Tag Archives: FCC victorville

Scrutiny is ‘Difficult’… But Aplenty – Update for August 30, 2022

August 30, 2022 lisa-legalinfo Leave a comment

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

BOP DIRECTOR DOESN’T LACK FOR MATERIAL

In her first video message to Bureau of Prisons staff, reported on last week in Government Executive, new Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters acknowledged the bumpy ride the BOP has experienced over the past few years: “We have had a great deal of scrutiny from auditing and oversight entities both internal to and external of our agency. While these findings are difficult to hear, we must work diligently to address these deficiencies in order to improve our environment for everyone who works and lives at the bureau.”

Last week suggests that Peters has no shortage of current ‘scrutiny’ to work with.

CARES Act Management: On Monday, NPR reported that only 17 of the 442 inmates returned to prison from CARES Act home confinement had committed new crimes. The number of new offenders represented less than two-tenths of a percent of the 11,000 sent home. Most of the 17 offenses were drug-related.

NPR criticized the BOP for a lack of due process and being too quick to revoke CARES Act status for insignificant infractions. With suits against the BOP over CARES Act revocation proliferating, NPR said, the agency is “considering a new federal rule to make the process more clear.”

The Hot Mess at Carswell: On Friday, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram dropped another ticking bomb on the Director’s desk. The paper’s investigation found that FMC Carswell – the only federal medical facility for women inmates in the country – “has been plagued with systemic sexual abuse for years. The Star-Telegram spoke to 12 former and current inmates at the facility, as well as prison staff and experts familiar with the investigative process at the Bureau of Prisons, which has oversight of federal prisons. Hundreds of pages of incident reports, federal records and court documents reveal a pattern of sexual misconduct and cover-ups.”

What’s more, the paper reported, Carswell inmates “say they are not always able to report sexual assaults due to fear of retaliation. Even when staff members report sexual assaults, Carswell upper management has at times failed to investigate misconduct, the union president at the prison said.” One Carswell staff member described the facility as “the perfect place for sexual misconduct.”

Finally, the newspaper reported, the BOP failed to provide victims with any mental health care to deal with trauma from the assaults. The BOP denied the claims, asserting that “every inmate and pretrial detainee in a BOP facility has daily and regular access to Health Services and Psychology Services staff.”

Lying Warden, Freezing Inmates: Meanwhile, the New York Post reported a week ago that the warden of a federal prison in California – identified by the paper as FCI Terminal Island – failed to fix a broken camera system in the lockup and kept prisoners in the cold after a heating malfunction during an unusually cold winter.”

The unidentified warden “risked the safety and security of inmates and staff” with the 2019 heating and surveillance failures at the prison near Los Angeles, according to a heavily redacted Dept of Justice Inspector General report of the probe obtained by the paper through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Investigators also found that the warden “lacked candor” in sworn interviews with agents. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section declined to prosecute after the investigation, according to the documents.

Making Fun of Women and Blacks: A California TV station reported last week that a BOP whistleblower told the BOP Internal Affairs division earlier this month that the author of a “racist and misogynistic Instagram page” entitled “Good Verbal,” works at FCC Victorville, based on the private jokes and inside knowledge of the posts.

The page, that mocks women prisoners getting sexually assaulted at FCI Dublin, female officers sleeping their way to the top and black prisoners getting thrown into the SHU, among other posts,” included details suggesting the author was assigned to work at Victorville.

The whistleblower asked that IA investigators identify the author, discipline that person, and shut down the page. “I refuse to work in a dangerous environment and be subjected to this type of treatment by alleged fellow staff members,” the letter to Internal Affairs read. “I am one of many people that are the targets of these nasty and highly offensive posts. It should also be noted that other institutions in various regions across the county are affected by this disgusting page. This page has the potential to turn into a national law enforcement issue.”

As of August 30, “Good Verbal” remained posted on Instagram and appeared to be unrepentant, saying: “Our humor is not for everyone. This is how we deal with the horrible things we must see to earn money. We are the modern day sin eaters. We try to manage those that are unfit for society.”

