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’60 Minutes’ Looks Behind BOP’s Potemkin Village Facade – Update for January 29, 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.

’60 MINUTES’ PUTS BOP DIRECTOR ON THE HOT SEAT

The American public got a primer on the Federal Bureau of Prisons last night on “60 Minutes,” and what the public saw was sobering.

BOP Director Colette Peters walked 60 Minutes reporter Cecilia Vega around FCI Aliceville. She told CBS that she wanted “people to see the good stuff” going on in the BOP. Inmates were shown in UNICOR, at a “Life Connections” graduation, and in classes. CBS did not fall for the Potemkin village.

dogandpony240129First, in a surprisingly candid interview between Vega and five or so inmates, the women freely admitted that CBS was seeing a dog-and-pony show. Director Peters admitted that things had been cleaned up but explained, “I’ve been doing this work for a long time– so I can see when things have been swept under the rug, if you will. I’m not naïve. And when anybody comes to your house you clean it up.”

Vega pressed Peters on the issue of short staffing and augmentation, asking how many more employees are needed.

Colette Peters: So we hope to have that real number for– you and the public– very soon.

Cecilia Vega: That seems like a critical number. How was that not on your desk when you s– took this job on day one, and– and still not there a year later?

More surprising than Peters’s non-answer was her assertion that the BOP would hire the employees needed to solve short staffing by October.

Shane Fausey, the recently retired national president of the Council of Prison Locals 33 and a former BOP lock and security specialist, was much more certain. He told Vega, “We’re short about 8,000 positions nationwide. ” He complained:

The[ BOP’s] buzz phrase is, “Everybody’s a correctional officer first.” That sounds good on paper. But if you take the teacher out of the classroom, and nobody’s teaching the offender the skills to go back out to society, we’re just back to warehousing people.

forcedsex161202Vega also focused on sexual abuse of women inmates at FCI Dublin and in other facilities, most of which Peters inherited from years of prior BOP directors who found it convenient to ignore allegations that, after all, came from untrustworthy and unworthy inmates. Peters claimed that the BOP is cleaning up the “Rape Club” culture at Dublin.

Colette Peters:  We’ve done a tremendous job in the last year rebuilding that culture and creating– an institution that is more safe, where individuals feel comfortable coming forward and reporting claims

Cecilia Vega: You just used the phrase, “tremendous job” in Dublin. Eight inmates have filed a class action lawsuit, and they’ve got testimony from more than 40 current and former Dublin inmates who say that the abuse is ongoing.

Colette Peters: That means the– the process is working, that they have the ability to come forward. They have the right to bring that class action lawsuit together.

bartsimpson240129Vega noted that more than 45 women have filed suits against the BOP, some of which claim that abuse continues, and that female inmates claim continuing retaliation by staff against those who voice allegations. Peters was skeptical:

Cecilia Vega: It’s one thing for you to say that retaliation is not tolerated, but it sounds like it’s actually still happening.

Colette Peters: Again, I would say those are allegations. I would like to be more grounded in fact around proven retaliation.

CBS 60 Minutes, Inside the Bureau of Prisons, a federal agency plagued by understaffing, abuse, disrepair (January 28, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

Is Senate Fed Up With BOP? – Update for July 13, 2023

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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.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, SENATORS MAY BE TELLING BOP

Phineas T. Barnum reputedly said, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But P.T. Barnum never served as Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

badpublicity230714It’s been a rough ride. First, the Dept. of Justice Inspector General has issued a scathing report of BOP mismanagement and maladministration that led to the suicide of high-value celebrity prisoner Jeffrey Epstein and the murder of Whitey Bulger. There has been a steady stream of death-of-a-thousand-cuts reports of BOP employees being convicted of everything from inmate sexual abuse to cellphone smuggling to COVID fraud. The Washington Post fumed last week that “regardless of the offense, any unnatural death in custody is a failure of the prison system.”

This week has seen well-loathed U.S. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar – serving an endless string of life sentences for an endless string of revolting assaults of women gymnasts – stabbed multiple times at USP Coleman by attackers unknown. BOP employees promptly blamed the attack on a short-staffed facility.

It wasn’t long before the Associated Press reported that Nassar was attacked inside his cell, “a blind spot for prison surveillance cameras that only record common areas and corridors.” The AP said, “In federal prison parlance, because of the lack of video, it is known as an ‘unwitnessed event.’”

It isn’t clear that even full implementation of the Prison Camera Reform Act (Pub.L. 117-321), hardly prevented Capitol Hill from finally having had enough of the BOP follies.

Enough is more than enough. After several half-hearted attempts to address BOP management weaknesses, a bipartisan group of senators yesterday announced the introduction of the Federal Prison Accountability Act of 2023 (no bill number assigned yet), intended to increase oversight at federal prisons.

FPAA would require the president to seek Senate advice and consent when appointing the BOP director, who would be appointed to a single, 10-year term. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said requiring Senate confirmation of the BOP director would “bring badly needed transparency and accountability to the federal prison system.”

“The Director of the Bureau of Prisons leads thousands of employees and expends a massive budget,” Grassley said in a press release. “It’s a big job with even bigger consequences should mismanagement or abuse weasel its way into the system.”

sexualassault211014It took awhile to get here. Following an 8-month investigation last year that revealed rampant sexual abuse of female prisoners and a failure to prevent recurring sexual abuse, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) introduced the Federal Prison Oversight Act (S.4988) late last year. The bill – which would have required the DOJ Inspector General to conduct inspections of the BOP’s 122 correctional facilities, provide recommendations to problems and assign each facility a risk score – was window-dressing, a political statement with no chance of passage in the waning days of the 117th Congress.

