Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Contract Prisons

From the US Department of Justice

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which is the component of the Department of Justice (Department) responsible for incarcerating all federal defendants sentenced to prison, was operating at 20 percent over its rated capacity as of December 2015. To help alleviate overcrowding and respond to congressional mandates, in 1997 the BOP had begun contracting with privately operated institutions (often referred to as “contract prisons”), at first on a smaller scale and later more extensively, to confine federal inmates who are primarily low security, criminal alien adult males with 90 months or less remaining to serve on their sentences. As of December 2015, contract prisons housed roughly 22,660 of these federal inmates, or about 12 percent of the BOP’s total inmate population...

In recent years, disturbances in several federal contract prisons resulted in extensive property damage, bodily injury, and the death of a Correctional Officer. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated this review to examine how the BOP monitors these facilities. We also assessed whether contractor performance meets certain inmate safety and security requirements and analyzed how contract prisons and similar BOP institutions compare with regard to inmate safety and security data. We found that, in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP institutions and that the BOP needs to improve how it monitors contract prisons in several areas.

From Think Progress

For the most part, however, the report lays out a much more mundane case against private prisons. The private facilities failed, in large part, not because of high profile incidents — but because, compared to their government-run counterparts, they simply weren’t good at running a correctional facility. In this battle between socialism and the free market, socialism clearly won.

How the War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility

The social mobility of black Americans has suffered collateral damage from the “War on Drugs.” Being convicted of a crime has devastating effects on the employment prospects and incomes of ex-felons and their children... These findings are often used to motivate efforts to reduce criminal behavior. They should also motivate changes in our criminal justice system, which unfairly punishes black Americans—often for victimless crimes that whites are at least as likely to commit.

An estimated one-third of black male Americans will spend time in state or federal prison at some point in their lifetime – more than double the rate from the 1970s and over five times higher than the rate for white males.

What’s driving the imprisonment of black men? Arrest data show a striking trend: arrests of blacks have fallen for violent and property crimes, but soared for drug related crimes. As of 2011, drug crimes comprised 14 percent of all arrests and a miscellaneous category that includes “drug paraphernalia” possession comprised an additional 31 percent of all arrests. Just 6 percent and 14 percent of arrests were for violent and property crimes, respectively.

More from Brookings.

Prison Populations and State Incarceration Rate Data

Federal and state authorities accounted for more than 1.6 million prisoners at the end of 2010. That’s about 497 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 residents – a rate that varies greatly throughout the country.

Data shows prison populations and incarceration rates for each state. Statistics are compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

More from Governing.

Solitary confinement's invisible scars

From the Guardian:

As kids, many of us imagine having superpowers. An avid comic book reader, I often imagined being invisible. I never thought I would actually experience it, but I did.

It wasn't in a parallel universe – although it often felt that way – but right here in the Empire State, my home. While serving time in New York's prisons, I spent 2,054 days in solitary and other forms of isolated confinement, out of sight and invisible to other human beings – and eventually, even to myself.

After only a short time in solitary, I felt all of my senses begin to diminish. There was nothing to see but gray walls. In New York's so-called special housing units, or SHUs, most cells have solid steel doors, and many do not have windows. You cannot even tape up pictures or photographs; they must be kept in an envelope. To fight the blankness, I counted bricks and measured the walls. I stared obsessively at the bolts on the door to my cell.

Prison System Problems

Profiting Off Prisoners

With some politicians arguing private prisons help states save money and other politicians arguing the system is rife with corruption, there can be no debate about this basic fact: The private prison system has surged in size since the U.S. began experimenting with private prisons in 1984. Between 1990 and 2009, the inmate population housed in private prisons grew by more than 1,600 percent.
(If you can't see infographic, go HERE.


Image compliments of Top Criminal Justice Degrees

Capital Punishment, 2011 – Statistical Tables

At yearend 2011, 35 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons held 3,082 inmates under sentence of death, which was 57 fewer than at yearend 2010 (figure 1). This represents the eleventh consecutive year in which the number of inmates
under sentence of death decreased.

