Many suicides in prisons could have been prevented, says Justice Watchdog
Dozens of inmates, including disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, have died needlessly in federal prisons due to lax supervision, access to contraband and poor monitoring of at-risk inmates, according to a report released Thursday by the Justice Department watchdog.
The Bureau of Prisons, responsible for approximately 155,000 inmates, routinely subjects prisoners to conditions that place them at increased risk of self-harm, drug overdoses, accidents and violence. the department's inspector general found after analyzing 344 deaths between 2013 and 2021 that were not caused by diseases.
More than half of these deaths were suicides, and many of them could have been prevented if prisoners had received proper mental health assessments or been housed with other prisoners in accordance with departmental guidelines rather than being left alone, as the Mr. Epstein, the report concluded. .
The report “identified several operational and administrative deficiencies” that violated the permanent agency's policies, said Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general, whose investigators previously concluded that Mr. Epstein's death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019 was the result of gross negligence and inadequate staffing.
Researchers found “unsafe conditions” in almost all the deaths they analyzed, Mr. Horowitz said. The number of such deaths in the federal system has risen steadily — to about 50 per year, he added.
Despite the prevalence of conspiracy theories about Mr Epstein's death, the circumstances were strikingly similar to those of many of the 187 inmates who died by suicide in the period covered by the report. The vast majority were white men who committed suicide by hanging, many were housed alone when they took their own lives, and a disproportionate number, 56, were sex offenders – even though a relatively small percentage of federal prisoners are in prison for such crimes.
Researchers cited the overuse of single-prisoner cells and restrictive solitary confinement as a major factor in many suicides. But they said the agency's failure to identify serious mental health problems — by classifying problem inmates as low risk — was an equally serious misstep.
Several deaths mentioned in the report summarize the system failures.
Officials at an unnamed federal prison placed an inmate who had recently attempted suicide alone in a cell, without his personal belongings or follow-up medical care, even though he had been marked as a suicide risk upon arrival. In another case, researchers found that a psychological assessment of an inmate who died by suicide had not been updated to reflect an increased risk of self-harm, but was instead cut and pasted from a report submitted seven years earlier .
A spokeswoman for the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Horowitz and his team sought to determine whether conditions in federal prisons were worse than those in state and local facilities. But shortcomings in the Bureau of Prisons' documentation of deaths and the unique makeup of the federal population made such a comparison impossible, Mr. Horowitz said. (Most prisoners have been convicted of nonviolent crimes, including immigration and white-collar crimes.)
Many of the problems identified by the Inspector General are the result, directly or indirectly, of acute staffing shortages among corrections officers. The shortage has forced security guards to call in teachers, case managers, health care workers, counselors, facility workers and even secretaries to serve as guards, despite having only basic security training.
The Bureau of Prisons is not alone in this regard. State and local law enforcement agencies across the country, especially corrections departments, are struggling to hire and retain employees at all levels as better-paying, less demanding jobs draw away people who face rising housing, food and transportation costs.
Colette S. Peters, director of the agency, has taken several measures to address this problem. But she has had limited success in securing major funding increases needed to sufficiently raise salaries or repair deteriorating infrastructure in many of the system's 122 prisons and camps.
Researchers who conducted site visits and analyzed agency data also found stunning deficiencies in the supervision of the 70 inmates who died of drug overdoses in the period covered by the report.
In some cases, prisoners were able to smuggle opioids into prisons using drones that flew into prisons at night. Others conveniently hid drugs in garbage bags after working on cleanups outside prison walls.
In one notable episode, corrections officers inspecting the cell of an inmate who had committed suicide by overdose found a hidden stash of 1,000 pills that officers had managed to miss during inspections – including one taken the day before his death.
But drugs weren't the only contraband prisoners used to harm themselves or others. Officers investigating the death found a series of metal shafts made from nails and nails, pieces of plastic sharpened into blades and garrotes made from pieces of cloth and rope.
The report noted that Mr. Epstein collected less conspicuous contraband from under the noses of corrections officers — sheets and blankets that he used to make a noose.