Christopher Zoukis's Blog - Posts Tagged "federal-prisons"
Federal Prison Guards Now Armed With Pepper Spray
A new federal law, passed by Congress without a dissenting vote and signed by President Barack Obama, directs the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide pepper spray to corrections officers in all federal prisons except minimum- or low-security facilities.
The measure (S. 238, the “Eric Williams Correctional Officer Protection Act”) cleared both chambers of Congress under parliamentary procedures used for non-controversial measures that allowed the bill to bypass committee hearings and votes, and required only a voice vote, not the recording each legislator’s vote, in each house. The bill had bipartisan sponsorship and the support of prison workers’ groups.
Public Law 104-133 bears the name of a 34-year-old correctional officer who was killed in February 2013 in the high-security federal prison in Canaan, Pennsylvania. While working alone to oversee a routine evening lockdown in a high-security housing unit with two levels and over 100 inmates, Williams was blindsided by an attack by an inmate on the cellblock’s second level.
The attack knocked him down a flight of stairs, where the attacking inmate beat Williams so severely that the corrections officer’s skull was crushed. The officer was also stabbed more than 100 times with a shank, a crude prison-made weapon.
The inmate who killed Williams was serving an 11-year term for drug trafficking for the New Mexican Mafia gang, and has also been convicted of the first-drug murder of a rival gang member in Arizona. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty when he is tried later this year for Williams’ murder.
BOP policy forbids corrections officers bringing weapons into cellblocks. At the time of his death, Officer Williams had only a radio, handcuffs, and keys; the blind-side attack was so sudden the corrections officer was unable to hit the alarm button on his radio, nor did he have any defensive gear or equipment to repel an attack.
Nor was there any back-up help nearby: in 2005, the year the Canaan penitentiary opened, a cost-cutting BOP measure reduced cellblock staffing from two officers to a single officer. Government records show a very similar fatal attack on a corrections guard occurred in a federal penitentiary in California in 2008.
At the time of Officer Williams’ murder, BOP had begun a pilot program, which did not include the Canaan penitentiary, on pepper spray use. That non-lethal but incapacitating self-defense and riot control compound (more formally known as oleoresin capsicum), irritates the eyes, causing tears, pain, breathing difficulty and temporary blindness.
The new law directs the BOP to issue pepper spray routinely to BOP officers and other employees of all federal prisons, except minimum- or low-security facilities, who may be required to respond to a prison emergency; it can also decide to issue it to other staffers. Initial staff training is required before they can carry pepper spray, along with annual refreshers. The law specifically allows pepper spray use to reduce violent acts by prisoners against other prisoners, BOP staff or prison visitors.
The new statute also requires the Government Accountability Office to study and report to Congress within three years on the effectiveness of pepper spray in reducing prison crime and violence, the advisability and cost of expanding it to minimum- and low-security prisons, and other steps to improve the safety of BOP prison officers and staff.
Hopefully, the BOP will closely monitor its new self-defense measure to ensure proper training of correctional staff as well as to ensure it is used within reason to benefit both correctional staff and inmate safety.
The measure (S. 238, the “Eric Williams Correctional Officer Protection Act”) cleared both chambers of Congress under parliamentary procedures used for non-controversial measures that allowed the bill to bypass committee hearings and votes, and required only a voice vote, not the recording each legislator’s vote, in each house. The bill had bipartisan sponsorship and the support of prison workers’ groups.
Public Law 104-133 bears the name of a 34-year-old correctional officer who was killed in February 2013 in the high-security federal prison in Canaan, Pennsylvania. While working alone to oversee a routine evening lockdown in a high-security housing unit with two levels and over 100 inmates, Williams was blindsided by an attack by an inmate on the cellblock’s second level.
The attack knocked him down a flight of stairs, where the attacking inmate beat Williams so severely that the corrections officer’s skull was crushed. The officer was also stabbed more than 100 times with a shank, a crude prison-made weapon.
The inmate who killed Williams was serving an 11-year term for drug trafficking for the New Mexican Mafia gang, and has also been convicted of the first-drug murder of a rival gang member in Arizona. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty when he is tried later this year for Williams’ murder.
BOP policy forbids corrections officers bringing weapons into cellblocks. At the time of his death, Officer Williams had only a radio, handcuffs, and keys; the blind-side attack was so sudden the corrections officer was unable to hit the alarm button on his radio, nor did he have any defensive gear or equipment to repel an attack.
Nor was there any back-up help nearby: in 2005, the year the Canaan penitentiary opened, a cost-cutting BOP measure reduced cellblock staffing from two officers to a single officer. Government records show a very similar fatal attack on a corrections guard occurred in a federal penitentiary in California in 2008.
At the time of Officer Williams’ murder, BOP had begun a pilot program, which did not include the Canaan penitentiary, on pepper spray use. That non-lethal but incapacitating self-defense and riot control compound (more formally known as oleoresin capsicum), irritates the eyes, causing tears, pain, breathing difficulty and temporary blindness.
The new law directs the BOP to issue pepper spray routinely to BOP officers and other employees of all federal prisons, except minimum- or low-security facilities, who may be required to respond to a prison emergency; it can also decide to issue it to other staffers. Initial staff training is required before they can carry pepper spray, along with annual refreshers. The law specifically allows pepper spray use to reduce violent acts by prisoners against other prisoners, BOP staff or prison visitors.
