Global Courant 2023-04-26 22:44:32
Sexual abuse in the nation’s federal prisons must be eradicated, the Justice Department’s second-senior chief told prison officers gathered for their first nationwide training since revelations that a toxic, permissive culture at a California prison allowed abuse.
The Associated Press on Tuesday gained exclusive access to training for guards at the country’s 122 federal prisons, the first since AP investigations revealed deep, previously unreported deficiencies within the federal Bureau of Prisons, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency. Department of Justice.
Teams of experts and officials will soon be fanning out to women’s prisons across the country to follow up on the reforms the agency passed last fall, and they will speak to both staff and inmates, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a speech at the training facility outside of Denver.
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During the training, guards sat at round conference tables littered with quotes on welfare and leadership from Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi. It was the first meeting of its kind in five years.
“This is urgent, urgent work,” Monaco told the AP in an interview. “It’s up to us as leaders to speak up and make those changes and be really vigilant about it.”
Any sexual activity between a prison officer and an inmate is illegal. Correctional officers have substantial power over inmates and there is no scenario where an inmate can consent.
At California’s Dublin prison, a culture of predatory employees was fueled by cover-ups that kept their misconduct largely out of the public eye for years, the AP’s reporting found. The former prison warden was convicted of molesting prisoners and forcing them to pose naked in their cells. He was one of many employees accused of sexually abusing detainees. The chaplain was also convicted.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks at a meeting of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on April 25, 2023 in Colorado. Monaco said at the meeting that sexual abuse in prison should be eradicated. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Abuse involving a guard is rare, but clusters of allegations against correctional officers and other personnel are more common, said Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz. His watchdog agency investigated that case and other sexual abuse complaints in federal prisons.
“One of the challenges facing BOP is making sure that when you have cancer in your facility, you get it out right away. Because if you don’t take steps to stop it, it will spread and grow,” said he.
The criminal prosecution of other sexual abuse cases is expected to continue. Monaco told US attorneys last week to prioritize cases of sexual abuse allegations against correctional staffers.
“But most importantly, we need to do all the work to prevent this from happening in the first place,” she said. Most guards are committed leaders who can lead a culture that “will not tolerate any instance of sexual abuse,” she said in the speech to guards, which contained both warnings and encouragement.
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Fundamental change in the culture of the Bureau of Prisons is part of a new mission statement announced Tuesday by the bureau’s new director, Colette Peters. She was hired last year after her predecessor resigned under mounting pressure from Congress. That came after AP investigations revealed widespread corruption and misconduct.
The Justice Department’s hands-on approach expands and refines its response to the Dublin crisis last year. Peters’ predecessor, Michael Carvajal, led a Bureau of Prisons task force on a week-long trip to the Bay Area prison. They met with staff and detainees, some of whom shared graphic details of alleged abuse.
In December, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring the Bureau of Prisons to repair broken surveillance cameras and install new ones, both to discourage abuse and to help investigators hold abusive employees accountable. But the agency has been slow to install new cameras, with none installed as of a February status report to bill sponsor Senator Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.
Broad cultural changes are pointing in the direction Peters says she wants the agency to take, including ramping up rehabilitation for inmates to become “good neighbors” outside of prison.
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“Most of these people are coming home. So what do we want them to look like when they come back to our communities?” said Peters.
Making prisons “more normal and humane” will also create better work environments for U.S. prison officers, who she says often suffer from PTSD and have shorter lifespans, unlike their counterparts in countries like Norway.
“That equates to a safer environment for both our employees and those in our care,” she said.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy. Any major institutional shift, whether government or corporate, takes time to filter through the system, Horowitz said.
“It takes several years. It takes a commitment of months and years to make an effective culture change,” he said. “The key is to keep it up.”
