Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

Example, out of trenton, where an in mate by the name of sean washington in 2013 he was a clerk at the library and he wanted to leave the library to go bring some legal papers to one of the other inmates but a corrections officer said you cannot leave and the facts are disputed but the worst facts, the facts that the state claims, is that mr. Washington then said mother fer, dont tell me what to do. What was his punishment . 90 days in solitary confinement. That is a real example we see all across the nation. So just for time. So we know that people are being sent to solitary for many Different Reasons and some of them have to do with administrative issues and the like. Right. Does it work in terms of somehow effecting the behavior of prison str any is there any productive value in the bureau of prisons. Im going to push back on the language they use and some people are sent to solitary for administrative reasons and that is a loaded term because the bureau of prisons commonly call solitary administrative segregation and it sowns harmless but in effect it is solitary. And people are sent there for really minor reasons. And some reasons are for protective custody like i mentioned in my testimony. So for example with the Lgbt Community who faced hassarment from other prisons a lot of time theyll be sent to involuntary protective custody to protect them from inmate violence yet they are being punished. We see this happening all of the time. And the bureau of prisons, for example, according to you asked what was does it actually work. So recently there was an independent review released pot public in february of this year by cna that looked at solitary practices in the federal prisons and looked at inmate behavior changing following solitary and their response was absolutely no. I would like to pause there. Can we have that report put into the record for this hearing. Without objection, and not only lesbian and gay, but also trans gender. Yes. But let me tell what you the report found because it is important. It looks at inmates disciplinary record 12 months before being sent into solitary and 12 months after coming out of solitary and it found virtually no change whatsoever. So lets get to the New York Times article you held up today, the consensus upon medical experts, what are what is the damage, the trauma, theect on an individual to be in solitary confinement, used shockingly offerage of four years, ive talked to numerous inmates who have experienced that length or more. What is the damage done to someone in general and would you also include in that someone who already has a Mental Health challenge. First of all, when i think of this issue and to use an example that is contemporary i think of it similar to Climate Change. There are certain people that deny the signs. But in the Scientific Community there is kons census consensus please dont lose this commit we by talking about Climate Change. Stick to the bipartisan agreement. But i mean there is consensus in the Scientific Community about the harms of skrv and there are two kinds of farms. One is exacerbates preexisting conditions, so Mental Illness that existed is exacerbated and becomes worse and secondly it produced mental and physical illness. Things like anxiety depression, hypersensitivity to time lie, bipolar disorder theres have been documents of that. The list is long and im happy to provide the committee with citations to every i think that would be helpful. Ill do that. And first of all i want to say to mr. Dillard and traordinary that you are here with the testimony of the experience of people behind bars and that is extraordinary. And mrs. Kerman in the little bit of time that i have left drill down on something often not talked about but what is happening as a result of overcrowding. We saw this in danbury when it was converted into a low security mens facility, you were close to your family and im wondering what impact does being in prison in close proximity to loved ones have on an in mate and what impact would gender specific programming have on a womans a ability to successfully recenter and if in the one minute i have left hit on those issues really briefly. Proximity to home, family and community is overwhelmingly important for both men and women who are confined to prison or jail. The opportunity and lets be clear, the majority of women in prison have children and the majority in period are the number one breadwinners for the family before they are in cars rated. Absolutely. The overwhelming number in prison are mothers and most of those mothers are the mothers of minor children kids under the age of 18, who experienced sort of a seismic impact when their mothers are incarcerated because a lot of the moms are single moms who have primary responsibility for their kids. So the opportunity to touch your children, to hold for your children to be reassured that their mother or their parent is okay is incredibly important both to parent and child. The opportunity to see your own parents or family members to maintain ties to the community broadly considered to which you will almostenefitiablely return, senator johnson is absolutely correct, the vast majority of people who are in prison are coming home from prison. So those life lines to the outside community we cant overstate how important they have to Public Safety, to peoples safe and successful return home to the community. Because when prison when correctional systems whether it is the b. O. P. Or otherwise, cut the life lines but making visits difficult, by placing people very, very far from their families or by making prisons inaccessible in other ways by making phone calls skosh tabletly exorbitantly hard or some jails have no contact through glass which is disincentive to have a visit those life lines are cut and the person incarcerated is much less likely to have both the family support, the safe and stable housing, the access to networks which might help them gain employment, all of which are a primary concern for successful reentry and that is true whether you are talking about men or whether you are talking about women. When we are talking about female prisoners, just very quickly and briefly, we know that the three things that drive womens involvement in crime and their incarceration are Substance Abuse, Mental Illness and again the overwhelming experience of violence, either sexual or physical violence. 80 or more girls in the system report that happening to them before they were incarcerated. So the problem with incarceration, prisons and jails are harsh places by design, is that for prisoners who have experienced very significant trauma like rape, childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, many of the correctional practices are very reminiscent of some of those abuses and so that creates a serious, serious clal enk in terms of challenge in terms of regular engagement with feel prisoners and in rehabilitation and in terms of again their ability to return home safely. In deference to my colleagues, im over time but thank you for that. Thank you. And when mr. Offer delled into Climate Change, he didnt lose the movement. There has been Climate Change and always will and. And vaccines work is that correct. Thank you mr. Chairman. At the risk of being embroiled in that side discussion you know i was the attorney general in north dakota, spent a lot of time actually most of the Drug Task Forces were under my jurisdiction and we ran a lot of those and it was at a time when there was a growing concern in 1992 with the drug problem and with more and more Violent Crime. And as a result we saw incarceration rates really sky rocket because of desperation. And i will tell you this it has been my experience that we constantly treat the symptoms but never treat the disease. And that is really where we are today, talking about how do we treat the symptoms and not how do we treat the disease. Ill tell you a story about a wise man. I did a juvenile Justice Project where we made it a little easier to transfer kid news the adult system but i traveled around the state of north dakota with a prison warden by the name of winston sat ron. He was a very wise guy and at the time in north dakota, you could interview every prisoner who came into the prison system and he would sit down and he would say tell me about your life. And as he talked they would say my parents were dif officed at 11 and i went to live with my grandma. And he wrote 11, because in his file that prisoner was 11 years old emotionally. And a lot of this is related to trauma and not understanding trauma and we exacerbate by not only not treating the trauma but engaging in behaviors that further the trauma whether it is isolation from family whether it is isolation from any human contact at all. And so lets be honest about the task that this society has imposed on the bureau of prisons. None of this should be any judgment on the bureau of prisons. Weve given them an impossible task. They have to take and prison crowding is part of that. Theyve got to maintain some level of security and there is desperation for solutions as to what they can be. But were here talking about things that are way way downstream. And were not here talking about things that are upstream. And so the juvenile Justice System, led really by a lot of very enlightened people at the department of justice has really begun a transformation into traumainformed and trauma based therapies. Looking at what can we do to treat trauma and how can we basically prevent a lot of abuse and a lot of abuse is selfmedication. A lot of addiction is chemical, i get it i get that is maybe the old model but a lot of it is selfmedicating for the trauma experienced in peoples lives. And so with all of that, i would like to know how we could design a system of prevention so we dont see more people what would you all in your experience like to see in communities that would prevent the out comes were seeing in the bureau of prisons and we can start you with mrs. Kerman. I think it seems there is a tremendous amount of recognition, thank you for the question senator heitkamp, that Substance Abuse and Mental Health problems including full blown Mental Illness and the every day demons that many people suffer at some point in their lives contribute to peoples bad choices and breaking the law. And so a significant commitment to handle those Health Problems in the Public Health system as often as possible rather than can i just ask quickly of the woman that you worked with and were incarcerated with how many of them were given a choice of drug court or some kind of intermediate kind of intervention . Yeah. That is very rare in the federal system. That is much more common in state systems or county systems of justice. And so there is a program in new york called justice home where women facing at least a year of incarceration when their District Attorney and their judge agree, are able to enter this program called justice home. They stay at home, generally with their children and are face a set of Accountability Measures but also get the Mental Health intervention or the Substance Abuse intervention and the Parenting Classes or the Vocational Training or whatever is specific to their case that is needed for them to get better out comes. In new york it cost 60,000 a year to incarcerate somebody and that program cost 17,000 a year. If we threw in the cost of foster care for a family with two children, the cost would amount to 129,000 a year. Thank you. So that is a good example. Mr. Dillard. Thank you for your observation senator heitkamp. Trauma informed care is truly something that is needed if were going to be preventive. I can use myself as an example of someone who had traumas at the age of 12, 13 years old who walked around with them for 35 years, never addressed and im just bearing them. When i was diagnosed, i was severely depressed most of my life. One of the reasons that i selfmedicated with illegal drugs, had i been diagnosed maybe i could have been given legal