In the company of killers, bank robbers and corrupt politicians, federal prisons might be a more interesting site than your average government workplace.
Less safe, too.
Joe Davidson
Joe Davidson writes the Federal Diary, a column about the federal workplace that celebrated its 80th birthday in November 2012. Davidson previously was an assistant city editor at The Washington Post and a Washington and foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered federal agencies and political campaigns.
A recent Government Accountability Office report on the Bureau of Prisons says inmate overcrowding undermines the safety of the agency’s staff, as well as that of the inmates.
“BOP officials reported increased use of double and triple bunking, waiting lists for education and drug treatment programs, limited meaningful work opportunities, and increased inmate-to-staff ratios,” the September report says. “These factors, taken together, contribute to increased inmate misconduct, which negatively affects the safety and security of inmates and staff.”
The prison facilities are crowded because the inmate population is growing faster than the bureau’s capacity. As the prison population grew 9.5 percent from 2006 through 2011, the agency’s capacity, increasing at 7 percent, didn’t keep up. Even with new facilities, the prison population grew from 136 percent of capacity to 139 percent, according to the GAO.
“Nearly all BOP facilities had fewer correctional staff on board than needed, with a BOP-wide staffing shortage in excess of 3,200,” the GAO said, citing a 2010 Justice Department study.
While crowding has increased, the inmate-to-staff ratio has gone down. Fewer officers is not a strategy for success. The consequences can be real and bloody.
“Serious correctional worker understaffing and prison inmate overcrowding is causing a significant increase in dangerous inmate-on-worker assaults,” Dale Deshotel, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, told the House Judiciary Committee in December.
In his written statement, Deshotel said “illustrations of this painful reality include: (1) the savage murder of Correctional Officer Jose Rivera on June 20, 2008, by two prison inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Atwater, CA.; (2) the brutal stabbing of a correctional officer on April 23, 2009, by a prison inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, IN.; (3) the brutal stabbing of a correctional officer on November 1, 2009, by a prison inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, PA; and (4) the more than 350 vicious inmate-on-staff assaults that have occurred at various BOP institutions since the murder of Correctional Officer Rivera.”
In fiscal year 2010, there were almost 1,700 assaults on bureau staff, according to an April 2011 GAO report.
The bureau did not respond to requests for comment on the GAO report. In an Oct. 2 letter to Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said “for safety purposes, BOP critically needs high security prison capacity.”
“The negative effects of overcrowding on safety are even more pronounced in high security facilities that house the most serious offenders,” Holder wrote. “Nearly 90 percent of these inmates have a history of violence, and nearly 70 percent have been sanctioned for violating prison rules. Assaults on BOP staff are higher at high security prisons than at lower security facilities.”
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