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With a $7 billion budget, more than 36,000 employees and 172,000 inmates, the BOP Director oversees a massive government agency without sufficient congressional oversight.
The DOJ Inspector General’s annual report called the BOP’s increasing costs a “persisting crisis” despite a “downward trend” in the federal prison population.
Yet, unlike most DOJ administrators and directors, the BOP Director is appointed by the U.S. Attorney General—not the President—without Senate confirmation.
The introduction of this bill comes after several failures by the BOP leadership to take proactive measures to handle COVID-19 in the federal prisons system and ensure the health and safety of federal prisons inmates and staff.
There are currently more COVID-19 cases in the BOP system than in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Hawaii, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, West Virginia, the Northern Marianas Islands, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
Thirty-three BOP inmates have died of COVID-19 while 1,692 inmates and 349 BOP staff have confirmed positive test results for the virus.
Despite the pandemic’s impact on the BOP system, the agency has continued to move inmates between facilities across the nation, often from hot spots to areas with few confirmed cases, leading to widespread concern among local communities, members of Congress, and doctors.
The federal Bureau of Prisons plays a critical public safety role in ensuring the very worst among us stay behind bars, but their utter lack of transparency and responsiveness to members of Congress and the public at large is appalling.
After years of out of control spending and actions that run counter to institutional safety, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is abundantly clear that increased oversight of the BOP is long overdue.
Making the position of BOP Director Senate confirmable will ensure that the American people have a say in this important role and that the BOP will remain responsive to their representatives in Congress.
The American public expects their government to be accountable to them. It’s time we hold BOP to that basic standard.
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