drugs and avoided the criminal Justice System. The fact is we never look at the cause, we just look at the effect. And many, many, many of these young men and women who i encounter in the work that i do today have tremendous traumas. And were working as a peer organization to help them work through that. To avoid Walking Around as hurting people because we know that hurt people hurt people. And if we do not address those traumas early on then further down the road after recidivism and recidivism and were still going to be paying a much higher kauft. Thank you. Mr. Offer. I would give a perspective by the time that i spent my time in newark, new jersey, which is a terrific city and a city plagued by poverty and in certain communities there is violence. And what i see in newark and really a lot of urban areas across new jersey and even across the country is that the only agency that is available in that municipality to address social needs or aat least the Agency Available is the Police Department. And to me that is the root cause of the problem. You have wellmeaning Police Officers and wellmeaning city officials that literally have no one else to go to if there is lets say some minor misbehavior happening on the street, that is minor. But that should not be treated by the criminal Justice System. And ill criticize diversion programs. While they are better than sending someone to jail or prison, my reaction is this person shouldnt have been entangled with the criminal justice person in the first place and arrested and diverted to alternative programs. We need to build up the resources of municipalities of tates to have other agencies to go to when they are interacting with people with with Mental Illness or with drug addiction problems. And if i could just close with a comment. The stigmatization of that label is something you will carry the rest of your life. It will prevent you from getting Student Loans and prevent you from getting a job. And so it is with a great deal of care that we should ever take that next step, because we are in fact relegating that person to a certain quality of life for the rest of their life. Especially given the age of the internet where we can find out anything about anyone. And so i just want to make a broader point that were here to talk about what were going to do with high incarceration rates but we cannot look that problem without looking at the broad scope of services that are provided and how we can work more effectively for prevention. Thank you, senator heitkamp. Senator ayotte. Thank you. I want to thank all of you for being here. I think like my colleague senator heitkamp, we were both attorneys general in our state before we came to the senate and one of the things that i had worked on as an a. G. Was reenltry programs. And im a strong supporter of the Second Chance act and supporting the reauthorization but saw it from an attorney general context where even people who were incarcerated, for serious crimes that we did not give them any path for success Going Forward because they came out, if they had a Substance Abuse problem it was the the underlying issue was never dealt with. If there was Mental Health factors, that was not dealt with, no job, no place to live. If you put yourself in those shoes and you are that person and put out on the street, i think all of us on the dice probably wouldnt be able to put it back together. So i wanted to get your thoughts. Dr. Dillard, i saw your focus is really as i understand what you are working on it would be some form of recentry program. And we saw it in our state get some momentum and then sort of fizzle. And wanted to get your thoughts on reentrytype programs and what more we could do to make them more effective to try to end this cycle and to get people on to protect dif lives. And then i had some other follow up questions, but i would appreciate it. Well i think reentry is a crucial point. If there is planning done, and individuals are giving different options. I know the federal system, six months andn a Halfway House is something i went through that was beneficial for me. I just wasnt released to the streets. And i was able to obtain employment during that period and save some money, to be able to rent a room at least, when i was done with my federal time. What im saying today though is young men coming out of our state and county systems homeless. 17, 18 years old who cant go live with their mother because theyve been told you cant go there because of subsidies connecting to their counseling and they are couch surfing. And when thur couch surfing it is probably with those not doing so well or the antisocials that had an influns in them being placed in the criminal Justice System in the very first place. Housing initiatives are huge. I dont have a solution. I can say that were working on them in the region that im working in. Nonprofits and faithbased organizations are engaging with us in providing housing at an affordable rate. Preparation is huge. Individuals have to identify certain things while in custody in order to have a paradigm shift that this cant be an ongs. This cant be an option. I had a client tell me that, you know, committing a new crime wasnt his first option. Wasnt his first choice. But it was his very last option. And i knew i know the troubling times that he was in sleeping on park benches, couldnt go to the shelter for various reasons, and he committed a new crime. As he told me it wasnt his first choice. It was his very last option. And so the reentry process along with all of the barriers i think mentoring from formerly an kars rated or connections from those that hire formally incarcerated because were ambassadors. I look at us as being those who can help them through the trying times and pivot points of reentry. Senator, my response to that question very quickly. This is an over sight houring on the bureau of prisons an the independent review that i keep referencing to and im happy to submit my annotated copy and with highlighting looked at this question of bureau of prison reentry practices and here is the finding in one sentence. There is no formal bureau wide reentry Preparedness Program specifically to restrictive housing and inmates in these settings and they have limited access to reenterry programming. The bureau does not do a good job in Reentry Programming. About 2,000 a year go from solitary back to community. One of the things the study found is that many of them they dont know the exact number because the bureau doesnt track it are sent directly from solitary back to communities. That is a terrible practice that needs to stop immediately. There needs to be a focus on Reentry Programming in the federal bureau of prisons. Thank you. And ms. Ker man, i wanted to ask you, and i saw this when we were a. G. As well, were seeing on a devastating scale in our state is opioid and heroin addiction and ive been working on legislation called the comprehensive addiction and recory act and i hope to take this issue up here not to the Second Chance act but this comprehensive Addiction Recovery act. There was some discussion you had about this idea of alternative courts up front. What would you do as you think about this issue, how many people did you encounter that had addiction issues that were underlying why they were in prison and how do you see this to me, to senator heitkamp heitkamps point, we cant arrest our way out of this. This is a Public Health crisis but i want your thoughts on what should focus on most. What is happening in New Hampshire is happening in ohio and all over the country in terms of huge spikes in deaths from heroin and other it is devastating. You wouldnt believe the parents that are coming to me high school heartbreaking. It is. Its devastating. It is fundamentally a Public Health question first and foremost. And so it is intersections where the criminal Justice System should really be secondary. Particularly as we continue to see crime rates very low. Violent crime rates very low. And so while obviously people who sell or use drugs are breaking the law, remembering that intervening in that addiction cycle is the single most important thing and cant be accomplished with a prison or a jail cell is completely central. We see a lot of people a lot of folks in the states trying a lot of Different Things and im neither a doctor nor an expert in addiction but we see safe harbors in places like gloucester, massachusetts and parts of the New England States have tried very innovative approaches to getting folks the medical help they need and having that be the primary concern rather than incarceration. When we look at states like new York New Jersey california the states that have reduced the prison populations the most and also have simultaneously continued to enjoy huge declines in Violent Crime, one of the things that weve seen in those states and i know udi could weigh in on new jersey is a huge decline in prosecutions and low level drug offenses and a recognition that those that public disorder is a reflection of a Health Problem an that is the way to tackle it. Thank you. Thank you senator ayotte. Senator baldwin. Thank you. First of all, i want to thank our panelists what a tremendous opportunity it is for us to hear from you and interact with you. And mr. Chairman, i really wanted to join the thanks for holding this hearing. I also to the Ranking Member. As you said in the outset and many have commented this is a very big and very complex issue. And so i hope well have additional opportunities and i want to say that im glad that youre recognizing this committees role in this discussion and i hope that we can keep that up. There is a number of things i wanted to touch on. I heard the Ranking Member talking about upholding the models in states that are working and i usually love to brag about my state but in this particular case im just going to share some of the statistics about Racial Disparities in the incarcerated population in our state. In wisconsin, africanamericans constitute only 6 of the state population, a little bit more. 35 of those incarcerated in state prisons are africanamerican. According to a recent study from the university of wisconsin in milwaukee, 13 of wisconsins africanamerican men of working age were behind bars which is almost double the National Average of 6. 7 . And the figures were particularly shocking and dismal for Milwaukee County where more than 50 of africanamerican men in their 30s had served time in prison. 45 of the inmates at our federal correctional facility, oxford are africanamerican and 19. 