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Outgoing Director Carvajal Beaten Up by Gang of Senators – Update for August 1, 2022

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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.

FORMER BOP DIRECTOR GETS SENATORIAL KICK IN THE PANTS ON HIS WAY OUT THE DOOR

Widespread drug abuse, substandard health care, violence and horrific sanitary conditions are rampant at USP Atlanta, according to a Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee investigation revealed last week.

riot170727The dysfunction at USP Atlanta is so notorious within the BOP that “its culture of indifference and mismanagement is derisively known among bureau employees as ‘the Atlanta way’,” the New York Times reported last week. Witnesses at the Subcommittee hearing last week “describe[ed] dozens of violent episodes — and the systematic effort to downplay and cover up the crisis — over the past few years,” The Times reported.

The prison’s conditions reflect wider problems in the BOP’s network of 122 facilities housing about 158,000 inmates, The Times said. The system has suffered from chronic overcrowding, staffing shortages, corruption, sexual violence and a culture that often encourages senior officials to minimize the extent of the problems.

The Associated Press reported that outgoing BOP Director Michael Carvajal, who testified under a Subcommittee subpoena, “faced a bipartisan onslaught Tuesday as he refused to accept responsibility for a culture of corruption and misconduct that has plagued his agency for years.”

schultz220801Carvajal argued that “he had been shielded from problems by his underlings — even though he’d been copied on emails, and some of the troubles were detailed in reports generated by the agency’s headquarters.” He blamed the size and structure of the BOP for his ignorance on issues such as inmate suicides, sexual abuse, and the free flow of drugs, weapons and other contraband that has roiled some of the BOP’s 122 facilities. His attempts to deflect responsibility for his leadership failings sat well with neither Subcommittee chairman Sen Jon Ossoff (D-GA) nor its ranking member, Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI).

Colette S. Peters, the longtime head of Oregon prisons, assumes the BOP director’s post on Tuesday. Carvajal finally will get the retirement he announced seven months ago, but not before the Subcommittee made it clear that it was fed up with his blandishments.

“Inmates hanging themselves in federal prisons, addicted to and high on drugs that flow into the facilities virtually openly,” Ossoff told Carvajal, “and as they hang and suffocate in the custody of the US government, there’s no urgent response from members of the staff, year after year after year… It’s a disgrace. And for the answer to be ‘other people deal with that. I got the report. I don’t remember’. It’s completely unacceptable.”

“It’s almost willful ignorance, and that’s what I find disturbing,” Johnson said. “‘Don’t want to know what’s happening below me. Don’t want to hear about rapes. Don’t want to hear about suicides’.”

rapeclub220801In one of the hearing’s most heated moments, Ossoff pressed Carvajal on rampant sexual abuse at FCI Dublin, a federal women’s prison in California’s Bay Area known to staff and inmates as the “rape club.” Among the Dublin employees charged criminally so far is the prison’s former warden.

“Is the Bureau of Prisons able to keep female detainees safe from sexual abuse by staff?” Ossoff asked. “Yes or no?”

“Yes, we are,” Carvajal replied. “In those cases when things happen, we hold people appropriately accountable.”

“You are the director at a time when one of your prisons is known to staff and inmates as a ’rape club,” Ossoff shot back. Carvajal had no response.

Rebecca Shepard, a staff attorney for the Federal Defender Program Inc., said USP Atlanta subjects inmates to inhumane and substandard conditions:

I have seen clients routinely locked down and allowed out of their cells for extremely limited periods of time, such as only 15 to 30 minutes, three to four times a week, or only an hour each day. And these lockdowns persist for months. Clients are treated as though they are in solitary confinement, not because of their behavior, but because of their misfortune and being placed at USP Atlanta.

The problems were “stunning failures of federal prison administration,” Ossoff said. But despite “unequivocal internal reports of abuse and misconduct, the situation continued to deteriorate.”

sexualassault211014Attorney General Merrick Garland appears to be moving more decisively, especially on the issue of sexual violence against female inmates and staff members. On July 14, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a task force to establish a policy aimed at “rooting out and preventing sexual misconduct” by prison employees over the next 90 days. Ms. Monaco said she was also instructing frontline prosecutors to make all misconduct cases at facilities a top priority, The New York Times said.

Last week, Forbes reported that Peters will take over an agency in disarray:

Relations between management and labor is at an all-time low, the agency is failing at implementing the First Step Act and COVID-19 continues to ravage its institutions. A recent survey by Partnership for Public Service, which ranks best places to work within the US government, ranked the BOP near last among 432 federal agencies. It ranked dead last in Effective Leadership category. This comes at a time when the BOP is trying to recruit new workers to make up for many veteran BOP employees who are leaving the agency.

Dumpster220718Hyperbole?  Well, just last week:

•      An independent arbitrator found the management at the Bureau of Prisons Federal Correctional Center Yazoo City in Mississippi guilty of violating the civil rights of the American Federation of Government Employees’ (AFGE) local President Cyndee Price at the facility, as well as retaliating against her in violation of the union contract.

