I think something id like to see the president address on thursday is anything related to gaza and palestine. Its very important right now and people not talking about it and choosing to look at it one way. Watch the sta on thursday at0 p. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan now, our free mobile video app, or online atspan. Org. The director of the federal bureau of prisons joined the justice dertpector general to testify on the rise of nonmedicalrelated deaths in the federal prison system. They discuss the need for policy reforms for confinement, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse treatments and more funding and resources. This is an hour and 50 minutes. Span3. In recent years more than 300 people have died of nal causes in custody of the presence. Does have too often been the result of this management and operational il project and National Public radio three years ago found that the thompson federal in recent years, mohr than of il has become one of the deadliest prisons in america because of the defunct a special Management Unit. I was sh and asked Inspector General haaretz 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 bop to medical units so incarcerated individuals could receive the care they needed. It is evident the issues the committee has highlighted over the years included 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 death reviewed period, 2014 to 2021 but the number that demonstrate increased risk to safety of individuals with bop care. Bop continues to struggle with contraband interdiction and lacks adequate treatment for understaffing, in particular in health and psychology services, strains their ability to staff present significant barriers to the bops ability to ensure institutional safety. My colleague senator booker of the criminal Justice Subcommittee will hold a hearing on i thank him for his leadership. The lengthy and ineffective discipline process fails to bring economy from staff misconduct. B. O. P. 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 and custodial deaths. Suicides accounted for just over half of the 344 deaths cig reviewed but only half of those suicides occurred in restrictive housingsolitary 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 fit tary con 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 soli causes lasting, irreparable, physical, emotional and mental harm to incarcerated people. It threatens Public Safety and strains prison budgets. I want to addhetical, 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 Accounting Office released a report which i requested was senator. They have failed to implement 54 of the 87 recommendations from two prior studies unrestricted housing. The failure overreliance unrestricted housing is debbie. Debbie. That is why we have the director peters, i understand many issues have been problems. 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 will be here momentarily to acknowledge of thopg of this committee meeting. He has another conflict in his schedule as well. I want to proceed. E witnesses. Each will have five minutes provide an Opening Statement and then round of questions from each. I asked individuals to . Lse stand and raise your right hand. You say that testimony will be the truth, the whole truth and nothbut the truth, so help you god. Let the record reflect both have entered in the affirmative. We will start with Inspector General horowitz. You may proceed. I could not hear. First . Yes. Thank you. Thank you, chairman durbin. I also wanted to acknowledge with me are the team that work on the desks and custody report print and visited the present mentioned in your Opening Statement. ■b i have been Inspector General for almost 12 years. Every year i have included the b. O. P. In my annual report of the top management and performance challenges facing the with some notable exceptions, the problems at the b. O. P. Seem to only increase. Last year the b. O. P. Was added to the gao high risk list. To be clear that these are not new problems. Yesterday we released a compendium of over 100 blsends reflecting the systemic challenges of the b. O. P. That we have identified over the past two decades. Many of the 344 deaths that you mentioned that we found were due to suicid homicide, Drug Overdose or other unknown factors. We reviewed the deaths in custody report have a direct connection to the challenges. By the way, as we referenced in our report so did the high profile death of inmate Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 and james woody were issued. When the public wonders whether the treatment of those two high profile inmates was unique, the answers■, sadly, from our desk in custody report is that it was not. Many of the desk we discussed milarly serious management and operational failures. These include longstanding management and operational challenges that involve serious staffing shortages including correctional and healthcare positions. Single selling of inmates, inappropriate Mental Healthcare designations of inmates. Ineffective contraband interdiction and outdated Camera Security systems. Staff failure to follow b. O. P. Policies and procedures for and and ineffective untimely staff disciplinary process. Indeed, one or more of these challenges was a contributing factor in many of the inmate deaths. And these longstanding challenges continue to present eccentric and critical threat to the b. O. P. Safe and humane management of inmates in its care and custody. For example, we found that in nearly one third of the inmate deaths within our scope, contraband, drugs or weapons contribute or appear to contribute to the rampant perforation of contraband is a major challenge for the b. O. P. Resug the b. O. P. Partially closing its federal penitentiary in atlanta in 2021. With honesty and integrity. Ax the oig dedicates significant resources to investigate alleged criminal wrongdoing and b. O. P. Facility, tilyassault and smuggling as we have seen through our ongoing criminal investigation where the warden chaplet and several other inmates have been convicted of Sexual Assault charges, failing to identify and address criminal wrongdoing can spiral and po. Relatedly, our ongoing use with our audit of the use of restraints was prompted, by allegations that inmates at usp thompson, which you reference. They were routinely placing extended periods of time and inmates were mistreated while restrained. Closed by director peters in response to these and other concerns. Let me turn to suicide■j, which comprise, as you noted, the majority of the desk we reviewed her that half of those indicted by suicidwere in single cell confinement despite policy that strongly disfavored the use of single selling. Almost half the suicides occurred in restrictive housing units. Over 60 of inmates who died by suicide had been designated at the lowest Mental Health treatment level. None of these are new issues. Them in our prior reports and the gao has also raised them we made 12 new recommendations in our death and custody report. And the b. O. P. Agreed with all of them and we will carefully monitor the b. O. P. s limitation of them. Effectively addressing these widespread systemic issues at the b. O. P. And Department Leadership with support from the office of management and budget, congress and other important stakeholders but the problems we have identified in our oversight work 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 b. O. P. Staff and inmates. And to return to our communities upon the release from