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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.

THE OLD IS NEW AGAIN AS FORMER BOP DIRECTOR RE-ASSUMES HELM

The supremely pessimistic and apochryphal author of Ecclesiastes in the Christian bible (Kohelet in the Talmud), King Solomon, complained in Chapter 1, Verse 9, that “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Welcome to the all-new BOP.

As everyone knows by now, last Monday Attorney General William Barr unceremoniously fired interim BOP Director Hugh J. Hurwitz, replacing him with former BOP Director Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer as interim director and former interim BOP Director Dr. Thomas R. Kane as interim assistant director.

Even before Epstein’s death, Justice Dept. officials reportedly expressed off-the-record frustration with senior BOP officials, but the management flaws found since high profile defendant Jeffrey Epstein killed himself at MCC New York Aug. 10 have angered DOJ leaders, including the attorney general, according to anonymous law enforcement officials quoted by the Washington Post.

Robert Hood, a retired former warden at ADX Florence and a critic of BOP leadership, called Hawk Sawyer an “outstanding” choice. “After a lot of recent instability, Kathleen Hawk Sawyer brings stability and direction,” Hood said. “She’s been a warden, she’s been a trainer, and she means business. It’s breathtaking to hear that she’s back. It’s exciting for the staff, many of whom have only heard about her. They know she’s a nuts-and-bolts person and a very direct person to work with.”

Hood predicted that Hawk Sawyer, a psychologist, will move quickly to fix a major problem at the bureau — the number of senior positions that have gone unfilled or had their responsibilities delegated temporarily.

Hawk Sawyer is no newbie. She ran the BOP from 1992 to 2003, capping a career that began back in 1976 as a psychologist at FCI Morgantown. But it’s been 16 years since she last led the agency, and some say a lot has changed in the interim. Jonathan Smith, a prison rights attorney, says the BOP is “much more complicated than when she was last director, partially because the growth in population, partially because you see a much harsher and more punitive system.”

Smith told NPR that today’s BOP uses solitary confinement more frequently than it did in the past. He says the use of private prisons has skyrocketed, as has the privatization of services across the system. And perhaps most importantly, the federal prison population has jumped from 65,000 in 1992 to more than 177,000 in 2019.

NPR reported that during her tenure as BOP Director, Hawk Sawyer was thought of as a champion of rehabilitation, someone who pushed for education opportunities inside federal prisons.

Additionally, Hawk Sawyer has “a long track record advocating for ‘good-time credits’ as a way to motivate inmates to participate in programs for personal development,” according to the Washington Examiner. “She correctly realized that increasing good-time allowances could go a long way toward reducing the federal prison population and help maintain order in prisons too.”

With last year’s passage of the First Step Act, some of the changes to sentencing laws and good-time credits that Hawk Sawyer supported are now law. The reforms included in the First Step Act are based largely on state-level successes, including former tough-on-crime states, that have now instead become smart on crime — and soft on taxpayers.

Not everyone is excited by Hawk Sawyer’s appointment. A former AUSA turned defense attorney and former BOP official observed that in 2017 then-Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III appointed Mark Inch, a retired Army major general, to run the system. After less than a year, General Inch – who tried to make changes within the BOP and to navigate a middle course, abruptly quit. Hawk Sawyer, a permanent replacement, was not named until this week, the authors complained,

when Barr appointed someone who previously served in the position for over a decade, and who contributed to the current problems plaguing the Bureau. This is not going to create systemic change. This reactive switch in leadership is pure optics. We need to ask this question: Why was General Inch, someone who tried to change the culture, ultimately replaced with a BOP veteran?

Regardless of one’s position on Hawk Sawyer’s appointment, there is general agreement that she faces an agency in disarray. “”Clusterfuck doesn’t begin to describe the current state of the BOP, and it dates far beyond the Trump administration,” David Safavian, deputy director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s criminal justice reform center, told The Marshall Project this week. “Anyone who thinks BOP is a high performing organization has never been inside a federal prison.”