3 are hispanic. And i hope as we continue to work on this very complex issue, that that will be on our minds. I also just wanted to mention it previously people were talking about their previous service, attorney general, i was never attorney general, i practiced law in a small general Practice Firm at the very beginning of my career. Mostly general practice a couple of times i took misdemeanor public defender cases and that is my only interimmediate action but i was becoming involved in county politics an state level legislative office at this time where i saw the precursors of what were seeing now being debated. So i had the honor actually of serving as chairwoman of the Corrections Committee in the state legislature for one term. I took our committee to prisons for tours for visits for conversations with people who work there people who were inmates there, we had sometimes legislative hearings in the prisons. We went to the intame facility, one of the maximum Security Prisons, one of the medium Security Prisons for men and one of the medium Security Prisons for men. We went to the womens prison on a couple of occasions and visited work release facilities. At the same time the legislature was talking about should we allow private prisons to be built and run in wisconsin. Should we contract with other states to deal with our overflow issues and have them house our wisconsin prisoners. And the counties were doing the same thing because some of the jails at the county level were overflowing. And the debate, the substantive criminal justice debate in our state at the time, and this is the early 90s. Three strikes and youre out, elimination of probation or parole and we have a. Felony and a b. Fem and an ab felony and new crimes were being created and there was debate about prison based vocational programs and mandatory minimums were a big topic. You could see all of this sort of in the future and now the future has come and it is not going to be overnight that we figure out what missteps we had had and how we deal with this in a saner way. I have a couple of questions and if i dont get to all of them, im hoping that you will be willing to submit this answers in writing for some things we might not get to. Quickly, ms. Kerman, you mentioned the women are the Fastest Growing prison population right now. Years ago when i was visiting the womens prison in wisconsin, it seemed there were gender differences an how they dealt with certain issues. We talked about solitary confinement. Is there a gender difference if how these issues are dealt with in womens prisons, for example i remember being very concerned about overmedication of women in the womens prison to deal with behavioral issues as opposed to placement in solitary confinement. Is this something we should still be looking at . We should absolutely be looking at the use of solitary confinement in mens and womens prisons. I echo udis testimony that solitary confinement is often used not for the most serious infractions like an assault for example, but rather for very lowlevel infractions. Women are overwhelmingly likely to be incarcerated for a nonViolent Crime and are very unlikely to use violence while they are in cars rated. Womens facilities do not tend to be to struggle with violence, as one of the guiding issues in terms of security. Solitary confinement is overwhelmingly used as a punitive measure. Female prisoners are disproportionate likely to suffer from Mental Illness. There are Mental Illness in mens facility is a huge problem, and it is even bigger problem in womens facilities. One of the tragic things about solitary confinement is that mentally ill people have a more difficult time following the rules of a prison. So what you see is spiraling sanctions which ultimately land them in solitary confinement, a place profoundly inappropriate for anybody with Mental Illness. A regularly healthy person who is placed in solitary confinement for ten days, after ten days will start to significantly deteriorate mentally emotionally psychologically, let alone a Mental Illness person placed in those circumstances. Since i have a couple of seconds left me me ask about reentry and if prison and after prison access to educational and vocational programming and you can certainly feel free to elaborate after the fact in writing because i know i have such limited time. But again, i recall the restriction of any sort of public funds or individualized Financial Aid assistance to those particularly in state prison because that was something i was looking at closely. I believe that is continued over time and we have additional restrictions once a person is back in the community they want to seek additional vocational or Higher Education generally. It makes it impossible for the Financial Aid. Youve talked already, mr. Dillard, about people emerging burdened with debt not related to Higher Education. Tell me a little bit about the options for people to secure Post High School education upon release . Well, im seeing more opportunities opening up for individuals post release. At one time there was you check a box and you could get Student Loans. Im happy to hear that the pell grants there is a pilot within the federal system with pell grants. Im so happy to hear that because it is a fact that individuals prior to 1994 i know many individuals who served time prior to that who came out with Associates Degrees and went on to achieve bachelors and masters. The fact is 98 of those who get a higher a bachelors or higher degree never return to prison. I mean that is something that we cant ignore. And i think that we should support as far as Higher Education within the system. Thanks. Thank you, senator baldwin. We do have a second panel. We could keep going on and this is fascinateingfascinating. Again, i want to thank this panel. The pirp of every hearing from my standpoint is to define the problem and lay out a reality and we collectively commit and i think youve accomplished that goal big time. Mr. Chairman, if i may yes. It is such a complicated zing shich and dealt with distinct aversions from solitary confinement to the lack of reentry, it might be good to pick one of those verticals given the vastness and hold another hearing. I was just going to get there. This is just a first. And i think what will end up being a series of haergs. We have a Mission Statement for this hearing. It is simple to enhance the economic and National Security of america. I think this issue touches both. One thing we tried to do in this committee is find the areas of agreement. What youve seen in it hearing is a great deal of bipartisan agreement that what were doing just isnt working. And not because of lack of effort by our next panel of witnesses, by any stretch of the imagination. So mr. Offer, i would encourage you and your organization to continue to press with this and work with those of us that want to solve your problem. Your points on solitary confinement dead on and we need to fix that. Mr. Dillard, god bless you for turning your life around and taking your circumstance and offering that to your fellow man to help other people find redemption and again turn their lives around as well. And mrs. Kerman, i think with your unintended celebrity, i think youve gone an excellent job of raising the issues. Ive spoken to my staff. I liked your answer to the question in terms of what are alternatives. And from my standpoint, a rigorous rigorous dose of Community Reparation and those types of programs, Community Service i think is probably appropriate for people that have committed crimes, we do need some punishment and deterrence but hopefully in the Community Service you might heal and you just might find that a far more effective way at dealing with the issues than locking somebody up and really seeing the result that simply is not working. So again i just want to thank everybody here on this panel. I want to continue to work with you and work with members of the committee on a bipartisan basis and know this is just a first of what will be im sure a series of i think very important hearings. So thank you very much. And well call up our next panel. By the way if you have time. I would love to have you stay and listen to our next panel as well. But you dont have to feel obligated to. [ pause in proceedings ] mr. Samuels you sitd down and im going to ask you to stand again because it is the tradig of this committee to swear in witnesses. So if you will both rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. Please be seated. Our first witness in this panel will be mr. Childs e samuels jr. He is the direct your of the federal bureau of prisons and appointed on december 31, 2011. He is a career public administrator in the federal bureau of prisons serving as the assistant director of the Correctional Programs Division where he oversaw inmate functions. Director samuels was responsible for enhancing the reentry initiatives. Mr. Samuels. Good morning chairman johnson and Ranking Member carper and members of the committee. I thank you for your time and focus on important issue of federal corrections. Im pleased to discuss with you today the operations of the federal bureau of prisons. Im also pleased to speak on behalf of the 39,000 dedicated correctional workers across the country who are on the job 24 hours a day, seven day as week to support the bureau as Public Safety mission. We protect society by confining offenders in facilities that are safe human cost efficient and appropriately secure and provide offenders programs to help them become law abiding citis. Simply stated we protect society and reduce crime. But we face significant challenges. The bureau does not control the number of offenders who enter our system or the length of their stay. We are required to house all federal offenders sentenced to prison while maintaining safety, security andective Reentry Programs. We house offenders convicted of a variety of offenses. Many serving long sentences and many with extensive histories of violence. Drug offenders make up almost half of the population. In addition, we house many individuals convicted of weapons, sex and immigration offenses to include international and domestic terrorism. The bureau is the largest Correctional Agency in the country with more than 2007,500 offenders and 122 federal prisons, 13 private prisons and 178 Community Based facilities. Our agency began to expand rapidly in the 1980s. Due largely to the nations war on drugs. From 1980 to the present, we experienced an eightfold increase in the size of our in mate population. Crowding in federal prisons reached nearly 40 systemwide and even higher at immediate yaum and high Security Prisons where the more violence prone offenders reside. The tremendous growth in inmate population outpaced Staffing Resources and negatively impacted institution safety. Our ability to effectively supervise prisoners and provide inmate programs depends on having sufficient numbers of staff available at our prisons. Recently population abated scheidtly n. Fiscal year 2014 we saw the first decline in inmate population for more than 34 years and we expect it for the next couple of years but crowding will remain a challenge. Staff safety as well as the safety of the public and the offenders we house is my highest priority. Every day our staff put the safety of the mesh people above their own to keep communities safe and secure. Some of the saddest days of my 27 year career occurred one week in 2013 when two staff were killed in the line of duty. Correctional officer Eric Williams was killed on february 25th nl and the next day lieutenant alvarado was murdered. This is a powerful reminder of the dangerouses our staff face. We have taken advantage of technology for contraband edirection and Perimeter Security where pilots and pepper spray for staff and we are requiring the use of protective vests. We increased our correctional officer staffing at high security institutions during evenings weekends an holidays. Over the past few years we have been protect avenue it addressing concerns regarding the use of restrictive housing. Since 2012 we substantially reduced the number of in mates in our special housing unit and special management unit. Less than 7 of the population is in restrictive housing and very few are housed without another individual in the cell. Our focus is toik maur sheer placed in restrictive housing for the right reason for the right amount of time. We have inmates who need specializes treatment and a high degree of supervision to protect themselves and others. We look forward to make additional reforms in the area of restrictive housing. We have a saying in the bureau that reentry begins on the first day of in car race. We review criminal behavior and Substance Abuse and education and Mental Illness and we prepare them to transition successfully to their communities. Many of the programs have been proven to reduce recidivism such as the Residential Drug Abuse Treatment Program and educational and vocational programs. We have programs for Mental Illness offenders and including those with history of trauma and we have programs with offenders and sex offense histories and those with severe personality disorders. We provide programs to help offenders deepen their spiritual faith and we have programmed tailored to the needs of female offenders. The bureau relies on a network of Community Based facilities residential Facility Centers or Halfway Houses and home confinement. Community placement helps offenders readapt to the community and secure housing jobs, medical care and more. Chairman johnson, Ranking Member carper, and members of the committee, this concludes my formal statement. Im proud of the work our taf do to keep americans safe. Again, i thank you for your time and focus on the important issue of federal corrections. Thank you direct your samuels. The next witness is michael horowitz, the Inspector General for the department of justice. During his tenure as the Inspector General, the office has identified a number of areas within the bureau of reform including budget inmate programming and especially as it relates to the elderly inmate population and increasing safety and implementation of the Compassionate Release Program mr. Horowitz. