As federal prison system shrinks, abuse allegations rise
The rate of inmate-related staff misconduct allegations at federal prisons has increased by nearly 50 percent in the current decade, even as the system has been shrinking.
After the shocking death by hanging of Jeffrey Epstein, the nation’s most notorious federal detainee, in a Manhattan cell on
Aug. 10, the chronic mismanagement of the Bureau of Prisons became impossible to ignore.
The bureau’s acting director, Hugh Hurwitz, was swiftly replaced by Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, a highly regarded former director.
But the problems in the federal system run much deeper, a McClatchy analysis shows.
The rate of inmate-related staff misconduct allegations has increased by nearly 50 percent from fiscal year 2010 through 2018, the analysis of records drawn from the bureau’s office of internal affairs found.
That includes a range of offenses, such as sexual and other physical abuse, theft or destruction of inmate property and smuggling contraband into prisons.
In the first four months of 2015, Edward Mendoza and James R. Toadvine, corrections officers at Phoenix Federal Prison
Camp in Arizona, sexually assaulted a female inmate, who worked in the recreation department where Toadvine was assigned, multiple times. Toadvine also told the inmate that he would stalk her upon her release.
The victim “feared retaliation and further abuse if she resisted or reported” Toadvine and Mendoza and “suffered, and continues to suffer, severe and permanent injuries, mental anguish, distress, embarrassment, and humiliation,” court records state.
The rate of sexual abuse allegations at federal prisons has doubled over the current decade, McClatchy found.
“These incidents are disheartening, but are they surprising? No,” said Jody Lynn Broadduss, an attorney representing the woman who says she was sexually assaulted in the Arizona camp. “These situations run rampant in prisons.”
Some of the increase can be attributed to greatly improved reporting of sexual abuse after the bipartisan Prison Rape Elimination Act came into effect in 2012. However, McClatchy found that from fiscal year 2017 to the following year alone, the rate shot up by around 55 percent and is now the
highest it has been in the past nine fiscal years.
“BOP takes all allegations of misconduct seriously and takes appropriate action, which may include disciplinary measures, such as reprimand, suspension, removal, or referral for criminal prosecution where warranted,” the Bureau of Prisons stated in response to McClatchy’s findings.
RISE IN MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS
The Bureau of Prisons’ Office of Internal Affairs opened 278 more misconduct cases for investigation in fiscal year 2018 than the prior fiscal year. These included cases against bureau employees, volunteers, contractors and Public Health Service officials who serve in federal correctional facilities, and staff in private facilities that house federal inmates.
McClatchy’s analysis revealed that the share of bureau employees investigated for misconduct rose by nearly 15 percent from fiscal years 2010 to 2018.
In June 2017, Khristal Ford, then a lieutenant at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas, and Tavoris Bottley, a senior corrections officer, escorted an inmate to a medical observation cell because they suspected he was drunk or on drugs.
The inmate had consumed alcohol but was not intoxicated and while he was verbally aggressive at times, at no point did he threaten Ford or Bottley, court records state. He calmly walked into the observation cell but when he was alone, he picked up a food tray and threw it at the locked door.
Ford reopened the door of the cell, asked Bottley to “take care of it” and watched as Bottley punched the inmate three times without any justification. According to court records, they then submitted reports omitting any reference to the punches, falsely cited the inmate for attempted assault and falsified a breathalyzer report to make it seem as if the inmate was intoxicated — a typical case of physical abuse..
The rate of excessive use of force and physical and verbal abuse of inmates rose by more than a fifth from fiscal year 2010 to 2018, McClatchy found.
Among the cases IA investigated is one where a corrections officer tackled and struck an inmate with a closed fist even though the inmate was complying with staff instructions and another incident where an officer used pepper spray without any justification on an inmate while a second officer shut off water to the inmate’s cell.
The rate of fiscal improprieties such as theft and destruction of an inmate’s funds or property by staff almost doubled over the most recent nine years.
The rate of allegations of “inappropriate relationship with inmates” — misuse of inmate labor, soliciting, accepting or offering anything of value to an inmate, and improper contact with an inmate or his or her family — also increased by nearly a third.