Three months ago, however, Ossoff introduced a revised version of FPOA (S.1401), with Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) filing a companion bill in the House (H.R.3109). The new FPOA would have, among other actions, created a hotline for prisoners to report misconduct.

mismanagement210419Now, three months later, the latest effort to reform federal prisons would subject the BOP director to the same congressional scrutiny as other law enforcement agency chiefs such as the director of the FBI, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said is needed. “The Director of the Bureau of Prisons oversees more than 34,000 employees and a multi-billion dollar budget, and should be subject to Senate review and confirmation as well,” McConnell said.

Grassley introduced FPAA along with McConnell and Sens Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), John Cornyn (R-TX), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (R-IN) and Ossoff. With that kind of legislative horsepower behind it – not to mention black eyes like Jeffrey Epstein, Whitey Bulger and Larry Nasser – it’s safe to predict that Director Colette Peters may be the last BOP Director to not be approved by the Senate.

The Hill, Bipartisan senators introduce bill to increase federal prison oversight (July 13, 2023)

Sen. Charles Grassley, Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Increase Accountability at Federal Prisons (July 13, 2023)

Associated Press, Larry Nassar was stabbed in his cell and the attack was not seen by prison cameras, AP source says (July 11, 2023)

Associated Press, Former federal prison guard sent to prison for violating civil rights of injured inmate (July 11, 2023)

Washington Post, Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide reveals grave failures of U.S. prisons (July 10, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

“What We Have Here…” – Update for October 27, 2022

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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.

… IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE


failuretocommunicate221027We Should Have Told You It Would Be On the Test: If email is any indication, not only did Federal prisoners receive First Step Act earned-time credits applied well after the credits were promised, but what was delivered was well short of what was reasonably anticipated.

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo reported that although BOP Director Colette Peters told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her September 28 testimony that the agency’s new “auto-calc” program was already up and running, “it was not until the week of October 3rd that FSA credits started to be applied. As one prisoner told me, ‘I was expecting a year of credits and I got 4 months. I have no idea what happened’.”

Pavlo said that “what happened is that the calculator still has errors in it. Prisoners who were transferred to a halfway house after receiving an interim calculation of their sentence, were called in and told they would be returning to prison after the new calculation took away their year.”

Pavlo wrote, “One of the main factors that seems to be causing issues is that federal prisoners were told to complete a needs assessment survey when they first entered prison. The survey was part of the FSA in that it was meant to provide an assessment of the types of programs, needs, that the prisoner would address while in prison. The assessment was to be done on-line through an internal computer terminal that prisoners use for email communications with their families… What prisoners were not told was that the survey’s completion was a requirement to initiating the FSA credits. All of the prisoners I spoke to stated that they were never told of the survey’s importance nor could I find information about this in the FSA nor in any directive given to prisoners.”

Pavlo’s report is consistent with email complaints I have gotten from prisoners that no one ever suggested that the needs surveys served any necessary purpose.

Pavlo quoted Emery Nelson of the BOP is quoted as saying, “Completion of the self-assessment survey is only one factor which determines when an inmate begins earning FSA time credits.”

We’re Not Listening to You: The DOJ Office of Inspector General told BOP Director Colette Peters two weeks ago about an aspect of its recent investigation into sexual abuse of inmates by BOP employees that it found troubling.

dontbelieve221027“These concerns arose when the OIG recently inquired of the BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs (OIA)… about a disciplinary action taken by the BOP following an OIG investigation of alleged sexual abuse by a BOP employee. In response to our inquiry, we were told by OIA that, in cases that have not been accepted for criminal prosecution, the BOP will not rely on inmate testimony to make administrative misconduct findings and take disciplinary action against BOP employees, unless there is evidence aside from inmate testimony that independently establishes the misconduct…”

OIG told Director Peters that BOP’s refusal to rely on inmate testimony to make misconduct findings in administrative matters “is inconsistent with the fact that such testimony is fully admissible in criminal and civil cases, and creates significant risks for the BOP in its handling of administrative misconduct matters. Inmate testimony alone has been found sufficient, and with corroborating evidence is often found sufficient, to support criminal convictions of BOP employees, where the evidentiary standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In short, inmates are not disqualified from providing testimony with evidentiary value in federal courts, and there is no valid reason for the BOP to decline to rely on such testimony… where the evidentiary standard is the preponderance of the evidence. In addition, the OIG found that in the context of sexual misconduct cases, BOP policy and federal regulations, specifically those DOJ regulations implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), require the credibility of an alleged victim to be assessed on an individual basis and not be determined by the person’s status as an inmate.”

After the OIG provided the Bureau of Prisons with a draft of its report, BOP quickly denied that it had ever said it didn’t believe inmates as a matter of policy.  The Inspector General was unimpressed:

However, contrary to this assertion, the statements made by the OIA to the OIG as reflected in this memorandum were made by OIA on multiple occasions. Moreover, as described later in this memorandum, we found that in cases where the OIG substantiated BOP employee misconduct relying on inmate testimony the OIA has, on more than one occasion, sent less serious findings to the BOP’s Employment Law Branch (ELB) and the BOP institution where the subject employee works.

So now who doesn’t believe whom?

Forbes, Bureau Of Prisons’ Failure To Communicate First Step Act (October 15, 2022)

DOJ Office of Inspector General, Notification of Concerns Regarding the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Treatment of Inmate Statements in Investigations of Alleged Misconduct by BOP Employees (October 12, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root