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member carper, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. The Justice Department faces two interrelated crises in managing the federal prison system. Costs continue to rise while federal prisons remain significantly overcrowded and in an era of tight budgets this path is unsustainable. Since fiscal year 2000 the budget has nearly doubled and accounts for 25 of the departments discretionary budget. The b. O. P. Has more employees than any other d. O. J. Component and the second largest budget at the d. O. J. Trailing only the fbi. One of the drivers for the price increases in addition to the increased prison population is healthcare which cost the Bureau Prison forever 1 billion in 2014, a 61 increase since 2006. This rapid increase can partly be attributed to the aging of the federal inmate population and a recent oig report we found the number of in mates age 50 and older increased by 25 from 2009 to 2013. By contrast the population ofib mates underage 50 actually decreased by 1 , including a decrease of 29 for inmates underage 30. This demographic shift is notable because aging inmates cost more to incarcerate. Our report found that b. O. P. Institutions lack appropriate staffing to address the needs of the aging inmate population. For exam mel, while social workers are uniquely qualified to assist aging inmates the b. O. P. Blowingied only 36 workers nationwide. And the physical infrastructure of bop cannot aud quatly house aging inmates and the bop has not conducted a nationwide review of the accessibility of the institutions since 1996. In additionally the bop does not provide programming addressing the needs of aging inmates. We also concluded that based on the lower rates of recidivism, some inmates could be viable candidates for Early Release a program that congress has authorized. However, we found that in just over one year following the attorney general announcement of an elderly Compassionate Release Program, the department and bop only released two elderly inmates pursuant to it. These findings are similar to the 2013 review for the compassionate release inmate for all inmates. And we found it was managed inconsistently. Following our review they are modestly increased the number of in mates released under it. In our 2011 review of the Departments International prisoner transfer program, another Program Congress has authorized and which permits Foreign National inmates to serve the remainder of the sentences in their home countries, the oig found the department rejected 97 of transfer requests and transfers transferred less than 1 of mainities to their home countries to complete their sentence. We concluded the department needed to make a number of improvements to the program, including ensuring it accurately determine whether inmates are eligible for prom gram program and were completing a follow up review to that report. And another cost is for private contract prisons which alargely used to house inmates many of the b. O. P. 40,000 nonu. S. National inmates. The bop budget for contract facility is over 1 billion an the proportion of federal inmates housed in bop contract prisons has increased from 2 in 1980 to about 20 in 2013. Indeed two of the three largest d. O. J. Contracts are contract providers. They me address must address the safety and staff the most significant threat to the safety and security of bop staff and inmates with federal prisons at 30 over rated capacity. Indeed, in every one of its Agency Financial reports since 2006 the department has identified prison overcrowding as a programmatic material weakness, yet the problem remains unresolved today. In addition to overcrowding, the unlawful introduction of contraband presents a serious threat to safety and security. The unauthorized use of cell phones is proven to be a particularly significant risk, and the jao has reported the number of cell phones confiscated by the bop more than doubled from 2008 to 2010. Additionally sexual abuse in prison remains a serious safety and securityish ow. The oag has continued its longstanding efforts to identify sexual abuse by staff at federal detention facilities. We recently reported on the departments efforts to implement and comply with the prison rape elimination act. Finally, a Significant Management challenge for the department has been measuring the success of the prison programs. And an essential achieving performancesbased management is having reliable data, an issue that is continuing to be a challenge for the department and bop. A comprehensive approach to the collection and analysis of data on how well bop programs are reducing incarceration rates, detearing crime, and improving Public Safety will help the department focus its resources and make strategic investments. Thank you for the committees continued support for our work and i would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you Inspector General horowitz. First of all, i do not envy your task. And i want to thank you for your service which has been longstanding. Let me start there. According to your bio that i have in front of me you began as a correctional officer in march of 1988. Can you just because weve all quoted statistics here, in 1980 the prison population in the federal system was 25,000 and now it is over 200,000. Can you just give us your perspective in terms of what all has happened and what you witnessed over your career . Thank you, senator. From my perspective, having joined the agency as a correctional officer in 1988 and around that time the bureaus population was a little more than 60,000. I think historically when you look at the bureau press sons and you go back to 1940, from 1940 to 1980 the bureaus population pretty much remained flat for many, many years in compels of 20,000. So in 1980, which is the primary target for this discussion, we, as an agency, we had approximately 24,000 inmates in the federal system. We had less than 9,000 employees, 41 institutions and we were able to operate the entire Bureau Prison for 330 million. So when you look at the increase from 1980 to 2013, we were at more than 800 as far as the growth of the population. And our staffing didnt keep pace with that growth. And with our mission, where we are tasked with anyone and everyone who is convicted and turned over to the department of justice and placed in the care of the bureau of prisons, we have a job to do, a significant job. And it takes staff to do the work that is required. Let me ask you, from your perspective, again, youve been there, what drove the dramatic increase in the prison population . Well the war on drugs in the early 80s had a significant drive on the growth of the population. And as a result, we were having more offenders coming into the system. And we have a longstanding practice within the bureau of press sons, and this goes all the way back into the 1930th that our reentry efforts are always in play. And that is for to ensure for our role that were providing rehabilitation. But the challenges as we try to protect the inmates and staff in our facilities but the driver has been the war on drugs. Has there been any legitimate increase due to a crackdown on Violent Crime that we just really again, appropriately crack down on that, or is that really like we didnt become a more criminal society. We are always arresting and convicting people and putting people in jail. Are we putting them in longer . I want you to address that aspect as well. In regards to violent offenses, the department, through prosecutorial efforts, there is a mixture of individuals, as you are aware, nonviolent criminals and those with violence. And within our population, i think its very safe to say we have very violent offenders in our population to include a significant amount of gang members in the federal system we have more than 21,000 Security Threat Group Members who pose a significant threat to the public, inmates and staff. If were talking about gang violence, would that also be again, generally driven by drugs . It can be driven by drugs. If the gangs and those who are associated with that activity if its part of the structure within the gang for monetary gain. And let me stick with the director and ask some of the questions in terms of Inspector General history owe withess testimony. Why havent we been more proactive in terms of some of these Early Release programs that have been authorized . Is there a risk aversion . Because who wants to be responsible for releasing somebody into the public that will commit another Violent Crime. Can you speak to why we havent taken advantage of those programs a little bit more robustly . The bureau of prisons as director of the agency my authority is very limited. When you look at taking advantage of the various programs that are being referenced. With compassionate release, which i will start there, we, as an agency, did a thorough review and we determined a couple of years ago when we were looking at the number of individuals who would meet the criteria just for the release based on terminal illness. We discovered that there were a little more than 200 inmates in the bureau of prisons. And once they were identified you have to go further in making sure that for those individuals who are even being considered that they have the resources if they are, in fact, given the opportunity through a motion and are released under that program. So 200 inmates agencywide with the population at that time that was at 220,000 is a very, very small number. So again, were talking about compassionate release, and Early Release and release to Foreign Nationals and under all three programs are you saying that the law or the regulation is just written too restrictively and just doesnt give you the latitude to utilize those programs more fully . Then mr. Inspector general, ill be asking you the same question. Weve expanded, as you know with the release program we moved from medical to nonmedical. And even when we look at those cases and many are being referred, when you are looking at the criteria, as well as being responsible for Public Safety for any individuals having the propensity to continue more criminal activity, we have to take that into account. With the transfer program, and i do share the concerns that the Inspector General has raised, we identified through the audit a problem there, and we have since that time provided a number of training opportunities for our staff as well as educating the inmate population on their rights under consideration for the program and we have seen an increase. However, when we submit the application for consideration there is another process that takes place with the Department Working with the various countries who have agreements under the treaty transfer program to make determination on this when those individuals are removed. And of course, they would probably rather have the u. S. Bear the cost of keeping those people in prison themselves. Inspector general horowitz, can you kind of again speak to why, from your perspective, why some of these programs havent been utilized more fully . I think there are a couple of reasons. And i agree with director samuels. In many of them its not because of the bop decisionmaking, its elsewhere in the department or the way the programs have been narrow, restrictions placed on their use. For example, elderly release, 