“These increases are certainly concerning,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “It is possible that there has been an increase in reporting, which is a good thing. But at a minimum, this requires additional investigation.”
Some categories have seen decreases.
The reported rate of bureau staff supplying substances such as weapons, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or tools for escape has decreased by around 10 percent over the current decade. Reports of employees bribing inmates or accepting bribes have gone down by nearly 40 percent over the same period.
AN AGENCY IN TURMOIL
The findings come at a time when the Bureau of Prisons, which operates more than 100 federal correctional facilities and partners with several private prisons across the United States, is already reeling from allegations of dysfunction, mismanagement and cover-ups.
Earlier this year, a congressional report to the House Subcommittee on National Security found that misconduct in the federal prison system is “largely tolerated or ignored altogether.” The report also stated that
“some individuals deemed responsible for misconduct were shuffled around, commended, awarded, promoted, or even allowed to retire with a clean record and full benefits before any disciplinary action could apply.”
Last month, the Justice Department’s inspector general also found that an assistant director had engaged in inappropriate sexual and personal relationships with a contractor and an executive of the Bureau of Prisons union.
The bureau had an acting director for more than a year before Kathleen Hawk Sawyer was appointed director after Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in
New York City. According to recent news reports, Justice Department officials have been frustrated with how senior officials had been managing the bureau.
During a testy public hearing this week conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sawyer was grilled about the Epstein case and about conditions in general.
“Stable leadership is not everything but it matters,” said Jonathan Smith of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. “The tone that is set from the top has an effect on the functioning of each facility: whether it is a punitive or rehabilitative environment or even in terms of the acquisition of resources.”
The Sacramento Bee reported in June on a federal prison in California that lacked functioning air-conditioning for the third consecutive year as temperatures soared above 90 degrees. In January, a waterfront federal prison complex in New York lacked heat, light and warm food for days in the middle of a polar vortex.
“Once somebody is sent into prison, they disappear and we don’t see what happens,” Smith said.
The bureau lacks adequate structures to improve accountability for officer conduct and needs to build transparency into the judicial process, he said.
‘A RECIPE FOR BAD OUTCOMES’
The Justice Department’s budget request this fiscal year included an “administrative reduction of 1,168 positions and $121.5 million … in light of the declining inmate population.”
Although the number of federal inmates has steadily decreased, the majority of facilities are still overcrowded.
Prison reform advocates and some bureau employees say that a chief cause of misconduct and mismanagement is overcrowding combined with understaffing. Jeffrey Epstein, for instance, was housed in a short-staffed jail where only one of his guards was a regular officer, and Epstein had not been checked on for hours before he was found dead.
“Understaffing is a recipe for bad outcomes,” said David Fathi of the ACLU. “If the staff is working long hours or multiple shifts at a time, they are bound to be tired and impatient, and that can lead to undesirable results.”
In addition to providing security, prison staff also perform numerous other functions, including overseeing visitors, food services and providing transportation to medical facilities. Anything that affects the staff also affects the inmates, Fathi said.
“If you’re tired, your ability to problem-solve or deal with issues as they emerge goes down and uses-of-force and the risk of missing something and making mistakes goes up,” Smith said.
HOW MCCLATCHY ANALYZED THE DATA
The internal affairs reports were obtained by McClatchy through a Freedom of Information Act request. The figures in each report were generated by internal affairs in midOctober of every fiscal year.
To account for changes in both the inmate population and the number of Bureau of Prison employees, McClatchy calculated a rate for both allegations of misconduct as well as bureau employees who were the subject of investigations.
The rates were obtained by dividing the total number of allegations by the number of federal inmates in that fiscal year and then multiplying by 10,000.
The share of bureau employees investigated for misconduct was calculated by dividing the number of staffers investigated by the total number of employees of that fiscal year year and then multiplying by 100.
As an investigation proceeds, cases may be reclassified, making the reported figures subject to change. The number of persons investigated may not be equal to the number of cases opened in a given year because a case may have more than one person listed as a subject of investigation and a staffer could be the subject of more than one case. A subject may be charged with multiple allegations in a single case, causing the total allegations to be higher. A staffer may also be the subject of more than one case.