Four states (California, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania) held more than half of all inmates on death row on December 31, 2011. The Federal Bureau of Prisons held 56 inmates under sentence of death at yearend.

Of prisoners under sentence of death at yearend, 55% were white and 42% were black. The 387 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death accounted for 14% of inmates with a known ethnicity. Ninety-eight percent of inmates under sentence of death were male, and 2% were female. The race and sex of inmates under sentence of death has remained relatively unchanged since 2000.

More from Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Prison Happy

From the American Consumers Newsletter

Americans are singularly obsessed with imprisonment. No other country puts as many people behind bars. The number of people in custody in the nation's local jails and state or federal prisons more than tripled between 1985 and 2010, growing from 744,208 to 2.3 million, according to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. The rate of imprisonment more than doubled during the time period, climbing from 313 to 731 incarcerations per 100,000 population.

National Corrections Reporting Program, 2009 - Statistical Tables

This update adds data for 2009 to the electronic series of selected tables on most serious offense, sentence length, and time served in state prison. The National Corrections Reporting Program collects demographic information, conviction offenses, sentence length, credited jail time, type of admission, type of release, and time served from individual prisoner records in participating jurisdictions.

State of Sentencing 2010

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia adopted new criminal justice policies—ranging from scaling back mandatory sentencing laws to reforming crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparities to improving parole supervision -- all aimed at reducing prison populations and facilitating successful reentry of ex-offenders, while at the same time, ensuring public safety.

Today, 7.2 million men and women are under correctional supervision. Of this total, five million are monitored in the community on probation or parole and 2.3 million are incarcerated in prisons or jails. As a result the nation maintains the highest rate of incarceration in the world at 743 per 100,000 population.

Prison Mortality

Although access to this research (which appeared in the August 2010 issue of Demography) is restricted, the astounding results published in the article, "Incarcerating Death: Mortality in U.S. State Correctional Facilities, 1985-1998," are worthy of attention. In the article, Vanderbilt University sociologist Evelyn J. Patterson compares the mortality rate of men in state correctional facilities with the rate of men who are not in prison. She discovers that imprisoned black men have a lower mortality rate than black men who are not in prison. After controlling for firearm and motor vehicle deaths, the mortality rate for imprisoned black men is still lower. The reason, suggests Patterson, is that imprisoned black men have greater access to basic health care than their counterparts outside prison walls.

How the Census Counts Prisoners: Significant Political Stakes

From Citiwire.

If the facts in the story are accurate., e.g., if states can now choose how to count inmates, this would likely cause a problem if a prisoner is from one state and incarcerated in another. As a colleague noted: "They could then technically be counted in two states(or neither state) depending on how each state decides to handle this."

1 in 11 Prisoners Serving Life Sentences

A new report released by The Sentencing Project finds a record 140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime. In addition, 29% of persons serving a life sentence (41,095) have no possibility of parole, and 1,755 were juveniles at the time of the crime. No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America represents the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender. The report’s findings reveal overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

Census Bureau's Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts

Author: SAM ROBERTS
Date: Oct 24, 2008
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: A
Page: 12

...

Concerns about so-called prison-based gerrymandering have grown as the number of
inmates around the nation has ballooned. Similar disparities have been identified in upstate New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Critics say the census should count prisoners in the district where they lived before they were incarcerated.

...

In 2006, experts commissioned by the Census Bureau recommended that the agency study whether prison inmates should be counted in 2010 as residents of the mostly urban neighborhoods where they last lived rather than as residents of the mostly rural districts where they are temporarily housed against their will.

...

"With only one exception nationwide," Mr. Wagner said, "every time a community learns that prison populations are distorting their access to local government, the legislature has reversed course and redrawn districts based on actual population, not the Census Bureau's mistakes."

The sole exception he cited is St. Lawrence County in upstate New York. ...

"In New York and several other states, the regional transfer of a minority population does have a representational impact," said Prof. Nathan Persily, director of the Center on Law and Politics at Columbia Law School. "There's no reason why a community ought to gain representation because of a large, incarcerated, nonvoting population."