65 and older is where it was set. Announced with many fanfare, but there is only two. We find inmates being released under that program a yearplus later. Why is that . Well, in part because of the 4,000plus inmates who are over age 65 in the federal prison system, they have to meet very strict criteria. And both with regard to meeting the criteria and as we found in that program and treaty transfer, the discretionary calls that have to be made. And perhaps its risk aversion perhaps its a feeling that someone got a jail sentence, they should let me; appropriately strict criteria . We found we had concerned with elderly provisions. For example, requiring people to serve a long period of time and to demonstrate a lengthy period of service for a sentence. What that meant was for inmates that were the least dangerous, presumably had low sentences, they couldnt get released because they hadnt served a long period of time. That seemed odd to us. So thats something we should really take a look at. Right. Thank you. I dont want to go too much over time. Senator ayotte. Thank you, chairman. Director samuels, i want to ask you about a particular prison in my state thats important especially its in coosk county, fci burrland. And i wanted to ask about what the status is of staffing at that facility. Warden tatum has indicated the facility was staffed at about 290 and there were about 1200 incarcerated individuals there. Can you give me an update on levels and also what the ultimate goal is for capacity there and staffing . Yes. Thank you, senator. Right now with the plannedfor continued activation of the facility we are working very, very closely with the warden staff there to ensure our recruitment efforts remain on target, and were also ensuring that as we build a population, that were making sure that the inmate to staff ratio is where it needs to be so we dont have more inmates in a facility until were very comfortable with the number of staff that we have at the facility. And this is continuing to progress. I know there was a concern at one period of time where the applicant pool was not necessarily where we would like it. But with it the recruitment efforts, were starting to see that we have a very good pool for hiring individuals to work at the facility. So one followup i wanted on the applicant pool. This is an area of our state where people are always looking for more jobs. And so to get people from the area that have strong backgrounds, one of the issues thats been a challenge is the 37yearold age restriction. And has the bureau of prison actually reexamined this . I know ive previously written the bureau of prison on this issue. But its important that my constituents have an opportunity that live in the area to work there. Yes, thank you again, senator. Our focus is to make sure we are aggressively hiring from the local community as well as looking at veterans. And we do have the ability for individuals who are applying, who have served, to make waiver to grant waivers. And we are in the process of doing that. Well, thats very good to know and i appreciate your prioritizing hiring people from the community. I know theyre anxious and would would like opportunities to work there as well as our veterans. So i really appreciate your doing that. And i think youll find that they are a really dedicated group of people in the area. So thank you for that. I wanted to follow up on the prior panel, there was quite a bit of discussion and criticism, actually, on the Reentry Program piece from the bureau of prison and the commitment toward where we are when someone has finished their time and putting forward successful programs and path to success which im interested because with our recidivism rate it costs us a lot financially and also to the individual, to the quality of life, that the person has an opportunity to set a new start if theres not a good system in place for success. So i wanted to get your comments on what you heard in the prior panel on this issue. Thank you, again, senator. And i again will say to everyone that reentry is one of the most important parts of our mission. Along with safety and security of our facilities. And the expectation bureauwide is for all staff, all of the men and women who work to the bureau of prisons, to have an active role in reentry efforts. On any given day in the bureau of prisons for education, we have more than 52,000 inmates who are participating in education. We have more than 12,000 individuals actively participating in our federal prisons industry program, which is our largest Recidivism Program in the bureau of prisons. Those who participate are 24 less likely to be involved in coming back to prison. And for Vocational Training, more than 10,000 inmates are participating. And for those who participate compared to those who are not, the recidivism reduction is 33 . And you all are very familiar with our residential drug abuse program, and we also have our nonresidential programs as well. And we are very very adamant in ensuring that these programs are provided to all inmates within our population to have them involved for a number of reasons. It is safer to manage prisons when inmates are actively involved, and we are definitely trying to do our part to ensure that for recidivism reduction in this nation that we are taking the leap. For the number of individuals who come into the bureau of prisons, despite all of the challenges and the fig United Airlines that youre hearing, the men and women in the bureau of prisons do an amazing job. When you look at the specific numbers relative to recidivism, with the federal prison we have 80 who do not return to the federal system. 80 . Now, we have that 20 who eventually end up in state and local. We have always known that the overall recidivism for the federal system is 40 . The 20 that return to the bureau and the 20 that go into the state systems. And i would just also add that when you look at the bureau of prisons, and there is a study that has been done that for the state correctional systems, and its 30plus. When you look at the overall average of recidivism it is 67 . So i would still say that we have a lot of work to do. I mean, the goal is to have 100 individuals never returning. But as ive already stated for the record, the amount of growth that has occurred over that time period, we are very limited with our staffing. But it does not remove us from the commitment to our mission. If our staffing had kept pace with the growth over the years, i do believe that i would be sitting here reporting that the 80 would have been much higher. So i want to give the Inspector General an opportunity to comment on how you think were doing on reentry and any work that youve done on that. Were actually, senator, in a middle of a review of the Reentry Programs and the use of reentry in the middle of field work going to those institutions to look at those education programs, because of the concerns wed heard. So i cant give you a report yet out on it. I think well have something later in the year for you to look at. But it is a significant concern. One of the issues, ill just pick up on what director samuels said about staffing, that is a significant issue. Thats a significant safety issue, security issue. Reentry. Because what you see is, first of all, by most accounts, the federal Staffing Ratio of inmate to staff is worse than many of the state systems, what they have. And thats been exacerbated over time as the prison population has grown. There is a cascading effect of that. The director and the staff have to pull people out of other programs to do correctional work that they cant be doing some of the other programs were all talking about. And so that i think is lost sometimes and something certainly were looking at right now is that cascading effect. If you understaff the prisons the director has to first and foremost make sure the prisons are safe. I hope when you issue this report that youll also give us guidance on what the models are. What are the best models for reentry reentry . If were going to invest resources to create a better path for people so we can reduce the recidivism rate i think your recommendations on the piece of whats working best where we should invest resources, would be really helpful. Thank you. Thanks senator. I would note that apparently 10,000 out of the 210,000 population participating in that Reentry Program can you quick describe, why both of you . I mean, it sounds like a very successful program. I mean why arent more people engaged in it . Because i think in total we release 45,000 from the briefing, about 45,000 every year. Yes. If the 10,000 is in reference to the Vocational Training programs, we only have a limited number of opportunities that we can provide based on the number of inmates in our system. And that goes back to the crowding with increased crowding, you have waiting lists in the federal prison system, no different than any other system. And the goal is to try to push as many of these inmates through. And as we complete classes we bring more individuals in for participation. What i expect is an answer. I want to get that on the record. Inspector general. Yes. I think thats generally what were finding is there are limited resources with limited resources mean limited number of classes. Okay. Senator booker. Thank you very much. Director samuels, i appreciate you being here but more importantly or excuse me also i appreciate the fact that you visited me in my office and take a lot of the issues and concerns. You represent the administration as a whole as the president has have done some extraordinary steps around overall criminal justice reform, and im grateful that youre here today. It means a lot. I also want to echo, you are a part of the Law Enforcement community. And your officers put themselves at risk every single day to protect this nation and im grateful for the sacrifices that your officers have made and im glad you mentioned, as we see on the federal and state level, we do have officers not just losing their lives in the line of duty but also officers who are injured pretty severely often in the line of duty as well. We as americans should recognize that and that sacrifice and that commitment. I want to talk to you really quick and focus my questioning on solitary confinement and begin with sol carry confinement of juveniles. Theres a bipartisan dialogue going on right now about putting real limitations on the use of solitary confinement. We know that this is an issue that faces thousands and thousands of children across america. But when it comes to the federal system, this is actually a very small amount. It would probably surprise a lot of people were just talking about kids, a matter of dozens. This is in two populations, really. Its children that are tried as adults that are housed in adult facilities. And then the contracts, if im correct that you do with state facilities for juveniles as well. Do you think its feasible that, as is being discussed in congress right now and ive been in a lot of the discussions in the senate that we just eliminate solitary confinement or severely limit it for children, being very specific, for instance, by placing a threehour time limit on juvenile solitary confinement and banning it really for punitive or administrative purposes . Is that something you would see as feasible and something would you be supportive of . Thank you, senator. And i believe that for this issue, and in the federal system, as youve already mentioned, we contract out this service. We do not have any juveniles in an adult correctional facility. And the expectation that we have with the Service Providers for us is that at any time they are considering placing a juvenile in restrictive housing they are required to notify us immediately. And even if that placement were to take place, there is a requirement also that they have to monitor those individuals every 15 minutes. So in regards to your question with looking at the restrictions that could be considered, i would say that for our purposes, regarding this, that