Last week provided a perfect illustration of that basic truth, as the BOP hastily reversed a controversial policy that had was making it harder and more expensive for inmates to receive books by banning direct delivery through the mail from publishers, bookstores and book clubs.

books180507The policy banned books from outside sources, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Instead, prisoners would have had to submit a request to purchase books through an ordering system run by the commissary in which they would pay list price, shipping and a 30% markup, and could buy hardcover books only, according to memos distributed in at least three BOP facilities. Under the new protocol, a book Amazon might sell for as little as $11.76, including shipping, could cost more than $26.00.

The book policy has been in effect at USP Atwater since last October, USP Victorville since February, and reportedly at USP Lee as well. But the issue only erupted publicly last month at House oversight hearings on the BOP, where Director Inch had his head handed to him by Congresswoman Karen Bass, who raised the issue of the policy being implemented at USP Coleman and lambasted the Director for adopting a policy that seemingly banned books.

We reported last month that Inch seemed nonplussed, saying he was unaware of the Coleman policy and would look into it. When he suggested Rep. Bass might misunderstand the policy, she shot back, “I hope you follow up with Coleman, because this does not seem to be a misperception, this seems to be a directive.”

At the time, we figured the Coleman warden’s new policy was a frolic that the Central Office might not know anything about, but the fact that the policy has been on a slow-walk rollout at joints in California, Virginia and Florida suggests that Director Inch’s denial of knowledge about the book restriction might be less than candid.

petition180507After the House hearings raised the book restriction issue, The Washington Post followed up, asking the BOP for the identity of the book vendor the BOP would use, the markup and the rationale for the restriction. The Central Office refused to say, but told the Post in an email last Thursday that the BOP had rescinded the memos and will review the policy to “ensure we strike the right balance between maintaining the safety and security of our institutions and inmate access to correspondence and reading materials.”

“You shouldn’t have to be rich to read,” complained Tara Libert, whose D.C.-based Free Minds Book Club has had reading material returned from two California prisons in recent months and has stopped shipping to two others because of the policy.

So the complaints went from inmates to families to congressional representatives to the media, demonstrating that if the issue is right, even the people who seem to have no power can end up making government accountable.

Washington Post, Federal prisons abruptly cancel policy that made it harder, costlier for inmates to get books (May 3, 2018)

In Justice Today, New Federal Prison Policies May Put Books and Email on Ice (Apr. 27, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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BOP Director Has a Bad Day on Capitol Hill – Update for April 23, 2018

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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. 

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BOP DIRECTOR SAYS THERE’S NOTHING BETTER COMING ON HALFWAY HOUSE

punchinface180423Talk about violence directed at BOP employees… Director Mark Inch was beaten up pretty well last week when he delivered his largely fact-free report on the BOP to the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, with the chief executive at the BOP Coleman complex likely to have been taking it on the chin as soon as Inch could get out of the hearing room door.

We thought we were the only ones who found Director Inch’s obsequious and bureaucratic delivery tedious, but it became clear during his nearly 2-hour session that the Committee members were a little frustrated at Inch’s habit of turning every answer into a pretzel and coming up short on meaningful data about his agency.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) asked about the cancellation of 16 halfway house contracts, and demanded Inch square that with the shortage of halfway house bed space nationwide. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) cited the prior BOP director’s complaint that it is “scarce and expensive” to put people in halfway house, and demanded that Inch to explain the cancellations in light of the scarcity.

halfway161117In response to a question from Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) on BOP halfway house plans, Inch said the BOP spent $350 million on halfway house at 230 centers nationwide last year. Of the approximately 44,000 inmates released annually, he said, 80% get halfway house or home confinement placement. Inch said that reentry centers are “mostly important for inmates at the high end” of sentences.

In 2017, Inch said, the BOP overspent for halfway house and exceeded contractual limits on some locations while others were underused. He anticipated the halfway house placement will remain unchanged in 2018. “The challenges I look at – the constellation of our residential reentry centers is two things, is to the extent of how far out it can spread and the cost that is associated with it – our goal this year in 2018, is to have very clear usage figures data against the ascribed budget so I can make very logical budget requests in the future.”