Prof. James A. Gardner of the University at Buffalo Law School, said that because "prisoners don't want to be there, leave at the first opportunity, and
there's no chance they can vote, it is taking advantage of a completely inert
population for the purpose of sneaking out extra political power."

The Prison Policy Initiative found 21 counties across the country where at least one in five people, according to the Census Bureau's count, were actually inmates from another county.

...

more

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

Department of Correctional Services reports

A variety of Research Studies and Legislative Reports is now available online from the Department of Correctional Services. Titles include the Annual Shock Legislative Report, Profile of Inmate Population Under Custody, Inmate Escape Incidents, and Female Homicide Commitments.

1 in 100 Adults Now in Prison

2,319,258 Americans Behind Bars in 2008, Most of Any Nation.

Prison Populations and Legislative Redistricting

Recently there was an AP article from an advocacy group arguing that State prison populations should not be included as part of local population counts, especially when it comes to redistricting.

http://www.9wsyr.com/news/state/story.aspx?content_id=aef40f48-a62c-48d9-9ecc-310b57d5303f

The basic premise of the group is that these populations should be counted where they COME from, not where they are being housed. Since they are currently counted among group quarters populations, the argument goes, they unfairly provide overrepresentation to places that typically house them (usually more rural areas) when it comes to legislative redistricting.

Several issues arise from this position that I wonder about.

First, on the federal and state level, the flexibility of local officials to choose to either include these special group quarters populations in their counts is ZERO. Federal and state laws specify that these populations (state prisoners) WILL be included in all counts, including those for redistricting purposes for federal and state districts.

Local governments in NY apparently have an OPTION to count them, based on a court case in Jefferson County in the early 1990s. My best understanding of the decision is that the counties may choose whether or not to include them when they draw LOCAL legislative districts. In some counties, such as Oneida County, local laws have been passed addressing this issue - in Oneida County the local law mandates the inclusion of all group quarters populations. Others may choose NOT to use them for redistricting. But in either case, it should ONLY impact local legislative boundaries.

Second, the issue of whether it is appropriate to include prisoners in population counts for redistricting purposes places us, as census professionals, in a precarious position. If we don't include this group quarter, what about others, such as nursing home occupants, mental health facilities, or alcohol treatment centers ? Where do we stop in terms of deciding who IS and ISN'T a TRUE local person ? Many occupants of the above group quarters may actually be placed in those facilities not by there own choosing. So it is more appropriate to count them where they came from or where they are ?

Third, how would we determine where our prisoners are ACTUALLY from ? Is it where they were arrested ? Is it where they lived at the time they were convicted ? Obviously many of those in trouble with the law are very transient. How would anyone confirm a true address which would assign the person in question to a locality ? Is it simply a matter of where they tell you they last lived ?

Fourth, to reassign prison populations back to wherever they came from (assuming that could be done) would deny the rights of the local municipalities that provide support services to our State prisons to adequate representation. Who bears the costs associated with maintaining the water and sewer services, the costs of road maintenance, etc., which service the prisons ? The local municipalities, of course. To deny them the right to count the prisoners would be to deny them the right to population based funds from the federal and state governments which help maintain the areas around the prisons.

Lastly, if the prisons were to fall into disrepair, or start to endanger local communities because they followed unsafe practices, who would bring this issue to task before the state ? If a local water source were to become contaminated and the water at the prison facility were to become undrinkable, who's job would it be to work with the DEC and other water quality personnel to fix the problem ? A representative in some urban district hundreds of miles away, meaning the district from which the prisoner originated ? Not likely...the representative in whose district the prison is located would be much more apt to make an issue of such things. So in some ways, local legislators DO, in fact, represent the interests of the prisoner, as well as the local community.

According to our local Board of Elections, state prisoners have no voting rights. They may, upon release from prison, regain some right to vote. However this is usually something done with assistance from their parole officer.

Local jails have a slightly different angle on democracy. If you are in the local county lockup as a pretrial inmate, you can vote via absentee ballot. Once convicted, regardless of what the conviction is for, you can no longer vote while you are imprisoned. Once released, you are back on the voting rolls, assuming you ever were.