it would be something that is definitely something that should be considered and looked at as a practice. And if congress were to act on legislation putting those severe limitations on the practice, with limitations of just a matter of hours, that is something that you would agree to something that is feasible . Yes. I really appreciate that. And thats actually encouraging to the discussions going on right now. And frankly, its a small population, but doing it on the federal level would send a signal to really resonate throughout our country and frankly is already being done in some jurisdictions. Pivoting to adult solitary confinement, if i may, this practice, as you know, is harshly criticized. If you listened to the other panel, theres a lot of data from the medical community, specifically, and also Civil Rights Community and human rights communities. A may 2013 report which i know youre also familiar with from the gao found that the federal bureau of prisons didnt know whether its use of solitary confinement had any impact on prison safety didnt know necessarily how it affected the individuals who endure the practice, or how much frankly its costing taxpayers in general. Just this year in a recent internal audit by bureau of prisons noted inadequacies in Mental Health care for people in solitary confinement. As said in the previous panel, many people max out in solitary then find themselves going right into the general i shouldnt say general population. Going back into the public. In many ways i think these reports are a wakeup call of the seriousness of this issue. So i first want to say, do you know right now how many people are in solitary confinement beyond 12 months or say, 24 months, or 36 months . Do you have that data . Senator, i can provide that data for you. Okay. So we do track those folks who are staying in often for years in solitary . Yes. And senator booker, i can first id like to just state for the the bureau of prisons, we do not practice solitary confinement. In my oral testimony and my written testimony our practice has always been to ensure that when individuals are placed in restrictive housing we place them in a cell with another individual. To also include that our staff make periodic rounds to check on the individuals. And i also believe that it is important and im sorry, i need to be clear on that. Your testimony to me right now is that the bop does not practice solitary confinement of individuals singularly in a confined area . You are correct. The we only place an individual in a cell alone if we have good evidence to believe that the individual could cause harm to another individual and or we have our medical or Mental Health staff give an evaluation that it would be a benefit for the individual to be placed in a cell alone. We do not, under any circumstances, november have we ever had a practice of placing individuals in a cell aphone. Thats astonishing to me. And id love to explore that further. Because all of the evidence that i have said it is a practice at the federal level. So youre telling me that there are not people that are being held for many, many months alone in solitary confinement . Is that correct . When you look at the bureau of prisons agencywide, that is not a practice which we have three forms. We have our shu, special housing units, which are the majority of individuals throughout the country placed in restrictive housing. We also have a program so in the shu, so they are not individually held . No, sir. And on average, agencywide, the average amount of time that individuals are spending on average, again total, is a little more than 65 days. And so the shu is not solitary confinement, they are not an individual in a cell alone . That is not the practice of the bureau of prisons. Never has been the practice. I hope there will be another round. Senator mccaskill. Thank you. Mr. Samuels, what percentage of the inmates that youre responsible for have been convicted of a Violent Crime in the federal courts . Convicted of a federal crime of a Violent Crime. Of a Violent Crime . Give me a second. Approximately 5 . Okay. So weve got 5 violent, 95 nonviolent. I think the thing that people need to understand, which im not sure that people do is that that 5 that committed Violent Crimes, you dont even have primary jurisdiction probably on most of those crimes in the federal system. I dont think people realize that the federal Law Enforcement system was not designed or ever intended to address what most people think of as crime in this country. It was originally intended to be just for those kinds of crimes that because of the interstate nature of them, they needed to be handled by the federal government. That would be Crimes Involving the inter drugs going from country to country, and then eventually we started nibbling away at that and we started doing bank robbers, then we started doing interstate kidnappings or interstate and i know this because we handled a whole lot of murder cases when i was the prosecutor in kansas city, and nothing was more irritating to me. We had the best homicide detectives, i believe, in the midwest, in the Kansas City Police department. We had experienced prosecutors who handled murders every day. And invariably when there was a really highprofile murder case, all of a sudden the fbi would start sniffing around and try to grab that case. And find some kind of interstate part of the crime so that they would take the case as opposed to us who handled murder cases all the time. And frankly, in my opinion, biased as it may be, had much more expertise. I say all this because youre spending 7 billion, and 95 of that money is being spent on nonviolent offenders. Thats an astounding number on nonviolent offenders. An astounding number. So my question is, how many times have you been brought into the policy questions of who is being prosecuted in the federal system and why . Because you guys dont get 911 calls. Nobody calls the fbi with a 911 call. I used to make the point to my friends who were fbi agents, hey, they didnt call you, they called us. So the federal system gets to pick what they this is not required. They get to decide what they want to prosecute. Unlike state prosecutors who have to make a decision on every single case. So are you ever called in to the policy discussions about the growth of federal Law Enforcement and this massive amount of prosecution thats going on and the growth in the prison system . Because these decisions are being dictated by the department of justice and how many cases theyre actually filing. Are you ever consulted on any of those decisions . Senator mccaskill, i would offer that the bureau of prisons, when the discussions are taking place, we are brought into the discussion when needed by the department. But i also would share, which im sure youre aware, that for any policy decisions relative to who is being prosecuted, that remains with my colleague in the department, who would be more than anyone else regarding this issue capable of responding to that. So lets get at the stuff you can do. Lets talk about the elderly offender program. The way you entered into some of the contracts, you didnt specify out what the costs of home detention was versus your detention, correct . In other words, what you did, you werent able, in the pilot, isnt this correct, mr. Horowitz, they werent able to discern what a release into home detention was costing versus incarceration in one of the prison facilities . That is correct. The gao found that in their review. And so you are not in the position that you can even analyze what the costs of a Home Detention Program versus prison would be, correct . Well, since that time, once the finding was made, weve been working to isolate those costs. Okay. And how are you doing that . Weve put together procedures within our administration division, the staff who are responsible for the contracting oversight, to monitor. Okay. There were 784 of 855 applicants for the elderly release program that were denied. 784 out of 855 were denied. Can you explain why they were denied, that massive amount . And these are all elderly. These are not young people. I can take your concern back, but from the knowledge that i have regarding this, many of those individuals, it was dealing with the issue of being eligible based on criteria that was put in place. Who sets the criteria . The criteria for the pilot . Yeah. Who set it . That was established by congress. So were the ones that said if its a lowlevel offender that got an 18month sentence, they couldnt go to a home program unless theyd served 18 months . Well the department was involved with the final determination on what the criteria would be, but that was something that was done through conversation between department and members of congress. Well i would love to know who was in on that conversation. If you would provide that to the committee. And id like to see the criteria. Because if youve got 95 of your population is nonviolent, and youve got we know that the recidivism rate for people over the age of 55 is somewhere between 2 and 3 . By the way, thats a recidivism rate that any Reentry Program or Drug Court Program or any state court system would die for. That is an amazingly low recidivism rate. I do not understand how we cannot even were turning down 784 of 855 applicants for a pilot program. It seems to me that the institution is being stubbornly stuck in the status quo. Stubbornly stuck in the status quo. And i am so excited that we have Critical Mass around here. As somebody who, against a lot of political headwinds started one of the first drug courts in the country as an elected prosecutor, i convinced the people in my community and the Police Department that a drug court was a taxpayer factory. Because the people who went into drug court were either on welfare or they were stealing. They werent paying taxes. And all the nonViolent Crimes they were committing is because they were drug dicted. That drug court movement, ours began in 1993. It spread all over the country and the world because it worked so well. You know what, i begged the federal government to participate in our Drug Court Program. Didnt want to hear a word about it. I couldnt even get them to send us their mules, the girlfriend mules. They wouldnt even send us those. I was saying let me take your cases, your lowlevel drug offender cases. Wouldnt hear of it in the 90s. And im not just not sure that weve moved that much in the department of justice. And i hope we can all work together. I know my times up. Ive got some questions. I would i have some questions for the record about Reeves County that contract. Why in the world are we using a county as a gobetween on a prison contract . And also these criminal alien prisons that we have that half of them are immigration offenses. And im curious about the 1 billion price tag on that. So ill get you those questions for the record. