We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
THE BAND PLAYS ON…
Acting with efficiency and consideration for the well-being of prisoners, the Federal Bureau of Prisons closed FCI Dublin two months ago. This is the BOP version.
Acting precipitously, hiding its intentions, and with all the care and haste of a concentration camp evacuation in front of the advancing enemy, the BOP shuttered FCI Dublin, treated inmates like cattle while they were being transferred to other facilities in order to stop or at least hobble investigations into the inmate abuse at BOP facilities. This is the critics’ version.
Three Senators and 19 Representatives wrote to BOP Director Colette Peters last Thursday to get to the bottom of the unprecedented prison closure.
The letter they sent asks who made the decision to close Dublin and when the decision was made. The request focuses on the role of Regional Director Rios-Marques in the culture of abuse at FCI Dublin, “including her selection of a succession of wardens who have been at best ineffective and at worst complicit in retaliation and intimidation,” and wants to know whether she was following BOP policy “when she refused to advise [the Special Master appointed by the court to oversee Dublin] of the impending closure, which would begin the next day, even when asked directly on April 14?”
Madam Regional Director, you’ve got 29 years in at the BOP. It might be a good time to contemplate retirement.
The letter hints at a credibility gap forming between Congress and the BOP. “[T]here has been a tragic and unacceptable history of long-term abuse of [prisoners] at FCI Dublin,” the letter says. “Up until weeks before the closure of FCI Dublin, BOP leadership and their counsel repeatedly asserted that conditions and care at FCI Dublin were constitutionally adequate, and repeatedly denied allegations of staff misconduct and retaliation.”
The letter also recounted that the legislators were concerned “about shocking abuses that allegedly took place during the mass [prisoner] transfers,” noting that “this level of disregard for human dignity cannot be tolerated. Additionally, the frantic nature of the closure of FCI Dublin reflects a lack of adequate planning and proper safeguards to protect the rights of [prisoners].”
[I have replaced the letter’s use of “AIC” — Peters’s kinder, gentler “Adult in Custody” term — with “prisoner.” Peters says “AIC” but other BOP employees call them “bitches.” These women are ‘prisoners’ and ‘inmates’ until such a time as BOP line employees start treating them like AICs, or at least treat them like human beings and not like cattle, Director Peters’s “feel-good” relabeling notwithstanding.]
BOP officials have stated that the Dublin closure plan was “carefully considered over months,” an assertion that would have made Pinnochio blush.
The legislators want written answers by July 10, 2024.
Meanwhile two advocacy groups last Wednesday asked U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the Northern District of California jurist overseeing the class action case against the BOP for Dublin sexual abuse, to unseal court records and preserve public access to hearings.
The legal nonprofit Public Justice and the ACLU of Northern California jointly filed a motion for increased transparency in the case, which is set for trial in June 2025. In the last two months, Judge Gonzalez Rogers has held a series of closed hearings to address the Dublin closure. “These hearings took place without prior notice, and in many instances, the docket does not reflect that they even occurred,” the groups said in a statement.
Letter from Sens Mark DeSaulnier, Laphonza Butler and Richard J. Durbin (and others) to BOP Director Colette Peters (June 13, 2024)
Associated Press, Legal advocates seek public access to court records about abuse at California women’s prison (June 12, 2024)
– Thomas L. Root