Who’s the Rat? Finally, at a detention hearing last week for one of the three defendants charged with the murder four years ago of James “Whitey” Bulger, the government revealed that inmates at USP Hazelton knew in advance that Bulger was arriving on October 29, 2018. He died 12 hours later.

NBC News called Bulger’s death “a stunning security failure for the federal prison system. The previously undisclosed revelation that USP Hazelton inmates were tipped off to Bulger’s arrival raises additional questions about the federal Bureau of Prisons’ handling of his transfer to one of the country’s most violent prisons.”

“It’s just absurd that this happened,” a former BOP gang investigator told NBC.

A Bit of Support from a Critic: One piece of criticism the new Director received within about a day of her swearing-in four weeks ago was her decision to keep outgoing BOP Director Michael Carvajal on for a month as an advisor. Last week, Shane Fausey – national president of the National Council of Prison Locals union and a strident critic of BOP management – defended keeping Carvajal on. With an agency the size of the BOP, “you don’t just turn off the lights and say have a nice day. It requires a transitional period to understand, and I hate to use the word, ‘bureaucracy’ of the federal government,” Fausey said. “Whatever your personal feelings are with Director Carvajal, I think it’s essential for the success of Director Peters that he stay on board to kind of guide her at the beginning of her tenure.”

Government Executive, A New Director Is Bringing Hope to the Federal Prisons Agency (August 22, 2022)

NPR, Released during COVID, some people are sent back to prison with little or no warning (August 22, 2022)

Ft Worth Star-Telegram, They were sexually assaulted in prison. An overwhelmed mental health system failed to help (August 26, 2022)

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, ‘I’m nobody to them.’ Survivors report sexual abuse by staff at Fort Worth Carswell prison (August 26, 2022)

New York Post, Warden failed to fix camera system, heat at California federal lockup: watchdog (August 22, 2022)

KTVU-TV, Whistleblower outs racist, misogynistic Instagram page at California federal prison (August 24, 2022)

NBC, Twist in Whitey Bulger murder case: Inmates at West Virginia prison knew in advance he was coming (August 23, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

The Clock Chimes 13 Times for BOP COVID Response – Update for June 25, 2021

June 25, 2021 lisa-legalinfo Leave a comment

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

REMEMBER COVID? IT’S STILL AROUND IN THE BOP… AND PEOPLE ARE STILL DYING

The Bureau of Prisons reported 61 sick inmates and 136 sick staff in 65 facilities as of last night.

What is curious is that the BOP reported two more inmate COVID deaths last week.

One was from last December. With its usual opacity, the BOP reported last week that on “Friday, December 4, 2020, inmate Carlous Lindell Daily tested positive for COVID-19 at the United States Penitentiary (USP) Victorville in Victorville, California, and was immediately placed in medical isolation. On Wednesday, December 23, 2020, in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, Mr. Daily was considered recovered after completing isolation and presenting with no symptoms.”

[Editorial note here: The BOP always trots out the justification in notices like these that ‘we only said he was recovered because the CDC guidelines said he was recovered’. I have heard from too many inmates that ‘recovery’ consists of taking a temperature. The inmates are listed as presenting no symptoms because staff is careful not to ask the inmates about any symptoms].

To be sure, poor Mr. Daily must have been experiencing some continuing symptoms that the crack BOP medical professionals overlooked. Only five days after he was declared fit as a fiddle, “[o]n Monday, December 28, 2020, Mr. Daily experienced vomiting and an altered mental status, and while being treated, became unresponsive. Responding staff immediately initiated life-saving measures. Staff requested emergency medical services (EMS) and life-saving efforts continued. Mr. Daily was subsequently pronounced deceased by EMS personnel.”

Apparently, the Health Services staff was so crushed by losing their ‘recovered’ patient that no one got around to reporting his death for over five months.