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator mccaskill. I dont want to put words in your mouth but i think were finding another area of agreement here. The federal government getting involved in something from my standpoint is better left to the states and local governments because theyre better at it, theyre closer to it. They use a little more commonsense approach. So ive frequently said washington, d. C. The federal government, definition is the law of negative unintended consequences. I think were seeing a lot of that here today. Again, not because of good intentions and not because of people working hard and sacrificing. But i think thats just basically true. I want to be respectful of the witnesses types. I know know senator booker had another question. Lets not abuse the time. No im grateful. I think were having semantic problems, mr. Director. The doj defines solitary confinement as the terms isolation or solitary confinement mean the state of being confined to one cell or for approximately 22 hours per day or more alone or with other prisoners. The Health Consequences for solitary confinement period, are well alerted. And this is a common practice in the federal system. But its not just with other prisoners, in the shu, and often prisoners in the special management units. Its common as well. And the average stay in that is 277 days. And in the adx or the administrative maximum prisons the average solitary confinement is 1,376 days. So this is a real problem and it does exist and forgive me if my semantics are wrong and i think ive got more precision now. No sir. And i did want to clarify and i appreciate you bringing the subject back for that. At the adx, when i testified in 2012, at that time we had a little more than 400 inmates at the adx in florence, colorado, which makes up less than onethird of 1 of our entire population. And for that population, those individuals are placed in single cell. And the majority of the population also, when you look at their offenses, 46 have been involved in some homicide at some point in their lives. Again, but the reality is, is that the actual result i dont care if its a homicide, nonviolent drug crime. What are we getting for taxpayers for putting them in an environment in which human rights folks consider that torture . And we have a medical community that has a consensus about torture. And so or the harmful excuse me, the traumatizing effect of that. And so what im just saying is, and again, the crime and violent, nonviolent, im saying this is a nation that doesnt endorse torture or believes we should traumatize folks and if theres no data that supports us actually having something positive coming out of this its got to be a practice that weve we should end or severely limit. And thats what im just saying. Im trying to do a datadriven approach relying on experts and science. And just because i want to stay on the good side of the chairman, im going to shift off of this issue because i have enough questions to last another ten minutes and i dont think im going to get that. I will tread upon his no, youre not. His indulgences as long as possible. So just real quick, a real quick point. Federal bureau of prison houses 14,500 women. As we talked about in the last panel, overwhelmingly, the women have children. Children of of a minor age. The trauma visited upon children and those often the primary caregivers, there is a lot of issues and i want to get to one reality in danbury, connecticut, which as mere 70 miles away from the new york city area, i like to call it the greater newark area, which is an easy reach for visitors from the northeast. Thats going to be changed and those women are now going to be moved slated right now to move to alabama to a facility there which is about 1,000 miles away from the greater newark area, a drive that takes more than 16 hours. So why was the 500mile policy enacted, which is a good thing, which is something i endorse, due to the cost of travel for families, would you commit to revising the rule to have a presumption of 75 miles if possible . Do you understand . Is there a chance to revise that rule . Senator, when we looked at the Mission Change for danbury we made every effort to try to make sure for fairness for those offenders who not only were living in the New England States or as far as their residence, but we had many offenders there who were from california, from texas. And we tried to make sure that with the realignment that we move those individuals who were not from that part of the country, so they could be closer to their family. And so were taking care of the californians but there are a lot of people from the northeast, a lot of women with small children who are having those connections effectively severed. And that is very problematic. Im just going to shift for now if i can and i apologize. Just quickly looking at the private prison issue real quick and shift to mr. Horowitz if i can, i dont want you to feel like i was ignoring you in this hearing. Are you concerned about the growth of private prisons that contract with the bop, and what have you endorsed that these prisons are accountable to the public . Because we have real issues with these contracts with a toast costing us about 51 billion for taxpayers taxpayers. And these are forprofit companies. 33,830 press certificates were held in private facilities in 2010 and that number has broken to over 38,000. Im concerned about oversight. And then theres a lack of reporting. Information thats just i can get a lot of information easily from the prisons that are being run by the director. But theres this unbelievable, really offensive to me, lack of information and data about our private prisons and what is going on there. And so i want to ask part of that question, then im done, just wait for the answer. Is the abuse reports of immigrant detainees. Now i understand these folks are not american citizens, but they are human beings. And the report of abuse at our private prisons are troubling. Thousands of men live in 200foot kevlar tents in some of these facilities that each house about 200 men. The facilities are described as filthy insectinfested horrible smells, constantly overflowing toilets. This is an affront for this nation for what we stand for. For me its an affront. Im just wondering what steps are you taking to hold these prisons accountability and lift the veil that protects the American Public from knowing whats being done with wells of their taxpayer dollars . Weve taken several steps, senator. We issued the report on the Reeves County facility this year and focused on that particular private prison and the concerns we found just like you just mentioned. Staffing levels, for example. As you know, reveals county had a riot several years ago. One of the issues was supposedly staffing levels. We looked and saw there were concerns about the staffing and billing and contracting practices. We made a variety of recommendations as to that facility. Were looking at currently the adams county facility and mississippi, leavenworth and kansas private prisons, as well as a broader review looking at the bops monitoring of overall the contract prisons because that is an issue of concern. As the spending has increased and the number of prisoners has gone from 2 to 20 of the overall federal prison population, thats an issue of concern. So were doing those reviews. Several of the contract prisons like reeves, like adams the northeast Correctional Center in ohio, have all had riots in the last several years. Those are contract prisons being used by the bop and it has raised the concerns that were looking at closely. And why not better reporting . Why cant i or the public get the same kind of transparency in reporting that we would get with the prisons that are directly under the purview of director samuels . And thats something were looking at as well. Because its an issue body were looking at what kind of reporting the bop is getting from these institutions. In addition, what kind of information is flowing and is accessible and why arent we doing more why isnt more being done to be transparent about that . Thank you, senator booker. And you can have my personal assurances that ill continue with you personally and continue to use this committee to highlight these issues and work towards solutions. I think this is an important issue. I want to thank again both of you gentlemen for the service to this nation and your thoughtful testimony. I want to thank all of the witness. I think we did accomplish the primary goal of the hearing again, lay out the reality lets admit we have a problem. Weve got one here. Im not saying weve got the Ready Solutions but weve certainly taken that first step, admitting weve got the problem. With that, the hearing will remain open for 15 days until may 14th at 5 00 p. M. For submission of statements and questions for the record. This hearing is adjourned. On the next washington journal, real clear politics reporter rebecca berg discusses the gop president ial field. Then the Heritage Foundation and Nicole Austin hillary from the Brendan Center for justice discuss whether the 50yearold Voting Rights act is still needed. Join the conversation at facebook and twitter. Washington journal, live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. This weekend politics books, and American History. Saturday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan congressional profiles with four freshman members. Pennsylvania democrat brendan boyle, Louisiana Republican ralph abraham, michigan democrat Brenda Lawrence new Jersey Republican tom macarthur. Sunday night at 9 00 with elections coming in october well show you a debate among the four National Party leaders in canada. On cspan2 saturday night at 10 00 eastern on book tvs after words, Charles Murray argues through the use of technology we can rein in the power of the federal government. Sunday evening at 7 00, Susan Southard talks about the city and people of nagasaki, japan from the morning it was bombed on august 9th 1945, to today. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3 we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki japan, and the end of the war in the pacific. Our programming starts saturday morning at 10 00 with a conversation with president Harry Trumans grandson, Clifton Truman daniel. Later visit the American University hiroshima nagasaki atomic bomb exhibit with the universitys director of nuclear studies. Sunday morning at 10 00, our coverage continues with the 2000 documentary on the making of the atomic bomb. Later, interviews with two bomb survivors. Get our complete schedule at cspan. Org. This month, cspan radio takes you to the movies. Hear the Supreme Court oral argument from four cases that played a part in popular movies. From this summers woman in gold to the free speech case from the 1996 movie the people versus larry flynt. The watergate case from all the president s men. And 2011s the loving story about the civil rights case invalidating laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Hear the Supreme Court oral argument from four cases that played a part in popular movies saturdays in august at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan radio. Listen to cspan radio at 90. 1 fm in the washington, d. C. Area, online at cspan. Org or download our cspan radio app. Next, a look at mexicos political and Economic Future with a former u. S. Ambassador to mexico. And a Political Science professor from the mexico Autonomous Institute of technology. They discuss allegations of corruption within the Mexican Government and how the recent escape of drug lord Joaquin El Chapo guzman is an indication of the countrys many challenges. This was hosted by the interamerican dialogue. Its about an hour and 40 minutes. Good morning. And thank you all for joining us today. It seems like it wasnt too long ago when this was a lot of talk, at least in this city about mexicos promise mexicos moment. A new administration. A political pact among its main parties. And latin americas most ambitious and wideranging reform agenda that seemed to enjoy broad support. In fact, many important measures were enacted in a short period of time. Lately, however, the news from mexico has been of greater concern. Security and human rights issues rule of law challenges generally have come to the fore. The disappearance of 43 students almost a year ago highlighted in dramatic fashion these persistent problems. Last month, on july 11th the Cartel Leader Joaquin Guzman El Chapo Escaped from a maximum security prison, exposing what many see as systemic corruption and contributing to a loss of confidence in the government. Corruption allegations have dogged president pena net toe and his administration. Less than a week ago, last friday, in fact, mexican photo journalist Ruben Espinoza and four women were murdered in mexico. A stark reminder of the danger of being a journalist in mexico today. The pena net toe administration, which has three and a half years left in its term is at a critical juncture. The president s approval level has dropped to 34 . Its lowest point yet. Although we should remember that in many other countries latin american