July 21, 2009
The House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on Tuesday, July 21, to review and analyze the Federal Bureau of Prisons’s (BOP) policies. In his opening, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), subcommittee chairman, stressed the need to re-evaluate the federal prison system which suffers from budgetary constraints, overcrowding, insufficient personnel, and unsafe facilities.
The subcommittee heard three panels addressing various problem areas for the federal prison system. The first panel was Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) who spoke of his personal investment in improving safety for correctional officers, prompted by the death of Jose Rivera, who was killed by two inmates with homemade weapons at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atwater, California. Following his death, reports by the Department of Justice described USP Atwater’s significant understaffing, overcrowding, insufficient funding and a lack of safety for inmates and correctional officers alike. Cardoza specifically spoke to the necessity for nonlethal weapons, such as pepper spray, for correctional officers. Harley G. Lappin, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), sitting on the second panel, opposed the arming of correction officers with nonlethal weapons, as doing so would have detrimental consequences.
Lappin stressed the role of prisons as “community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and provide inmates with a wide range of work and other self-improvement programs that will help them adopt a crime-free lifestyle upon their return to the community.” These criteria are not being met as the BOP suffers from staggering levels of overcrowding, citing an unprecedented 4.9-to-1 inmate-to-staff ratio. Lappin went on to lobby for increased funding, expanded housing facilities, more private prisons, and reductions in the number of inmates and time served lengths through earned good time and halfway houses.
The third panel consisted of Reginald A. Wilkinson, head of the Ohio College Access Network; Philip Fornaci, Director of the DC Prisoners’ Legal Services Project; Richard A. Lewis, senior manager at ICF International; Stephen R. Sady, Chief Deputy Federal Public Defender; and Phil Glover, Legislative Coordinator at the American Federation of Government Employees.
“Over-incarceration of federal prisoners takes a huge societal toll: the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted; the human cost of individual freedom lost and families broken; and the redefinition of our society as one willing to incarcerate more than is necessary to accomplish legitimate goals of sentencing,” said Sady, who criticized BOP’s inefficiency. Specifically, he noted failures to implement federal laws such as the Second Chance Act, the good time statute and the law providing for compassionate release in extraordinary and compelling circumstances. Sady said that the latter has became known as the “death rattle rule” due to its poor and cumbersome implementation. Failure to implement these laws costs the American taxpayers millions.
Wilkinson spoke of the need to maintain Federal Prison Industries (FPI). He testified that FPI inmates were 24 percent less likely to recidivate than their non-FPI counterparts. Glover spoke further on violence and safety concerns in prisons, Lewis focused on faith-based initiatives, and Fornaci pushed for increased medical care for prisoners, particularly citing the failures of the grievance system.
All the legislators and witnesses agreed that drastic changes are needed to correct the deteriorating federal prison system.
To read testimony, please follow this link: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_090714.html