In a report issued on May 22, 2024, the federal Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) slammed persistent staff shortages at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Sheridan, Oregon, saying they raise “serious safety and security issues” for both prisoners and staff. Ironically, the report was released just weeks after a former guard at the lockup was sentenced to federal prison for his role in a drug-smuggling and bribery conspiracy at the prison.

Nickolas Carlos Herrera, 34, was sentenced on March 18, 2024, to 15 months in prison and three years of supervised release for taking bribes to mule contraband to prisoner Donte Hunt, 40, from a non-incarcerated accomplice, 34-year-old Elizabeth McIntosh. The loot included marijuana, Suboxone, Yeezy sneakers and a cellphone. The former guard pleaded guilty in May 2022 to conspiracy, providing contraband in prison and accepting a bribe as a public official. McIntosh pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony in November 2023. The next month Hunt pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery. She was sentenced to a year of probation on February 13, 2024. He got a 15-month prison term on March 18, 2024, running consecutively to a 25-year term already received for a federal drug, weapons and money-laundering conviction. Special assessments were assessed, too: $100 to McIntosh, $200 to Hunt and $300 to Herrera. See: United States v. Herrera, USDC (D. Or.), Case No. 3:20-cr-00444.

As noted by the OIG in its report, the problems are not unique to FCI-Sheridan, but are instead consistent with the staffing crisis throughout the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). To prepare the report, the OIG conducted an unannounced, on-site inspection of the prison between November 27 and December 1, 2023. It was the third BOP prison inspection under OIG’s new on-site inspection program.

It was also not the first time that troubling conditions were identified at FCI-Sheridan. As PLN reported, the Oregon federal public defender’s office, appointed as a special master to monitor the prison’s compliance with a consent decree, also found significant safety and security concerns in a status report filed in February 2022. [See: PLN, June 2022, p.56.] From what OIG found, it seems conditions have not improved much.

As an example of the problems revealed in its 39-page report, OIG found “a backlog of 725 laboratory orders for blood draws or urine collection and 274 pending x-ray orders” due to lack of medical staff to perform the procedures. The inability to perform these tests is concerning because, without proper monitoring, prisoners with chronic diseases such as diabetes suffer serious health complications. But staff shortages are so severe that one prisoner faked a suicide attempt just to get treatment for an ingrown hair that had become infected. He wasn’t being overly dramatic either; the infection had gone so long without treatment that he required hospitalization.

Shortages in psychological and educational staff also left hundreds of prisoners unable to participate in cognitive behavioral or chemical dependency treatment programs, the OIG reported. These programs not only address recidivism but can also reduce the time a prisoner spends confined through earned time credits.

Guard shortages also left many areas of the prison unsupervised, the OIG continued. As a result, prisoners remained confined to their cells when they should have been engaged in programing or other constructive activities. “When we go in, we are getting staff telling us, in a very straightforward way, how concerned they are about what’s going on at their facilities,” Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said. “We heard repeatedly from staff, including corrections officers, who were so exhausted and so understaffed they couldn’t do their jobs.”

Perhaps most troubling, these staffing shortages have left the prison unable to keep track of allegations of prisoner-on-prisoner sexual misconduct—a failure that directly violates data collection requirements of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, 42 U.S.C. ch. 147 § 15601 et seq. That data is crucial to inform prison policies and procedures to reduce sexual violence.

The OIG report chronicled other problems at FCI Sheridan, too, including leaky roofs, substandard food services and smuggled drugs. See: Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Federal Correctional Institution Sheridan, OIG Evaluations and Inspection Division (May 2024).  

Additional source: KTVS, NPR News, New York Times