The federal prison system. He discussed the need for policy reforms, Mental Health and Substance Abuse treatment and more funding and resources. This is one hour 15 minutes. You are watching live coverage on c span3. In recent years more than 300 people have died of unnatural causes in custody of the presence. Does have too often been the result of this management and in recent years, more than 300 people have died of unnatural causes in custody of the prisons. Too often been the result of this management and operational failures. Investigation by the Marshall Project and National Public radio three years ago found that the thompson federal prison in my home state of illinois has become one of the deadliest prisons in america because of the defunct a special Management Unit. I was shaken by the allegations in the article and asked Inspector General horowitz to examine them. We will discuss the results today. After media reports late last year alleged that some adults in custody died while awaiting for necessary medical care, i called on gop to change its procedures, staff and supply medical units so incarcerated individuals could receive the care they needed. It is evident that many of the issues the committee has highlighted over the years including understaffing, overuse of restrictive housing and employee misconduct that will continue to have deadly consequences if they go unaddressed. The Inspector General report identified 344 nonmedical deaths of adults in custody and its reviewed period, 2014 to 2021. Number of trends emerged that demonstrated increased risk to safety of individuals with bop care. For example, 20 of the deaths were overdoses from contraband and prescription drugs. Bop continues to struggle with contraband interdiction and lacks adequate treatment for thousands of individuals fighting addiction. Understaffing, in particular in health and psychology services, strains their ability to provide quality care. Violations of bop policy by staff present significant barriers to the bops ability to ensure institutional safety. This afternoon my colleague , senator booker, chair of the criminal justice subcommittee, will hold a hearing on staffing crisis. I thank him for his leadership. The lengthy and ineffective discipline process fails to bring accountability for staff misconduct and bop fails to use post death reviews and proper recordkeeping to identify corrective actions. This failure to learn from past mistakes is most troubling when examining the role of restrictive housing in custodial deaths. Suicides accounted for just over half of the 344 deaths cig reviewed. Almost half of the suicides occurred in restrictive housing, which is more known as solitary confinement. We have a stark reality when it comes to solitary confinement. This is cruel and unusual punishment that has been the normal in the United States for way too long. In 2012 i held the first ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement. At the time 8 of federal incarcerated individuals were intersected housing. After some progress under president obama, we have returned to the same percentage of people in solitary today. We know that overuse of solitary confinement causes lasting, irreparable, physical, emotional and mental harm to incarcerated people. It threatens Public Safety and strains prison budgets. I want to add a parenthetical, i understand that some of the intimates we are talking are dangerous people who need to be isolated under certain circumstances. I am a realist about that. This consistent reference of 8 is unacceptable. Earlier this month, the General Accounting Office released a report which i requested. It found they have failed to implement 54 of the 87 recommendations from two prior studies unrestricted housing. The failure to decrease overreliance unrestricted housing is debbie. That is why we have the dangers the spring. Director peters, i understand many issues have been problems for years. Before you arrive. It is time for solutions and change the lives of hundred americans are at risk. My colleague is under the rather today and will not be able to join us. Senator grassley was here momentarily to acknowledge of the opening of this committee meeting. He has another conflict in his schedule as well. I want to proceed. We will swear and the witnesses. Each will have five minutes to provide an Opening Statement and then round of questions from each. I asked individuals to please stand and raise your right hand. You say that testimony will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god. Let the record reflect both have answered in the affirmative. We will start with Inspector General horowitz. You may proceed. I could not hear. I am sorry. Are you calling on me first . Yes. Thank you. Thank you, chairman durbin. I also want to acknowledge with me are the team that work on the desks and custody report print ash visited in the sites,. Every year i have included the bop in my annual report and performance challenges facing the department of justice. With some notable exceptions, the problems at the bop seem to only increase. Indeed last year the bop was added to the high risk list. To be clear, these are not new problems. Yesterday we released a compendium of over 100 oig reports since 2002 reluctant a systemic challenges of the bop that we have identified over the past two decades. Many of the 334 deaths due to suicide, homicide, Drug Overdose or other unknown factors that we reviewed in the deaths and custody report have a direct connection to these challenges. By the way, as we reference in our report, so did the highprofile deaths of Jeffrey Epstein in between 19 and Whitey Bulger in 2018 as we detailed in those public reports we issued. When the public wonders wonder the treatment of those highprofile inmates was unique, the answer, sadly, from our deaths in