     In 2020, Price was the first Black woman elected to serve as the local union president at any Federal Correctional Complex in the nation. But after that, the arbitrator ruled, prison wardens prohibited Price from using 100% official time to perform her union work, although previous Local President Vincent Kirksey had been granted 100% official time for the past seven years, and male local presidents at other BOP facilities also are on 100% official time.

     Bankston ordered the agency to pay Price overtime pay for the 1,080 hours of union work she performed on her own time that should have been performed during duty hours under the approved contract and past practice. Price was also awarded $300,000 in compensatory damages, as well as attorney’s fees and expenses.

•    A former BOP employee from FMC Lexington was sentenced last Friday to 80 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to committing five counts of sexual abuse of a ward. The employee, Hosea Lee, was a correctional officer serving as a drug treatment specialist. Between August and December 2019, Lee engaged in sexual acts with four separate female inmates who were in his drug classes.

•    A Mississippi woman, Tarshuana Thomas, was arrested Monday after being indicted by a federal grand jury for alleged fraud involving federal COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program loans. The US Attorney said Thomas, who worked as a CO at FCC Yazoo City at the time of the alleged fraud, devised a scheme to obtain PPP funds by filing fraudulent loan applications.

The Atlanta Voice, Senator Ossoff grills Federal prison officials over deplorable conditions at Atlanta Penitentiary (July 28, 2022)

The New York Times, Prison Personnel Describe Horrific Conditions, and Cover-Up, at Atlanta Prison (July 26, 2022)

Forbes, Outgoing Federal Bureau Of Prisons Director Carvajal Subpoenaed By Senate Subcommittee (Jul 19)

WRDW-TV, Ossoff leads hearing on troubled Georgia federal prison (July 26, 2022)

WJTV, Arbitrator finds Yazoo County federal prison guilty of violating civil rights (July 26, 2022)

Dept of Justice, Former BOP Employee Sentenced to 80 Months in Prison for Sexual Abuse of a Ward (July 29, 2022)

Mageenews.com, Former BOP Correctional Officer Charged with COVID-Relief Fraud (July 29, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen – Update for July 18, 2022

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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.

NEW ‘REFORM’ SHERIFF COMES TO BOP

Colette S. Peters, the longtime director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, has been tapped to lead what The New York Times last week called “the chronically mismanaged and understaffed federal Bureau of Prisons.”

Dumpster220718The appointment comes after a 5-month search to replace current BOP Director Michael Carvajal. Carvajal announced his retirement in January under pressure from Senate Democrats – especially Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) – who questioned his management.

The Times said Peters “was considered the favored candidate for a job seen as one of the Justice Department’s most demanding and thankless assignments.” Kevin Ring, president of FAMM, was blunter:  “Colette Peters is walking into a dumpster fire. From sexual violence and medical neglect to understaffing and years-long lockdowns, the BOP’s leadership has allowed a humanitarian crisis to develop on its watch. Families with incarcerated loved ones have been begging for change.”

The Associated Press reported that “Peters, who championed steeply reducing [Oregon’s] inmate population in the last decade, will inherit a federal agency plagued by myriad scandals. Her hiring comes about seven months after Director Michael Carvajal submitted his resignation amid mounting pressure from Congress after investigations by The Associated Press exposed widespread corruption and misconduct in the agency.”

Those issues include health and safety problems, physical and sexual abuse, corruption and turnover in the top management ranks. Staffing issues, exacerbated by the pandemic, have resulted in a huge shortage of prison guards and health personnel, according to an AP investigation last year, which uncovered a wide array of other shortcomings.

bureaucracy180122When she takes office on Aug 2, Peters will become only the second director in BOP history with no prior experience in the federal prison system. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who led the search to replace Carvajal, said DOJ had been looking for someone focused on reforming an agency that has had cultural issues for decades.

Durbin had been especially critical of Carvajal, who started his BOP career as a correctional officer 30 years ago, accusing him of failing to properly implement the First Step Act. Last winter, he called repeatedly for Carvajal’s firing, describing the BOP as rife with abuse and corruption.

The accuracy of that criticism was underscored this week by a Forbes report that 42 months after First Step became law, the BOP is only now beginning staff training on how to apply earned-time credits for inmates, with training set to start next month. Forbes said, “While the training on FSA is a great idea, it also serves as verification that the BOP is way behind on implementing the most important aspect of the law, which is to allow prisoners to earn time off of their sentences. After training, it will take months to coordinate local training at the institution level. Until then, expect the chaos to continue and questions to go unanswered.”

Shane Fausey, national president of the Council of Prison Locals, which represents BOP employees, welcomed the selection of Peters. “We believe that the lessons [Peters] learned while leading the Oregon Department of Corrections can be used to effectively improve the BOP,” he told Government Executive. “Additionally, it is extremely important that officer and employee safety are prioritized in all decisions.”

Rep Fred Keller (R-PA), chair of the House BOP Reform Caucus, said, “I look forward to maintaining an active and productive relationship with Director Peters in her new capacity on BOP priorities such as improving the agency’s operations, increasing correctional officer staffing levels, and ensuring the safety of staff and inmates.”