The new statute also requires the Government Accountability Office to study and report to Congress within three years on the effectiveness of pepper spray in reducing prison crime and violence, the advisability and cost of expanding it to minimum- and low-security prisons, and other steps to improve the safety of BOP prison officers and staff.
Hopefully, the BOP will closely monitor its new self-defense measure to ensure proper training of correctional staff as well as to ensure it is used within reason to benefit both correctional staff and inmate safety.
Bureau of Prisons Announces Family-Friendly Policies
In a bid to make federal prisons more helpful for inmates’ ability to re-enter society after their release, the Bureau of Prisons in late April announced a set of new policies designed to make it easier for those incarcerated in federal institutions to stay in contact with their families.
Three new initiatives were unveiled in an April 26 speech in Houston by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who visited a federal women’s prison and a re-entry hostel for female inmates awaiting release. The event was part of the “National Reentry Week” declared by the Justice Department to publicize a variety of anti-recidivism programs to aid the more than 40,000 inmates released from federal facilities each year.
During Reentry Week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a framework-setting “Roadmap to Reentry,” which outlined five evidence-based principles which she said underlie the Bureau of Prisons’ efforts to help former inmates overcome the stigma of a criminal record so they can successfully reintegrate into mainstream society and avoid being re-incarcerated.
One of those five principles deals with giving inmates the resources and opportunities they need to maintain their family relations, by strengthening inmate support systems while they are behind bars. (The Justice Department statement notes there’s research evidence showing strong family relationship cut recidivism, improve chances of finding post-release employment, and ameliorate the harm to children from having an incarcerated parent.)
One concrete step the Bureau of Prisons will take to solidify inmate-family relationships is expanding a new pilot program to bring videoconferencing to all its facilities for female prisoners by June 2016, with an eye to expanding video visits to all federal facilities eventually. Over 7% of Bureau of Prisons inmates are women, and because there are fewer facilities for women, they are often assigned farther away from their children than male prisoners might be.
Another measure the Bureau of Prisons plans is to start a pilot program, in cooperation with DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, for children with a federally incarcerated parent. The pilot program, to be launched at federal facilities in four states (Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia), aims to involve inmate parents and their children in youth development activities, such as mentoring and academic support. This program is already well underway; the $1.3 million in federal grants awarded last September to service providers will support these programs, starting this June.
The Bureau of Prisons also says it will develop and train its staff on best practices for interacting with child visitors and will create kid-friendly visiting areas at its facilities.
The other four principles in the Roadmap to Reentry are: providing each inmate with an individualized reentry plan matching his or her risks and needs; providing inmates with education, job-related training or other programs (such as those addressing mental health or substance abuse); assessing and improving the care halfway houses provide about 80% of newly released ex-inmates in the crucial time immediately after release; and giving newly released ex-prisoners reentry-related information and help accessing needed services, through a new reentry services hotline (1-877-895-9196) and a revised reentry manual for federal prisoners on their release.
Three new initiatives were unveiled in an April 26 speech in Houston by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who visited a federal women’s prison and a re-entry hostel for female inmates awaiting release. The event was part of the “National Reentry Week” declared by the Justice Department to publicize a variety of anti-recidivism programs to aid the more than 40,000 inmates released from federal facilities each year.
During Reentry Week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a framework-setting “Roadmap to Reentry,” which outlined five evidence-based principles which she said underlie the Bureau of Prisons’ efforts to help former inmates overcome the stigma of a criminal record so they can successfully reintegrate into mainstream society and avoid being re-incarcerated.
One of those five principles deals with giving inmates the resources and opportunities they need to maintain their family relations, by strengthening inmate support systems while they are behind bars. (The Justice Department statement notes there’s research evidence showing strong family relationship cut recidivism, improve chances of finding post-release employment, and ameliorate the harm to children from having an incarcerated parent.)
One concrete step the Bureau of Prisons will take to solidify inmate-family relationships is expanding a new pilot program to bring videoconferencing to all its facilities for female prisoners by June 2016, with an eye to expanding video visits to all federal facilities eventually. Over 7% of Bureau of Prisons inmates are women, and because there are fewer facilities for women, they are often assigned farther away from their children than male prisoners might be.
Another measure the Bureau of Prisons plans is to start a pilot program, in cooperation with DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, for children with a federally incarcerated parent. The pilot program, to be launched at federal facilities in four states (Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia), aims to involve inmate parents and their children in youth development activities, such as mentoring and academic support. This program is already well underway; the $1.3 million in federal grants awarded last September to service providers will support these programs, starting this June.
The Bureau of Prisons also says it will develop and train its staff on best practices for interacting with child visitors and will create kid-friendly visiting areas at its facilities.
The other four principles in the Roadmap to Reentry are: providing each inmate with an individualized reentry plan matching his or her risks and needs; providing inmates with education, job-related training or other programs (such as those addressing mental health or substance abuse); assessing and improving the care halfway houses provide about 80% of newly released ex-inmates in the crucial time immediately after release; and giving newly released ex-prisoners reentry-related information and help accessing needed services, through a new reentry services hotline (1-877-895-9196) and a revised reentry manual for federal prisoners on their release.
