The warnings were clear. The response was not.
After inmates attacked and killed a correctional officer at a federal penitentiary in California in 2008, union leaders pleaded with the Bureau of Prisons to hire additional staff and end the practice of having one officer patrol a unit of more than 100 inmates.
Congress allocated $160 million in 2009 and $70.5 million in 2010 expressly for "additional correctional officer staffing." The Bureau of Prisons, however, ignored the directive and used the money to pay for inmate care programs and prison facility maintenance, according to appropriations reports and budget documents.
No additional officers were hired either year and, despite the bureau's request for funds to fill 1,200 vacant positions in 2011 and 2012, the only allocations for new positions in those years were to staff recently constructed or renovated prison facilities.
Federal prisons are understaffed, overcrowded and exceedingly violent, according to union leaders, correctional officers and government auditors. The practice of assigning one guard per unit has also persisted and was in place Feb. 25, when an inmate ambushed and killed Officer Eric Williams, 34, of Nanticoke, at the United States Penitentiary at Canaan in Wayne County.
The Citizens' Voice reviewed hundreds of pages of transcripts from subcommittee hearings, floor speeches and government reports that reveal a troubling pattern of dire warnings, repeated requests for additional officers and official inaction.
Officer Williams died five months after the Government Accountability Office released a report on the effects of prison overcrowding that warned of increased inmate misconduct and the potential for a "serious incident."
Bureau of Prisons officials raised particular concern about high-security facilities like Canaan, "because these facilities are extremely crowded and house the most serious inmates."
It is unclear what action, if any, Congress or the Bureau of Prisons took to mitigate the risks raised in the report between its release, last September, and Officer Williams' death. U.S. Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., who commissioned the report with Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., did not respond to an interview request. A spokeswoman for Rep. Cummings did not respond to questions about what steps he has taken in response to the report.
The bureau, slow to recover from limited funding increases in the mid-2000s and the elimination of 2,300 correctional officer positions in 2005 and 2006, has struggled to keep up with an inmate population that has grown four-fold over the last two decades.
The system, which housed 58,000 inmates in 1990, reported 218,568 inmates in federal custody as of last Friday, including 176,127 at bureau-operated facilities and 29,313 in privately managed facilities. The bureau's 119 prison facilities, designed for 128,700 inmates, are 37 percent over capacity and high-security facilities, like Canaan, are 54 percent over capacity.
Contact the writer: msisak@citizensvoice.com