leaders are roughly at that same level. Despite some positive signs in the u. S. Economy, hex cos growth is not taking off as was promised and as many expected. This morning we will take a measure of the Current Situation and review possible political and economic scenarios over the coming months and years. Will president pena nietos slide in the polls continue or will he recover some ground . Is there a chance that recent developments will be a wakeup call that will galvanize effective action to strengthen the rule of law in mexico . Are the reforms producing positive changes for mexico . Are they moving forward . Or do they risk being stalled because of the salients of security and the rule of law issues . Are u. S. mexico relations affected by the current circumstances . Are the steps that either washington or mexico city should be taking to pursue a common agenda . Lots of questions. This morning we are thrilled to have with us as our featured speaker dr. Denise stressor and as a discussant, ambassador james jones. Full bios are available but let me say a few words about each. Denise is one of mexicos most incisive project nentminent, highly respected comment daters and analysts. When she speaks and writes as she does so eloquently, people pay careful attention. She teaches Political Science has authored many books, writes a column for reforma and writes for processo. She has a very high profile in the mexican media both tv and radio. She is also a personal friend for many years and someone who has been close to the dialogue. She, in fact, was here as a visiting senior fellow in the 1990s, contributed the mexico chapter to the third edition of constructing democratic governance a major dialogue project and initiative. And most recently spoke here at an event we organized on reproductive rights in latin america. Its an enormous delight to have her with us again and were very grateful that shes taken time from her busy schedule in washington to be with us this morning. After denises presentation, well hear from jim jones who is currently chairman of minot jones global strategy and formerly served as u. S. Ambassador to mexico as well as a member for many years of the u. S. House of representatives. Jim knows mexico extremely well and tracks developments very closely there. He participates in many dialogue activities and serves on the Advisory Board of our daily publication the latin american adviser, copies of which are available to all in the back. I want to thank jim very much for agreeing to be with us this morning as well. After hearing from denise and jim, we will invite and encourage your questions and comments. Look forward to a great lively discussion. I want to thank all of you again for coming. We have a few friends here from the Mexican Embassy. Thank you for being with us as well. Denies, ill turn denise, ill turn it over to you, thank you. Thank you very much, michael. And the dialogue for hosting me. I feel that the dialogue and a home for me in washington. And i especially appreciate your reference to our friendship which means a great deal to me. There was recently a widely circulated photograph that in my mind is a metaphor for the pena nieto government. It was a picture of the attorney general at the prison that el chapos men had escaped from, a maximum security prison. And there she was very nicely dressed, in high heels and a suit peering down the hole from which el chapo had escaped from. A hole that led to a 1. 5kilometer tunnel that has a motorcycle and air conditioning and you are probably familiar with the arc tech turl and engineering marvel that the tunnel was. And her peering into that hole signified a great deal. It was a picture that said more than a thousand words. It seemed to represent what is happening in mexico today. Peering into the hole and looking at a mess. A very difficult moment. And perhaps some of you will say, well, this is just denise stressor being critical. However, i think what im saying today represents the consensus of most analysts in mexico. And represents the feelings that are captured in the polls of the general population visavis the government visavis Political Parties, visavis the presidency visavis corruption. The peso is depreciating. And while there are many economic arguments to be made as to why that is occurring please remember that in mexico, the parity of the peso visavis the dollar for most ordinary mexicans is a psychological metric of how the country is doing. And the fact that it is sliding at such a rapid pace is an indicator of the lack of confidence in the government and not just what is happening in International Currency markets. The price of oil is down. As michael said, pena nietos Approval Ratings are the lowest of any mexican president in the last 20 years. Roma uno, which was the first step in the Energy Reform which involved the licitation of potential oil fields proved to be a disappointment, not attracting the amount of energy excitement, enthusiasm, or bids that the Mexican Government had expected. It was deemed by many a failure particularly in light of the very High Expectations that the Mexican Government had created regarding energyreform as being the detonator of high growth in the country. So i think there are four is that im going to speak of that capture the current moment. Inkpen tense, insecurity, and inequality, that are creating a general sense of a ship adrift, rutterless, and without a clear sense of who the captain is and whether or not hes in charge or actually knows where hes going. Starting with incompetence. The polls show it and i, for one, take political cartoons very seriously. Because they are a graphic expose of a mood and sometimes they are much sharper than even a column could be. And how have mexican political cartoonists baptized Enrique Pena Nieto . His image seems to matter more than the reality on the ground because he has a very how would i call it . Well, trumplike haircut. Or even more eloquently, a mixture of the imagery of the present of the telemarketing of the current presidency accompanied by the dinosaur vintage practices of the past. Weve gone, and you can see this reflected in the International Press coverage of mexico from delirium to disenchantment. To that the job was too big for him and the team of largely people from the state of mexico, that he had brought with him, or the old guard of the pri that doesnt seem to know how to adapt to current circumstances. Now, if members of the pri were here and perhaps certain members of the Mexican Embassy who are here, if they feel comforted by the thought that the pri won the Midterm Election, id like to say that it was it could turn out to be a appearic victory in so far as yes, the pri won the Midterm Election but if you look at the numbers, what are the numbers showing you . That the pri is losing votes at very quickly. That it would not have won the majority in congress it has had it not been for the alliance with the green party and the multiple illegalities the committee committed throughout the election that remain to this day unsanctioned by federal lek troll authorities, the former efa that was the jewel in the crown of mexicos democratization and has since become a tarnished crown because what happened after the transition in the year 2000 when we began to develop effective counter weights and checks and balances including autonomous electoral authorities, the parties discovered they didnt like this. They removed many of the elements that make electoral authorities independent and now you have an eni that is facing a huge loss of credibility because of the unsanctioned behavior breaking every electoral law and accumulating 600 million pesos in fines, all of this committed by the green party that as i said went unsanctioned. Even though the pri won, the negative perceptions and the disapproval are growing. And what are analysts saying . That Enrique Pena Nietos project is showing limitations that were there from the inception, but that many didnt recognize or understand. I think wooed by the 11 Structural Reforms that were quickly passed in the context of the pact for mexico leading to the sense that modernization was truly occurring and that vision and that sense of moving forward at this point in time in mexico, is severely compromised and the perception of most analysts is that the pena nietos project was more about reconcentrating power in the presidency, in the pri, in the executive than it was about truly reconstructing the state. Or reconstructing the way democracy works or reconstructing the incentives by which Political Parties operate, or reconstructing the incentives by which mexican capitalism works. So it was ambitious but i think flawed project. Built on reforms that either came too late and i would say this about Energy Reform where i think we are four or five years too late in terms of opening up our markets. Or reforms that were are being badly implemented or are insufficient as the case of telecomes reform or education reform, but i think the foundational problem was that they were built upon corruption and are being undone by corruption, because the idea was not to make the pie bigger. What weve seen now is that the project was to slice it up in a different way. That what was wanted was not real competition but rather state administered competition that would continue to shore up mexicos system of crony capitalism just with other cronies, and that the project wasnt about combatting impunity but rather taking advantage of it for this group that came. So theres a sense of malaise, of crisis, of social indignation, of ungovernability in which, yes the pri wins or did win the midterm but does not convince even after 11 Structural Reforms that have failed to take off. And when i referred to the depreciation of the mexican peso because we dont call it devaluation anymore or at least not now, many have argued this has to do more with whats happening with the american dollar et cetera, but a recent article in the Financial Times that did research on this topic what did it show . It underscored what has been my intuition all along. It showed that mexican households are taking their money out of the country. People who have savings are buying dollars. Yesterday the bank of mexico spent 200 million pesos trying to shore up the prop up the currency because they know what it means for the mexican psyche. So and why are people converting their money . Because they fear that theres an oncoming crisis that there could be a major devaluation, that were going to end it in the way that many other pri ease ending because of the lack of fiscal discipline and the accumulation of debt that this government has incurred in the first three years, because of the huge gap in government revenues and income as a result of the drop in oil and of a fiscal reform that it is insufficient to cover the gap. And a crisis brought on by what i perceive as a mismanagement of events that the government seemed unprepared for that it has not shown that it knows how to confront in a way that displays willingness or ability to resolve deeprooted kriess. Some of which are con juk wall and others that weve been dragging along for a long time as corruption thats become more accent waited. So you have a place where the military executed 22 people and theres now a recent report and investigation about this. Then you have the 43 murdered students, and let alone the fact that 43 students were murdered. What it was revealed was to what degree corruption and crime had penetrated government institutions, because those responsible for what happened, at least in the official version that we have up to now with the municipal president and the police and to an unknown degree the military. And then you got the white house scandal of which im sure all of you have aware of. A scandal that had it occurred in the united states, had it been revealed that Michelle Obama owned a 7 million house but that the title was in the name of a contractor who had won multimillion dollar bids by the Obama Administration and they