I remember from years ago a judge patiently explaining to a greenhorn lawyer (me) about the 13th chime. The ’13th chime’ comes from the mythical case of Rex v. Haddock, recounted in book Uncommon Law by A.P. Herbert. Some have attributed it to an earlier utterance by Mark Twain. Regardless of its origin, the ’13th Chime” doctrine holds that when a clock strikes 13 times, not only is the 13th strike itself discredited, but the very fact that there was a 13th chime raises doubts about the accuracy of the preceding 12. Twain allegedly said: “The thirteenth stroke of the clock is not only false of itself, but casts grave doubt on the credibility of the preceding twelve”.

The point is this: I have heard for months from inmate correspondents that people were dying at FCI XYZ of COVID, but FCI XYZ’s reported deaths never seemed to reflect inmate folklore. Mr. Daily’s demise is the second time in three weeks that the BOP issued a way-after-the-fact admission about a death that went unreported during the height of the epidemic. How many more of these unreported deaths – which, had they been reported in a timely manner, would have made BOP conditions during the pandemic look even direr – are lurking out there? What’s more, the under-reporting is consistent with the BOP practice many prisoners have reported of medical staff doing the ostrich thing, not inquiring about symptoms other than to take a temperature?

Certainly, under-reporting would not surprise The Marshall Project, which has been criticizing BOP sleight-of-hand on case numbers for months:

The Federal Bureau of Prisons also had a policy of removing cases and deaths from its reports. As a result, by the spring of 2021, we could no longer accurately determine new cases in federal prisons, which had more people infected than any other system.

Now for the other death last week, Sherri Hillman, a pretrial detainee who died at the abattoir known as FMC Carswell, the BOP’s only women’s medical center at Fort Worth.

The circumstances around the Carswell death were painfully similar to the April death of Martha Evanoff at that facility. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sherri had been sent to Carswell while awaiting sentencing in Kentucky, after being hospitalized with COVID since January. “She was transferred to (Carswell) in Fort Worth because most people thought she would be getting better care there than in Kentucky,” her attorney told the newspaper.

Her mother said, however, “from what she was telling me, I just don’t think she was treated right.” Two other Carswell inmates told the paper said they heard Sherri crying out for help for several days from her cell on the medical floor. One woman, who is also staying on the medical floor, said she heard the shouting.

“Everyone on the floor heard her screaming for help for several days,” a witness, who did not want her name to be used out of fear of retaliation, told the Star-Telegram, “For days, they said she’s faking it and there’s nothing wrong with her, and they ignored her cries for help. She would say, ‘Please, somebody help me.’”

Another inmate reported to me, “The poor woman begged for 4-5 days for help and was told to ‘shut up’.”

Sherri died alone in her cell on June 14.

BOP, Inmate Death at Victorville (June 17, 2021)

BOP, Inmate Death at FMC Carswell (June 17, 2021)

Fort Worth TX Star-Telegram, Woman told mother, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ before death at prison in Fort Worth (June 17, 2021)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Whistles a Happy Tune – Update for August 11, 2020

August 11, 2020 lisa-legalinfo Leave a comment

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

DEATH DOESN’T TAKE A HOLIDAY, BUT BOP SEEKS NORMALCY

Six more inmates died of COVID-19 last week, bringing the BOP’s death total to 116. Twenty-two have died since July 1. Even while the BOP heralded a drop in the number of sick inmates from 2,476 to 1,395, a reduction of 44%, the number of sick staffers hit 580, an increase of 14% from last week (and all-time high). COVID-9 has now reached a record 114 institutions (93% of all BOP facilities).

Still, the BOP bravely whistles a happy tune, seeking a return to normalcy as though it has the virus on the run. The agency announced Phase 9 of its rickety COVID-19 “Action Plan.” Phase 9 relaunches a number of EBRR-sanctioned programming (the programs that earn First Step Act credit), some – like the Residential Drug Treatment Program – to 100% and others to half capacity. UNICOR, the federal prison industry, is to spool up to 80% by September 1 and 100% a month later. Recreation time outside will resume, with limitations on group size and length of rec sessions. Inmate transportation begins again.

