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