High-profile attacks on Chauvin, Nassar put spotlight on violence in federal prisons
Derek Chauvin was stabbed nearly two dozen times in the law library at a federal prison in Arizona. Larry Nassar was knifed repeatedly in his cell at a federal penitentiary in Florida.
The assaults of two notorious, high-profile federal prisoners by fellow inmates in recent months have renewed concerns about whether the chronically understaffed, crisis-plagued federal Bureau of Prisons is capable of keeping people in its custody safe.
In the shadow of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s 2018 beating death at a West Virginia federal penitentiary and financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 suicide at a Manhattan federal jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, the Bureau of Prisons is again under scrutiny for failing to protect high-profile prisoners from harm.
Chauvin, 47, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020, was hospitalized for a week after he was assaulted Nov. 24 at a medium-security federal prison in Tucson, Ariz. — the same complex where an inmate tried to shoot a visitor last year with a contraband gun.
Chauvin’s suspected attacker, an ex-gang leader, told correctional officers he would have killed him if they hadn’t responded when they did, prosecutors said. He was charged last week with attempted murder and has been moved out of Chauvin’s prison to a federal penitentiary next door.
Chauvin’s family is “very concerned about the facility’s capacity to protect Derek from further harm,” his lawyer, Gregory Erickson, said. “They remain unassured that any changes have been made to the faulty procedures that allowed Derek’s attack to occur in the first place.”
Nassar, 60, the ex-U.S. women’s gymnastics team doctor who sexually abused athletes, was treated for a collapsed lung after he was stabbed multiple times in the neck, chest and back on July 9 at a federal penitentiary in Coleman, Fla. His attacker was stopped by other inmates before officers arrived.
The attacks on Chauvin and Nassar, among dozens of other assaults and deaths involving lesser-known federal inmates, are symptoms of larger systemic problems within the Justice Department’s largest agency that put all 158,000 federal prisoners at risk. They include severe staffing shortages, staff-on-inmate abuse, broken surveillance cameras and crumbling infrastructure.
The violence has challenged a perception — repeated by some lawyers and criminal justice experts quoted in the news media when Chauvin was sentenced last year — that federal prisons are far safer than state prisons or local jails. The inmates suspected of attacking Chauvin and Nassar both have violent histories.
After Chauvin’s attack, his mother complained in a since-deleted Facebook post that the Bureau of Prisons was keeping her in the dark on details of the assault and his medical condition — echoing complaints early in the COVID-19 pandemic when families weren’t informed about inmates who were dying from the virus until it was too late. The agency said it gave updates on Chauvin’s health to everyone he asked to be notified.
“Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd was a tragic loss of life and a horrifying reminder of the inequality that pervades our justice system,” said Daniel Landsman, the deputy director of policy at the criminal justice advocacy group FAMM, or Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
“However, no one’s sentence, regardless of their offense, includes being subjected to violence while they’re in prison. The attack on Chauvin is the latest in a long list of incidents that highlight the urgent need for comprehensive independent oversight of our federal Bureau of Prisons,” Landsman said.
An ongoing Associated Press investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported problems within the Bureau of Prisons, including rampant sexual abuse and other staff criminal conduct, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides.
The Bureau of Prisons, with more than 30,000 employees, 122 prison facilities and an annual budget of about $8 billion, has drawn increased oversight from Congress and scrutiny from government watchdogs in the wake of Bulger and Epstein’s deaths.
A law passed last year requires the Bureau of Prisons to overhaul outdated security systems and replace broken cameras — one of several critical issues that came to light in the wake of Epstein’s suicide. In some instances, however, the agency has been slow to comply, blaming technological challenges.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, meanwhile, has issued a pair of scathing reports citing management failures, flawed policies and widespread incompetence as factors in Bulger’s killing and blaming a “combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures” for Epstein’s suicide.