Above photo: President Donald Trump taking questions from the press aboard Air Force One en route to Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9. White House / Molly Riley.
Deadly abuses have continued in full swing.
A year into President Trump’s second term in office, hopes for inmates across the country have dimmed.
Hopes for a major restructuring of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) a year into President Donald Trump’s second term in office have come to naught.
Trump in June named former federal prisoner Josh Smith as the BOP’s deputy director. It was a bold and, in my view, progressive move. While greeted with hostility from the union representing federal corrections officers, it inspired hope among the tens of thousands of prisoners in federal custody.
Many of us thought that the next step would be something equally bold — perhaps to turn away from private prisons, which have cost the government millions of dollars in lawsuits because of wrongful deaths in custody, or perhaps to institute programming that would better prepare prisoners for release and for reintegration into society. But none of that has happened. And it’s unlikely that it will.
The problem is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sure, Josh Smith as deputy director of the BOP is a great idea. He spent five years in a federal prison following a drug conviction before founding a non-governmental organization that helps newly-released prisoners, and he brings a perspective that the BOP has never had before — from a former prisoner.
But that hasn’t changed any of the day-to-day problems that the BOP has experienced for decades. A small sampling of recent events includes:
- In Virginia — a state that has long been known for its broad disregard for the rights of prisoners at the federal, state and local levels — an ongoing collection of at least five federal lawsuits paints a picture of senseless violence against prisoners and petty retaliation by BOP officials.
- Multiple prisoners at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) Lee have alleged that guards beat them unprovoked over a period of years, in several cases while in shackles, leading to broken bones, ruptured organs, and mental breakdowns. Guards also wrongly accused one trans female prisoner of being a child molester so that other prisoners would beat her.
- Across the country at the deeply troubled Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) at Dublin, California, which is now closed, at least 22 female prisoners were granted compassionate release after at least 100 were repeatedly sexually assaulted by as many as 10 prison employees, including the facility’s warden, assistant warden, chaplain, and doctor, all of whom are now incarcerated.
- Rather than address the culture in which senior BOP employees believed that it was appropriate to rape prisoners at will, something that became known as the “rape club,” the BOP elected to simply shut the place down and transfer the prisoners to other prisons.
- In July, a BOP guard received an eight-year prison sentence for raping three prisoners at the federal detention center in Honolulu. Mikael Rivera received a sentence longer than he otherwise would have because he elected to abscond while out on bond. He was recaptured after a three-day manhunt.
These events haven’t taken place in a vacuum. State and local department of corrections and county jails have watched as the federal courts have turned a blind eye toward BOP wrongdoing.
If there’s no downside to doing literally anything you want to do to a prisoner and get away with it, then why stop? That attitude has led to more horrors at the state and local levels:
- The state of Minnesota was forced to pay the family of a hemophiliac prisoner, Dillon Bakke, $3.6 million after he died three days into a brain bleed, which the prison refused to treat. The prison also refused to allow Bakke to take his hemophilia medication.
- Bakke had complained repeatedly of severe head pain, an inability to walk or stand and severe nausea. He was finally allowed to go to the jail’s medical unit, where he died 12 hours later. The 32-year-old was being held on a charge of “suspicion of drug possession.”
- California’s attorney general is suing Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office, alleging that the county’s jails are “inhumane” and that the sheriff has failed to improve conditions, despite the courts repeatedly demanding that he do so. The L.A. County Central Jail is designed to hold 3,509 people, but averages 4,632 on any given day.
- Satellite jails are even more overcrowded, and independent inspectors have documented the widespread presence in all the facilities of feces, sewage, vermin, fire hazards, mold and stale air. The sheriff contends that “the situation is improving and the attorney general’s lawsuit is based on outdated information.”
- The tiny town of Issaquah, Washington, was forced to pay the families of two prisoners $5.5 million after 43-year-old Kevin Wiley and 48-year-old David McGrath died from “acute combined drug intoxication.” The men didn’t take drugs while incarcerated. They died while withdrawing from fentanyl and methamphetamine intoxication, having been refused any medical help.
- Prison officials did nothing over the course of three days in the two separate cases, while watching the men vomit, convulse and beg for help. Wiley asked to see a nurse, but his request was never answered.
- Three women held in Kansas’ Sedgwick County Detention Center split a $375,000 settlement after being raped by a guard. The guard, 22-year-old Dustin Burnett, had been thrown out of the military for possessing child pornography before being hired as a guard by the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office.
- The Ohio attorney general has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate how and why a female double amputee died while being restrained in a jail medical unit. Tasha Grant, 39, had no legs, but was nonetheless strapped down to a medical unit bed. She began experiencing chest pains, but was ignored and died shortly thereafter.
- When asked why a double amputee was restrained in such a way, a prison spokesman said disingenuously, “She threw herself on the floor and wouldn’t cooperate.” The spokesman apparently hadn’t been told that Grant was unconscious at the time.
I supposed that it’s not exactly true that Donald Trump hasn’t done anything with the BOP since naming Josh Smith as its deputy director.
On Sept. 25, the president abolished collective bargaining rights for the corrections officers’ union and he canceled their union contract. BOP Director William K. Marshall III said in an email to all BOP employees, “The whole purpose of ending this contract is to make your lives better.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
