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

THREE SENATORS DEMAND BOP CUT TIES WITH ACA

I agonized over this story. Not because of the content, which is as unsurprising as it is deplorable. But rather, as I asked my wife of 45 years, is it appropriate to use the term “circle jerk” in the LISA Foundation posts?

I mean, the term really fits. The Federal Bureau of Prisons pays the American Correctional Association to inspect its facilities. Well, not really. The BOP pays ACA to give glowing accreditations to its facilities. As a report issued by the Dept of Justice Inspector General last November found, the BOP doesn’t really want its prisons inspected by outsiders, even friendly outsiders like ACA inspectors. Rather, the BOP is quite happy to inspect itself and then report the results to the ACA, which issues its seal of approval based on the BOP’s self-evaluation.

Sort of like giving yourself a physical, telling the doctor the results, and having the physician issue a clean bill of health based on your evaluation. Or a highly choreographed pas de deux. Or maybe… yeah, sort of like a circle jerk. The BOP pays the ACA, the ACA lets the BOP OK itself, the BOP trumpets its accreditation to the public, and pays the ACA.

As my wife says, “You couldn’t make this s*** up.” A little salty, but a spot-on observation.

The IG’s report said that instead of providing an independent evaluation of BOP, the ACA “relied on the prisons’ own internal reports during reaccreditation reviews.” In other words, as the DOJ put it, “it appears the BOP is, in effect, paying ACA to affirm the BOP’s own findings.”

Last week, three US senators wrote to the Attorney General and BOP Director Colette Peters complaining that BOP reliance on the ACA for accreditation “has proven to be little more than a rubber stamp, and the BOP’s contract with the ACA has been a waste of taxpayer dollars. We urge the BOP not to renew its ACA accreditation contract when it expires.” The ACA contract, covering all of the BOP’s 122 facilities, is worth $2.75 million.

The senators, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey (both D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), complain that while “the ACA claims that ‘[a]ccreditation is awarded to the ‘best of the best’ in the corrections field,’ in practice, ACA accreditation is awarded to virtually every facility that pays the accreditation fee.” The letter argues that “given the critical need for meaningful oversight of BOP facilities and the ACA’s complete failure to provide it, the BOP should not renew its ACA contract after it ends in March 2024. The ACA’s accreditation system is ineffective at best, and at worst misleads the public to believe that a failing facility’s operations are adequate. We urge you to identify alternative means of oversight that involve genuinely independent, rigorous audits of each BOP facility.”

They are too polite to call it one big circle jerk. Which it is.

The Appeal, Nonprofit Prison Accreditor Perpetuates Abuse And Neglect, Senators Say (February 29, 2024)

Letter from Senator Warren et al. to Atty General and BOP Director (February 28, 2024)

Dept of Justice OIG, Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Contract Awarded to the American Correctional Association (November 2023)

– Thomas L. Root