Peters has faced criticism during her stint as ODOC chief. She was accused in a lawsuit of placing underqualified friends in high-ranking positions within the ODOC and creating openings for them by firing other employees or creating a hostile environment causing other employees to quit.

Bobbin Singh, the executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, last week expressed concern about Peters’s appointment given his experience with her. “This appointment is an insult to all those incarcerated in Oregon who are fighting for their civil rights and dignity,” Singh told the online publication Law Dork last Tuesday.

Less than a month ago, his organization sent a report to Oregon lawmakers detailing ongoing problems at ODOC. In the letter to lawmakers accompanying the report, Singh wrote, “Despite a cascade of evidence revealing serious issues within the department, ODOC continues to put forward a misleading narrative that either ignores the issues entirely, profoundly sanitizes the facts, or wrongly shifts blame and responsibility away from itself.”

goodbad220718Law Dork reported, “Another person familiar with Peters’s work helped explain how Singh could have such criticisms and DOJ could nonetheless want Peters for the job: ‘She both runs a bad system and is one of the handful of best DOC heads in the country. She has made some concrete improvements to the system. But the system is still really bad. It says so much about American prisons that ODOC can both be very bad — and be one of the better ones in the country.’”

NY Times, Justice Department Taps Oregon Official to Run Troubled Bureau of Prisons (July 11, 2022)

Associated Press, Justice Dept taps reforming outsider to run federal prisons (July 12, 2022)

Forbes, 42 Months After The First Step Act Was Signed Into Law, The Bureau Of Prisons Starts Training Staff (July 15, 2022)

Govt Executive, A New Federal Prisons Director Has Been Named, and Union Officials and Lawmakers Are Optimistic She Will Bring Positive Reforms (July 12, 2022)

Law Dork, New Prisons Head Comes From Oregon, With Baggage (Jul y 13, 2022)

FAMM, FAMM releases statement on new Bureau of Prisons Director (Jul 12)

– Thomas L. Root

ETC FUBAR at BOP, As New Director Search Finally Over – Update for June 16, 2022

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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.

BOP: DON’T CALL US, WE’LL CALL YOU ON EARNED TIME CREDIT CALCULATION

If there is a common refrain in emails coming into this Newsletter in the past several months, it is that inmates are not getting their earned-time-credit calculations from their Unit Teams.

don'tcallus220616A recap: The First Step Act authorized the award of credits to inmates who successfully complete programs that have been found to reduce recidivism. The acronym-crazy government calls them “EBRRs,” that is, “evidence-based recidivism reduction” programs. Inmates could receive “earned time credits” (ETCs) that will reduce their prison time up to a year, grant them more halfway house or home  confinement, and even get them more phone time and commissary.

(Confusingly, the government called ETCs “FTCs” for awhile – “federal time credits” – but seems to have settled on the preferred terminology now).

Inmates are classified using a system called PATTERN according to their likelihood of recidivism.  As they complete programs, age, and behave, their PATTERN score decreases, increasing the number of ETCs they may receive.

So all is roses in the BOP. Inmates are happily earning ETCs, the staff is contentedly helping prisoners forsake their prior evil ways…

FUBAR220616Right. In fact, implementation of ETCs (and awarding time off) is becime a FUBAR.

Last week, Walter Pavlo reported in Forbes on an internal BOP memo acknowledging the frustration:

Institutions are likely getting a lot of calls from outside family members and/or questions from the inmates themselves. We ask that you refrain from referring inmates or their family members to the DSCC or Central Office. As we move toward a fully automated auto-calculation process for the calculating and awarding of FTCs, neither the DSCC nor the Corrections Programs Branch are directly involved in the process.

Forbes said the memo directed institutions to give inmates and their family members a “canned response” asking “for their patience” during the implementation of an automated credit calculation system:

While all eligible inmates are able to earn credits, the Agency is prioritizing those inmates who are within 24 months of their Statutory Release date and eligible to both earn and apply Federal Time Credits. The Agency is in the final stages of development and testing of an auto-calculation app, and once finalized all eligible inmates will have their records updated and the Federal Time applied consistently with the Federal Rules language.

Late breaking news: The BOP has finally found someone who will admit to being considered for the director’s slot, replacing Michael Carvajal (whom Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] wants to usher into retirement as quickly as possible). 

Could MIke Carvajal finally be leaving the building?
Could MIke Carvajal finally be leaving the building?

The Oregon Capital Chronicle reported yesterday that Colette Peters, director of Oregon’s prison system, confirmed to the paper that she is a finalist for the BOP Director’s job.

She has been director of the Oregon Department of Corrections since 2012, where she is in charge of  4,400 employees and 12,124 prisoners.

As director of the Oregon prison system, she changed the agency’s reference to “inmates.” Oregon’s prisoners became “adults in custody.”

Forbes, As Biden Touts Action On First Step Act, Federal Prisoners Await Action From Bureau Of Prisons (June 4, 2022)

Oregon Capital Chronicle, Oregon’s prison director a finalist to lead federal prison system (June 15, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root