Meanwhile, fresh breakouts of COVID-19 were reported at USP Lewisburg (51 ill), FCI Loretto (37 ill), the Victorville, California, prison complex (127), USP Marion (70 ill) and FCI Edgefield (60 ill). Those locations join Coleman, Miami, Elkton, Forrest City, Beaumont, Carswell, Oklahoma City, Three Rivers and scores of other BOP institutions with the virus. CNN last week branded FCI Seagoville as “the hardest-hit federal prison in the United States” where “more than 1,300 of the roughly 1,750 prisoners have tested positive for the virus — a stunning three out of every four inmates.”

Since the beginning of May, when there was only a single coronavirus case at Seagoville, the number of inmates testing positive soared to 1,333, according to BOP. Twenty-eight of the roughly 300 prison employees have also tested positive. The outbreak means that the facility has more coronavirus cases than about 85% of the counties in the US.

The virus has reached FCC Florence (Colorado) and FDC Honolulu as well.

At FCI Miami, in Florida, nearly half of the inmates reportedly have tested positive. Kareen Troitino, the FCI Miami corrections officer union president, told ABC News that the virus was spread by one employee to inmates at the facility and, within a day cases at the facility went from one to four. Troitino says the only protective equipment the BOP issued were surgical masks. “One employee walked into work. He did not show a fever. He passed our screening procedures. He was positive. And that one employee spread it to numerous inmates. And then that’s it. Ever since then, it’s been a disaster.”

Troitino’s union local has sued the BOP and several other federal agencies, seeking hazard pay for at-risk essential workers.

In Washington, D.C., Democratic senators and representatives sponsored legislation in both chambers last Thursday to require the array of agencies that administer the nation’s jails and prisons to collect and report publicly detailed information about the spread of COVID-19 in their facilities. Joe Rojas, southeast regional vice president of the federal prison employees, told ABC News, “The Bureau is the largest agency within the DOJ and there’s no oversight. The BOP director doesn’t even get confirmed he just gets appointed.”

Forbes magazine complained last week that the BOP’s “Phase 9 Action Plan… looks a lot like Phase Eight… which looked a lot like Phase Seven. It begs the question as to whether there is a cohesive plan to address the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected over 10,000 federal inmates and over 1,000 correctional staff… killed 110 inmates and one staff member.”

BOP employees at FCI Tallahassee publicly expressed concern over Phase 9’s inmate transportation. “If we’re going to receive inmates that are positive, if we’re going to be assigned to inmates that have already tested positive it’s pretty shaky from day-to-day,” Yalimany Dudley, CO, told WTXL-TV.

Dr. Kristian Morgan, a nurse at the FCI, said inmates are coming in without being tested beforehand, bringing the virus with them. “We received about eight inmates from the Marshal Service last week. Five of those tested positive as soon as they entered inside the institution when we did rapid testing.”

BOP Memorandum, Coronavirus (COVID-19) Phase Nine Action Plan (August 5, 2020)

CNN, Inside the federal prison where three out of every four inmates have tested positive for coronavirus (August 8, 2020)

KTVT, Inside the Federal Prison Where Three Out of Every Four Inmates Have Tested Positive for Coronavirus (August 9, 2020)

Canon City Daily Record, 3 new cases of COVID-19 in Fremont County; Bureau of Prisons reporting 3 cases (August 3, 2020)

Honolulu Civil Beat, First Hawaii Inmate Tests Positive for COVID-19 Along With 4 Corrections Officers (August 7, 2020)

ABC News, As coronavirus spreads through nation’s jails and prisons, lawmakers demand more transparency on toll (August 6, 2020)

WXII-TV News, ‘We’re Risking Our Lives’: Front-Line Federal Workers Sue For Hazard Pay (August 7, 2020)

Forbes, As Bureau of Prisons Enters “Phase 9” Of COVID-19 Plan, BOP Staff Wonder If There Is A Real Plan (August 7, 2020)

WTXL-TV, FCI Tallahassee employees fear the worst as inmate transportation restarts (August 6, 2020)

– Thomas L. Root