BOP is Holding 12,000 Prisoners in Solitary Confinement
by David Reutter
A report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on February 6, 2024, found that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was holding about 8% of its population—nearly 12,000 prisoners—in Special Housing Units (SHUs), the agency’s polite term for solitary confinement. In SHU, prisoners are isolated “up to 23 hours per day,” GAO noted. But as PLN has reported, such brutal isolation threatens prisoners’ mental health. [See: PLN, Oct. 2022, p.1.]
BOP earlier got not one but two sets of recommendations to improve SHU Practices, and the GAO report called out the agency for failing to fully implement either one. A 2014 report by an independent contractor made 87 recommendations, but only 33 had been fully implemented by October 2023, GAO found. BOP’s parent agency, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ), completed its own SHU evaluation in January 2016 and made 53 recommendations, of which only 17 had been implemented, GAO said. A May 2022 Executive Order from Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., directed Attorney General Merrick Garland to ensure full implementation, but BOP has “made slow progress” towards that end, GAO found.
The main problem was BOP failed to make anyone responsible. But the agency also failed to leverage its program review process and its administrative remedy—or grievance—program to gather information about SHU. That failure prevented “timely resolution of deficiencies” because again BOP “does not have a process to verify that corrective actions were implemented.” Failure to analyze grievance data also left the agency unable to identify trends and improve operations.
The 2014 contractor assessment found that “subjective criteria” used to put prisoners in SHU were inconsistently applied, GAO recalled, and its assessment found racial inequalities persisted. GAO made eight recommendations, which BOP concurred with, beginning with full implementation of the 2014 and 2016 report recommendations—including a system to verify implementation, rather than taking a warden’s word for it. Another system to identify and address common causes of deficiencies across prisons was also recommended, along with a third system to identify the cause of racial disparities.
BOP no longer maintains what was once its most restrictive form of isolation, the Special Management Unit (SMU). Housed most recently at the U.S. Penitentiary in Thomson, Illinois, it was closed in 2023, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.16.] BOP has yet to decide the program’s future. If revived, though, BOP needs a mechanism to evaluate prisoners’ progression through SMU program levels, GAO said, while also applying SMU placement criteria consistently and equitably. See: Bureau of Prisons: Additional Actions Needed to Improve Restrictive Housing Practices, GAO (Feb. 2024).
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