“Voices from Within the Federal Bureau of Prisons: A System Designed to Silence and Dehumanize”

The title of this post is the title of this notable recent report from the nonprofits More Than Our Crimes and The Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. Here is part of the report’s executive summary:

Prison walls are erected not only to keep people in, but to prevent the world from seeing the abuses of our carceral system.  The inhumanity of what happens behind bars, as is demonstrated by the accounts of incarcerated persons in this report, is deliberately hidden from view in faraway prisons surrounded by high walls and double fences of razor wire.  Few people other than those who are confined or work in prisons have a full view of how they operate.  Glimpses provided by litigation or a scandal are rare and transitory; sustained transparency is nonexistent. This opacity allows dehumanizing conditions to be sustained and grow worse.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) is comprised of 122 institutions, incarcerating more than 157,000 people, that are among the least transparent and accountable in the nation.  The violent, dehumanizing and dangerous conditions in FBOP prisons harm families and communities in every state; impacting the mothers, fathers, children and siblings who lose loved ones to this sprawling network….

Yet, despite this extremely problematic history, the FBOP operates with no real accountability. The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General routinely lists “maintaining a safe, secure and humane prison system” as one of its top management challenges.  FBOP and prison leadership seem to be either unwilling or incapable of ensuring that even minimum standards are met.  As Sen. Dick Durban, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted, FBOP Director Michael Carvajal (since resigned) has “overseen a series of mounting crises, including failing to protect BOP staff and inmates from the COVID-19 pandemic, failing to address chronic understaffing, failing to implement the landmark First Step Act, and more.”

However, the overarching conclusion of this report is that reform cannot be achieved solely by replacing Director Carvajal with new blood.  The problems with the FBOP are cultural, entrenched and systemic, and independently enforced accountability must be the cornerstone of any serious attempt to change.  That cannot be achieved without replacing the current grievance procedure that incarcerated individuals must follow — which too often triggers retaliation as severe as physical abuse — with a process that is safe, reliable and fair.