Part of the problem, according to Reason.com, is “that the BOP is its own secretive fiefdom. It’s incredibly hard for reporters, family members, and civil liberties groups to find out what goes on behind prison walls, much less hold officials accountable.”

Washington Post, After Epstein’s death, attorney general replaces leader at Bureau of Prisons (Aug 19)

The Huffington Post, Jeffrey Epstein Death Shines Light On Understaffed, Unaccountable Federal Prison System (Aug 15)

National Review, The Epstein Fiasco and the Flaws with Our Criminal-Justice System (Aug 22)

The Marshall Project, Epstein’s Death Highlights A Staffing Crisis in Federal Prisons (Aug 14)

Reason.com, Jeffrey Epstein Is Dead Because His Jailers Neglected Him. He’s Not the Only One. (Aug 15)

Washington Examiner, New Bureau of Prisons leadership should focus on rehabilitation (Aug 21)

Washington Examiner, AG William Barr must do more to fix dismal prison conditions (Aug 22)

The Hill, A better way to run the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Aug 22)

NPR, What’s Changed Since Kathleen Hawk Sawyer Last Headed Prison Bureau? (Aug 22)

– 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.

WHITEY BULGER MURDER INTENSIFIES CONGRESSIONAL FOCUS ON USP HAZELTON

The murder of James “Whitey” Bulger last week at USP Hazelton, a day after his transfer to that facility, was not the first this year at the high-security institution.

Hazelton, known by inmates as “Misery Mountain”, has a history of violence. The New York Times reported earlier this year that 2017 saw 257 violent incidents at Hazelton, a 15% increase from 2016. Two other inmates were murdered in 2018 prior to Bulger’s appointment with a lock-in-a-sock.

Union officials have raised a flurry of concerns over the past year about acute understaffing and lethal violence at the prison, which is categorized as a high-security lockup. There are more than 3,000 inmates at the prison complex. “We’re short of 42 correctional officers,” Richard Heldreth, president of Local 420 of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800 employees at the U.S.P. Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. “It affects the security of the prison.”

Prisons across the nation have dealt with extreme shortfalls in correctional officers since the Trump administration imposed a hiring freeze in January 2017 and the Bureau of Prisons stopped filling vacant positions. At the beginning of this year, the agency eliminated 6,000 positions nationwide, a 14% reduction in staffing levels. The cuts included 127 jobs at Hazelton.

Nearly two weeks before Bulger’s death, Washington, D.C., Delegate to Congress Eleanor Holmes Norton asked the Dept. of Justice Inspector General to “open a formal investigation into the alleged appalling conditions inmates are facing at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Hazelton facility… Two inmates from the District of Columbia have died at Hazelton during violent altercations during this past year alone amid reports of brutal treatment of others… Based on the evidence presented to my office, I believe that the federal employees serving in this facility have likely received inadequate training, are under-supported, and are being compelled to perform duties outside the scope of their positions and their training, which is leading to these horrific and entirely unacceptable outcomes.”

Last Tuesday, Norton doubled down on her demand, saying in a news release, “Today’s reports of another inmate death at Hazelton heighten the need for an IG investigation into the operations and prisoner conditions at this federal prison. The two other killings at Hazelton earlier this year were of inmates from the District. Based on reports from my constituents who are housed at Hazelton and their relatives, there appears to be a serious shortage of staffing and other resources, leaving prisoners and guards vulnerable to attacks.”

It may have just been coincidence that the day Bulger was killed, FAMM sent a letter to President Trump urging immediate appointment of a permanent BOP Director, to replace Mark Inch, who resigned last April. FAMM President Kevin Ring wrote, “The BOP has been without a permanent director since General Mark Inch’s resignation from the post in May of this year. The void in consistent leadership has caused and exacerbated numerous problems throughout the federal prison system, for both staff and those in custody.”