fci loretto | Legal Information Services Associates LLC

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

THAT’S ONE WAY TO DO IT, I GUESS

Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette S. Peters announced yesterday that the agency will not reopen FCI Dublin – no surprise there – but additionally will close six other minimum-security facilities in Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Florida.

Associated Press obtained a letter to Congress in which Peters said the agency was taking “decisive and strategic action” to address “significant challenges, including a critical staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure and limited budgetary resources.”

Addition by subtraction… but that doesn’t make the decision wrong.

Three of the closures are satellite prison camps to low-security prisons: FCI Oxford, Wisconsin, camp; FCI Englewood, Colorado, camp (72 inmates); and FCI Loretto, Pennsylvania, camp (76 inmates). FCI Oxford has already been emptied, having relocated its camp-eligible inmates last June.

The Oxford, Englewood and Loretto closures will free up BOP staff for assignment to the low-security facilities on site. The Duluth, Morgantown and Pensacola stand-alone camp closures, which will affect 1,647 prisoners, will let the BOP reassign staff who want to remain with the BOP to prisons in other parts of the country where staffing levels are low.

About 400 employees will be freed up for assignment elsewhere. A BOP statement said, “Many employees affected by this decision will move from one part of a facility to another part of the same facility. The remaining employees will have the opportunity to move to different FBOP facilities. The FBOP is not downsizing and we are committed to finding positions for every employee who wants to remain with the agency.”

The BOP anticipates the process will begin now at all the facilities (except Dublin and Oxford, which are already empty) and be concluded in about nine months.

As for FCI Dublin, AP said the permanent shutdown “seven months after a temporary closure in the wake of staff-on-inmate abuse” – that led to the widespread reporting of the abusive staff members’ nickname for the prison as the “Rape Club” – “is the clearest sign yet that the agency — which has more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion — is unable or unwilling to rehabilitate its most problematic institutions.”

All of the prisoners at the notorious female prison, located not far from the San Francisco Bay area, were hustled out of town on BOP buses last April in a BOP attempt to torpedo continued federal court litigation over sexual abuse of a yet-undetermined number of inmates (although the plaintiff class numbers in the hundreds). Alas, the Court was not fooled. Walter Pavlo wrote in Forbes yesterday that while there have been no prisoners at the facility since the last one left in early May, “one insider told me they had hoped it would reopen. That will not happen.”

Making the Dublin closure permanent surprises no one except perhaps that one insider, for the same reason that schools are demolished after mass shootings: the optics.

The BOP said that FPC Pensacola, which is owned by the Navy, is in “significant disrepair” and will be demolished. FPC Duluth camp has “aging and dilapidated infrastructure,” including several condemned buildings contaminated with asbestos and lead paint, the agency said.

The Morgantown camp inmates and about 150 employees will be relocated to “maximize existing resources” at the federal prison complex in Hazelton (known as “Misery Mountain”) about 23 miles to the east. The BOP expected to save the $26 million needed for repair at FCI Englewood by closing its camp.

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley predictably whined about the closures: “This announcement jeopardizes the continued employment of 400 federal employees just weeks before the holidays. While the agency says it will attempt to place employees in other jobs, the reality is that most Bureau of Prisons facilities are in isolated locations far from each other, so many – if not most – employees affected will face disruptive relocations to remain employed.”

God forbid that government employees might face the same dilemma that private sector workers suffer on a regular basis.

The good news for the BOP is that the closures should cut costs slightly, reducing the number of facilities from about 121 to about 114 locations and reducing its staff shortage very slightly. Given that the BOP already ranks dead last in employee satisfaction among federal agencies, employee disappointment isn’t going to affect its status as a desirable place to work.

Associated Press, The US government is closing a women’s prison and other facilities after years of abuse and decay (December 5, 2024)

Forbes, Federal Bureau of Prisons Closing Prisons Ahead Of Trump Presidency (December 5, 2024)

KBJR-TV, Duluth, Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to ‘deactivate’ Duluth prison camp (December 5, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

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