Thank you, senator. From my perspective, having joined as a correctional officer in 1988 and around that time the bureaus population was a little more than 60,000. I think historically when you book at the bureau of prisons and go back from 1940 to 1980, the bureaus population pretty much remained flat for many, many years in excess of 20,000. So in 1980, which is the primary target for this discussion, we, as an agency, we had approximately 24,000 inmates in the federal system. We had less than 9,000 employees, 41 institutions and able to operate the entour bur en tour bureau of prisons for 330 million. So when you look at the increase from 1980 to 2013, we were at more than 800 as far as the growth of the population. And our staffing didnt keep pace with that growth. And with our mission, where we are tasked with anyone and everyone who is convicted and turned over to the department of justice and placed in the care of the bureau of prisons, we have a job to do, a significant job. An
Couple years ago when we were looking at the number of individuals who would meet the criteria for the release based on a terminal illness, we discovered that there were 200 inmates in the bureau of prisons. Once they were identified coming up to go further in making sure that for those individuals being considered, that they have the resources if they are given the opportunity and released under that program. 200 inmates agencywide with a population at times that was at 220,000 is a very small number. Senator we are talking about passionate release, early release, release of foreign nationals. Are you saying that the law or the regulation is written to restrictively and doesnt give you the latitude to utilize those programs more fully . Inspector general, i will be asking you the same question. Mr. Samuels we moved from apple to nonmedical. Even when we look at those cases , when you are looking at the criteria as well as being responsible for Public Safety for any of those individual
Mr. Dillard thank you for your observation. Trauma informed care is truly something that is needed if we are going to be preventive. I can use myself as an example of someone who had traumas at the age of 1213 years old. When i was diagnosed, i had been severely depressed most of my life. One reason i self medicated was Illegal Drugs had i been diagnosed, maybe i could have been given legal drugs and avoided the criminal Justice System. The fact is, we never look at the cause, we just look at the effect. Many, many, many of these women and men who ive encountered have tremendous traumas. We are working as a Pure Organization to help them work through that. To avoid Walking Around as hurting people because we know hurt people hurt people. If we do not address those early on, further down the road after recidivism, we are still going to be paying a much higher cost. Mr. Ofer i will give a perspective informed by the fact that i spend a lot of my time in newark, new jersey. A city that is
Example, out of trenton, where an in mate by the name of sean washington in 2013 he was a clerk at the library and he wanted to leave the library to go bring some legal papers to one of the other inmates but a corrections officer said you cannot leave and the facts are disputed but the worst facts, the facts that the state claims, is that mr. Washington then said mother fer, dont tell me what to do. What was his punishment . 90 days in solitary confinement. That is a real example we see all across the nation. So just for time. So we know that people are being sent to solitary for many Different Reasons and some of them have to do with administrative issues and the like. Right. Does it work in terms of somehow effecting the behavior of prison str any is there any productive value in the bureau of prisons. Im going to push back on the language they use and some people are sent to solitary for administrative reasons and that is a loaded term because the bureau of prisons commonly call sol
Continued activation of the facility we are working very, very closely with the warden staff there to ensure our recruitment efforts remain on target, and were also ensuring that as we build a population, that were making sure that the inmate to staff ratio is where it needs to be so we dont have more inmates in a facility until were very comfortable with the number of staff that we have at the facility. And this is continuing to progress. I know there was a concern at one period of time where the applicant pool was not necessarily where we would like it. But with it the recruitment efforts, were starting to see that we have a very good pool for hiring individuals to work at the facility. So one followup i wanted on the applicant pool. This is an area of our state where people are always looking for more jobs. And so to get people from the area that have strong backgrounds, one of the issues thats been a challenge is the 37yearold age restriction. And has the bureau of prison actually