Dozens of inmates, including disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, have died needlessly in federal prisons due to lax supervision, access to contraband and poor supervision of vulnerable inmates, according to a report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s watchdog agency.
The Bureau of Prisons, which has jurisdiction over about 155,000 inmates, routinely subjects prisoners to conditions that put them at increased risk of self-harm, drug overdoses, accidents and violence, the department’s inspector general found after analyzing 344 deaths from 2013 to 2013 2021 determined that what was not the case was caused by diseases.
More than half of those deaths were suicides, and many of them could have been prevented if inmates had received appropriate mental health evaluations or been housed with other prisoners according to department policy, rather than alone, as Mr. Epstein was to be left alone, the report concludes.
The report “identified several operational and management deficiencies” that violated permanent authority policies, said Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general whose investigators had previously concluded that Mr. Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center occurred in the Year 2019 was the result of gross negligence and inadequacy in staffing.
Investigators found “unsafe conditions” in nearly all of the deaths they analyzed, Mr. Horowitz said. The number of such deaths in the federal system has been steadily increasing – to about 50 per year, he added.
Although conspiracy theories about Mr. Epstein’s death are widespread, the circumstances were strikingly similar to those of many of the 187 inmates who died by suicide during the reporting period. The overwhelming majority were white men who killed themselves by hanging, many were housed alone when they took their own lives, and a disproportionate number, 56, were sex offenders – although a relatively small percentage of federal prisoners imprisoned for such crimes.
Investigators cited the overuse of single cells and restrictive solitary confinement as a major factor in many suicides. But they said the bureau’s failure to flag serious mental health problems — by classifying problem inmates as low risk — was an equally serious misstep.
Several deaths cited in the report summarized the systemic breakdowns.
Officials at an unnamed federal prison placed an inmate who had recently attempted suicide alone in a cell, without his personal belongings or medical follow-up care, even though he had been classified as suicidal upon arrival. In another case, investigators found that the psychological evaluation of an inmate who died by suicide had not been updated to reflect an increased risk of self-harm but had instead been copied from a report submitted seven years earlier.
A spokeswoman for the office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Many of the problems identified by the Inspector General are directly or indirectly due to an acute shortage of correctional staff. The shortage has led to guards hiring teachers, case managers, health workers, counselors, facility staff and even secretaries as guards, despite having only basic security training.
The Bureau of Prisons is not alone in this regard. State and local law enforcement agencies across the country, particularly correctional departments, are struggling to recruit and retain employees at all levels as better-paying, less demanding jobs draw away people facing rising housing, food and transportation costs.
Colette S. Peters, the office’s director, has taken several steps to address the problem. But it has had limited success in securing major funding grants needed to sufficiently raise salaries or repair deteriorating infrastructure in many of the system’s 122 prisons and camps.
Investigators who conducted site visits and analyzed the bureau’s records also found shocking deficiencies in the monitoring of the 70 prisoners who died of drug overdoses during the reporting period.
In some cases, prisoners have been able to smuggle opioids using drones flown into prisons at night. Others simply hid drugs in trash bags after working on cleanup outside the prison walls.
In one remarkable episode, correctional officers inspected the cell of an inmate who had committed suicide by overdose and found a hidden stash of 1,000 pills that had missed officers during inspections – including one taken the day before his death.
But drugs weren’t the only contraband prisoners used to harm themselves or others. Officers investigating recovered a number of metal shafts made from nails and spikes, pieces of plastic sharpened into blades and garrotes made from pieces of cloth and string.
Mr. Epstein, the report says, collected less conspicuous contraband in front of correctional officers – sheets and blankets that he used to form a noose.
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2024-02-16 00:46:09
www.nytimes.com