Stripped of bureaucratic–speak, that means nothing is going to change in BOP halfway house placement any time soon.

work180423The representatives, who have been hearing loud complaints from their BOP employee-constituents, also pushed Inch hard on augmentation, the BOP practice of using noncustody people like nurses, teachers and front-office workers in CO positions. Inch assured the Subcommittee that all of the 6,000 BOP positions being eliminated this fiscal years were vacant, and not the reason for augmentation. The director told the Subcommittee that “a lot” of the BOP staffers used for augmentation had started their careers as COs, and thus were well qualified to fill in on custody positions.

Despite union protests and Federal Labor Relations Authority rulings in favor of BOP employees, the Director insisted that augmentation was safe for employees. “You say it’s not a dangerous situation?” Rep. Michael Johnson (R-Louisiana) asked Inch incredulously. “I’ve met with a number of these [BOP] people from my home state of Louisiana, and they’re not comfortable with this situation.”

At one point in the hearing, Inch was blindsided by charges the BOP was banning books, an allegation arising from a policy being adopted by the Coleman, Florida, federal prison complex. The Coleman policy, which goes into effect next week, bans purchase of any books except those bought through the commissary for a 30% surcharge over list.

ban180423Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-California), who apparently believed the policy was a BOP ban on books, asked the Director how he could adopt such a policy. Inch seemed nonplussed, saying he was unaware of the Coleman policy and would look into it. He suggested Rep. Bass’s understanding of the policy might be a misperception, leading her to snap back, “I hope you follow up with Coleman, because this does not seem to be a misperception, this seems to be a directive.”

In point of fact, the Coleman policy is a book ban of sorts, because every inmate book request is filter through a BOP employee, who could simply refuse to honor a request for a book the BOP felt was inappropriate for whatever reason.

We suspect the Coleman warden, who appears to have violated the sacred bureaucratic rule of “don’t make your boss look bad,” got an unpleasant call from the Director about five minutes after the hearing ended.

House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight, Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Apr. 17, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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Running Out of Prison Industry Workers? – Update for February 21, 2018

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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.

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THE HARVEST IS GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW AT BOP, DOJ

USA Today reported last week that hundreds of secretaries, teachers, counselors, cooks and medical staffers were tapped last year to fill CO posts across the BOP because of acute officer shortages and overtime limits. The assignments, known as “augmentation,” were made despite warnings that the assignments placed unprepared employees at risk.

harvest180221As recently as last July, a House committee told the agency to “curtail its over-reliance” on augmentation, once reserved only for emergency operations. Instead, the practice has become common at some institutions where even s plumbers, electrical workers, budget analysts and commissary staffers have been patrolling prison yards and filling officer vacancies in maximum-security units. “While BOP reports that there is a higher incidences of serious assaults by inmates on staff at high and medium security institutions than at the lower security facilities, to meet staffing needs the BOP still routinely uses a process called augmentation whereby a non-custody employee is assigned custody responsibilities,” the Senate Appropriations Committee reported last summer.

The BOP told USA Today that all employees are regarded as “correctional workers first.”

Worker shortages abound, and not just at BOP. The Washington Post reported last week that the sudden departure of the Justice Dept’s No. 3 official is adding to the turmoil at an agency already lacking permanent leaders for important divisions.

Help-Wanted180221Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand resigned, reportedly because she did not want to be sucked into the Robert Mueller Russia investigation, to take a position in Walmart’s legal department. Meanwhile, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is blaming a single Republican senator, Cory Gardner of Colorado, for blocking confirmations of key figures, including the head of DOJ’s criminal divisions, over Session’s memo lifting Obama-era protections for states that have legalized marijuana.

Twelve U.S. Attorney picks still await confirmation, and 36 more have yet to be nominated. That’s a problem for DOJ, because, as an ex-official put it, “if someone is perceived as temporary and doesn’t have the full legitimacy that comes with Senate confirmation, they are less able to successfully advocate the interests and positions of their agency to the rest of the government.”

USA Today, As federal prisons run low on guards, nurses and cooks are filling in (Feb. 13, 2018)

Washington Post, Official’s departure adds to strain of vacancies at Justice (Feb. 13, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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