custody report is that it was not. Many of the 334 deaths were the result of serious management and operational failures, including longstanding management and operational challenges that involve serious staffing shortages, including for correctional and health care positions. Single celling of cellmates, ineffective contraband interdiction and outdated Camera Security systems, staff failure to follow bop policies and procedures, and an untimely staff disciplinary process. One or more of these challenges is a contributing factor in many of inmate deaths and our scope, and these longstanding challenges continue to present a critical threat to the bop safe and humane management of inmates in its care and custody. For example, we found in nearly one third of the inmate deaths within our scope, contraband drugs or weapons can be did or appeared to contribute to the death. The rampant proliferation of contraband is a major challenge for the bop, resulting in the bop partially closing its federal penitentiary in atlanta in 2021. As our report notes, atlanta had the highest number of deaths during the time of our review. Ensuring that staff follows policies and procedures and are held accountable for serious wrongdoing is critical, to improving security of institutions for inmates and the overwhelming majority of bop employees to do their jobs with honesty and integrity. The oig designates significant resources to alleged criminal wrongdoing at bop facilities particularly Sexual Assault and contraband smuggling. As we have seen through our investigation, where the warden, chaplain and several other inmates have been convicted of Sexual Assault charges, failing to timely identify and address criminal wrongdoing can spiral and poison an institutions culture. Relatedly, the ongoing use, our audit of bops use of restraints was prompted by allegations by thompson and the special Management Unit routinely placing restraints for extended periods of time and were otherwise, inmates were mistreated while restrained. This unit was closed by director peters in response to these and other concerns. Let me turn to suicide, which comprised the majority of the deaths we reviewed. More than half of those died by suicide, as you noted were in single cell confinement. Despite policy that strongly disfavors the use of single celling. Half the suicides were in restrictive Housing Units and where over 60 of inmates who died by suicide and had been designated at the lowest Mental Health treatment level, none of these new initiatives, the oig identified them and raise them. We made 12 new recommendations in our death and custody report in the bop agreed with all of them. We will carefully monitor the bops implementation of them. Addressing these widespread systemic issues at the bop requires a longterm vision and strategy from bop and Department Leadership with support from the office of management and budget, congress and other important stakeholders. The problems we have identified over the past 20 years will not be solved overnight but they must be addressed with urgency to protect the health, safety and security of bop staff and inmates, and to enable inmates to successfully return to our communities upon the release from prison. Toward that end, i appreciated my quarterly meetings with director peters and her desire to meet with me regularly. It is the first time in my 12 years as ig that that has occurred. Thank you. I would be pleased to answer any questions. Director peters. Good morning, chairman durbin. Ranking member graham and members of the committee. I am pleased to be here with you and Inspector General horowitz to discuss the deaths in custody report. Could you pull the microphone closer to you . Yes. We welcome, agree with and are implementing the reports recommendations print and have plans to go even further and take additional steps to mitigate unexpected deaths in custody. I have spent my entire professional career working in the Public Safety field, including as a Victim Advocate working with victims who lost loved ones. I know any unexpected death of an adult in our care in custody is tragic. It changes the lives of that persons family and loved ones forever. We also experienced these deaths as a heavy blow. I have been in our institution in the days following unexpected , and i have seen our employees suffering due to the loss. Our core Mission Always is to care for those in our custody in hopes that they leave our facilities prepared to be good neighbors. When our best efforts are not successful and death does occur, we initiate review processes to understand the costs of these deaths so we can prevent similar deaths going forward. We can do better here and must ensure that our reviews go deep enough and our documentation is clear enough to support the reviews. Our psychological assessments conclude that many individuals who come to us come with Mental Illness and Substance Use disorders making them more susceptible to suicide, overdose and homicide. To combat these deaths, we work on root causes and have coordinated evidencebased treatments. We train our employees to recognize those attempting suicide and refer at risk people for help and respond to suicide attempts. And also train on the appropriate use of cpr, aeds, and cutdown tools. Ensuring our employees have access to those tools in the workplace. The report notes that suicides occurred when people were single celled are interested in housing. That is why we limit the use of single celling. We have housing reforms underway now that will reduce the amount of time adults in custody spend in restrictive housing for disciplinary violations. We are quitting a special post to help those in custody transition from the risk restrictive housing environment to the general population. We are going to add employees to restrictive housing during the