prison. Towards that end, i appreciated my quarterly meetings with director peters and her desire to meet with mere years as ig that has occurred. I think we have made some important progress working together. Thank you and i would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Director peters. Good morning, chairman durbin. And members of the committee. I am pleased to be here with you and horowitz to discuss this report. Will you pull the microphone closer to you. We welcome, agree with and are implementing the repos endations print and have plans to go even further and taken 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 wo■drking with victims who lost loved ones. I know any unexpected death of an adult in our care and custody is tragic. It changes fb■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 deaths and ive seen are in place 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 that does occur, we initiate review processes to understand the cause of the desk so we can prevent similar desks 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 , overdose and homicide. To combat these deaths we work on root causes and have co evidencebased treatments. We train our employees to recognize those attempting suicide and refer at risk people for help and respond to attempts. And also train on the appropriate use of cpr, aeds, the locks zone and cutdown tools. Insert are in place 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 revote special training to those who work interested in housing and limit the ■■e of single celling. We have housing reforms underway now that will reduce the amount of time adults and custody spend in resciplinary violations. We are creating a special post in restrictive housing to help those in custody transition from that restrictive housing environment to the general population. We are going to add employees in restrictive housing during overnight shift. We continuously work to combat contraband to reduce homicides and overdoses. This includes heightened screening mail, detecting and instructing drones and terminating cellular communications. And continually monitoring intelligence and gang activity. To harness all of this inteigence, we are creating a new chief inspector position to identify systemwide patterns and problems, including that that would prevent deaths in our custody. Ty attorney general has formed a working group of experts to better prevent suicides. I want to be perfectly clear, our employees are our everything and fully staffed institutions and well trained employees save s. It is no secret that our agency is in crisis as a relates to recruitment and retention. We are recruiting and utilizing incentives to maintain the employees that we have while our efforts over this past year have clean results an inability to compete with the private sector and other agencies. Asan 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, and add is advertising that city Correctional Officers can make aroundthe job. While in the same amount of time, our officers, after we have implement the 35 Retention Bonus, it 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 mission 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. Thank you very much. My inte when i read an article in the atlantic magazine about the impact of isolation in solitary confinement on the human mind. Not just in the correctional setting but prisoners of war. He restaurants our former colleague, john mccain, with wh and what impact it had on him. It reminded us that the majority of prisoners would ultimately be released if their damage and serving process and the time in prison they will take that damage out into open society and others may suffer. This is been a longtime issue. It has been 12 years since the first hearing under my leadership occurred in this committee. I have boys concerned 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. Despite the decrease total population since you were sworn in as director in august of 2022, the percenge of individuals and restricted housing is actually higher than it was at that time. ■x as of this month, approximately 7. 9 or 11,179 people are currently being held in some form of restricted housing. An increase of. 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 receipt of housing, what is the status of the study . Thank you, senator. The study is underway. And ij has issued the contract. I have actually been on site and visiting the studies looking at our policies, practices and interviewing employees. E also not just waiti 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 for disciplinary purposes. Additional resources to solve this problem. In the shortterm, we shut down the special Management Unit in hearing on this issue in 2012, there have been multiple reviews of b. O. P. Policy. The latest came out earlier this month when a report was published that was requested. According to their report b. O. P. Has not fully implemented before of the 87 recommendations from two prior studies on improving restrictive housing practices. Conducted by an external consultant but it made 34 recommendations and only 16 have President Biden ordered the attorney general to c;implemt in 2022 853 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, what steps can you commit to today to immediately reduce restrictive housing populations . Thank you,senator. I think ready things we are doing today including that policy that has been long standing with our National Union and that will decrease the amount of time that individuals can be sanctioned to restrictive housing for disciplinary purposes. The data revealed that many of the individuals that are in restrictive housing are in there, many times of their own choice. They fear their ability to walk general population. We are working on creating cultures and environments that are more normal and humane bird of those individuals feel comfortable in general populations. As i mentioned in my opening remarks, we are creating positions who will work in restrictive housing and their sole responsibility not want to restrictive housing and help them transition into general population. We did this in the state of oregon and it was very successful. We are looking for to ruling that out this year. We are also looking at best practices across the country and around the globe to implement changes. As i shared with you last time we met, this is filling with Strategic Planning that we have rebooted our mission, our values. Many of the goals that we are working on will tie into restricted housing. Both a strong plan around restricted housing reform and building morale and working on our recruitment and retention issues, which are the core of Inspector General pointed out. What percentage of people have volunteered to be in the housing . That number is almost 40 . We are looking at the data as we get even closer into the data, it might be hard the mat. We have individuals that are categorized as pc status, which falls into the 40 but also individuals that are on transition status. Those too could fit into that category. Those that arent incarcerated because of the danger to others , prisoners and cellmates, i would like to ask, do accept the premise that those are put in richard housing involuntary run the risk of serious Mental Illness or worst . Senator, i would argue that everyone who is in restrictive housing will suffer of some form of mental or physical damage. Those that are agreeing or wanting to be in restrictive housing need to be educated on the fact that is not where they b