overnight shift. We continuously work to combat contraband, to reduce homicides and overdoses. This includes heightened screening, monitoring or terminating cellular communication, and continually monitoring intelligence and Gang Activity. To harness all of this intelligence, we are creating a new chief inspector position to identify systemwide patterns and problems, including that that would prevent deaths in our custody. On a departmental level, the Deputy Attorney general has formed a working group of experts to better prevent suicides. Again, i want to be perfectly clear, our employees are our everything, and fully staffed institutions and well trained employees save lives. Yet it is no secret that our agency is in crisis as a relates to recruitment and retention. We are aggressively recruiting and utilizing incentives to maintain the employees that we have, and while our efforts over this past year have gleaned results, we are still faced with an inability to compete with the private sector and other Law Enforcement agencies. As an example, at a federal prison about an hour outside of boston, a Correctional Officer quit his job for a better offer with better pay. The better offer, working at the local grocery store. On the Law Enforcement side, an ad is advertising that city Correctional Officers can make around 130,000 after a few years on the job. While in the same amount of time, our officers, after we have implemented the 35 Retention Bonus, would be making about 90,000. The story is the same throughout the country. We need more resources to carry out our mission and implement our vision and reach our goals. Chairman durbin, and members of the committee, thank you, for this opportunity to speak on behalf of the federal bureau of prisons, and i welcome your questions. Sen. Durbin thank you very much. My interest in this issue started many years ago when i read an article in the atlantic magazine by a doctor in boston about the impact of isolation in solitary confinement on the human mind. Not just in the correctional setting but prisoners of war. He referenced our former colleague, john mccain, and what he went through after five years of that type of treatment and what impact it had on him. And now the doctor reminded us that the majority of prisoners would ultimately be released if they are damaged in serving processed their time in prison, they will take that damage out into open society and others may suffer. This has been a longtime issue. It has been 12 years since the first hearing under my leadership occurred in this committee. I have concerns over solitary confinement and pleaded with directors now and before you to do something about it. Im going to reintroduce my legislation, solitary about reform act to limit the use of the practice. Director peters, despite the decrease in total prison population since you were sworn in as director in august of 2022, the percentage and total of number of individuals in restrictive housing is actually higher than it was at that time. As of this month, approximately 7. 9 or 11,179 people are currently being held in some form of restrictive housing. An increase of 0. 6 since september of 2022. Director peters, you have pointed to your contract with the National Institute of justice. When asked about your plans to address restrictive housing, what is the status of the study . Thank you, senator. The study is underway. And ij has issued the contract. The individuals studding restrictive housing have actually been on site and visiting the studies looking at our policies, practices and interviewing employees. We are also not just waiting for the results of that report. We are beginning to implement restrictive housing reform. Currently, we have plans to approve a new policy that will reduce the amount of time an individual can be sanctioned to restrictive housing for disciplinary purposes. As i mentioned, we are adding Additional Resources to solve this problem. In the shortterm, we shut down the special Management Unit in quick order last year. Sen. Durbin here is my concern. Since my first hearing on this issue in 2012, there have been multiple reviews of b. O. P. Policy. The latest came out earlier this month when the gao report was published that was requested. According to their report b. O. P. Has not fully implemented before not fully implemented 54 of the 87 recommendations from two prior studies on improving restrictive housing practices. One of those studies were conducted by an external consultant. It made 34 recommendations and only 16 have been implemented. President biden ordered the attorney general to implement in 2022 made 53 recommendations and only 17 have been implemented. The time for studies is over. The death rate in our prisons is unacceptable. Damage to Mental Health is unacceptable. My question to you is, what steps can you commit to today to immediately reduce restrictive housing populations . Thank you, senator. I think there are a variety of things we are doing today including policy that has been longstanding negotiated with our National Union, and that will decrease the amount of time individuals can be sanctioned to restrictive housing for disciplinary purposes. The data reveals many of the individuals that are in restrictive housing are in there, many times of their own choice. They fear their ability to walk in general population. We are working on creating cultures and environments that are more normal and humane. We are crating positions who will work in restrictive housing , and their sole responsibility will be working with those individuals who do not want to leave strict of housing, and help them transition into general population. We did this in the state of oregon, and it was very successful. We are looking forward to rolling that out this year. We are also looking at best practices across the count