Incarceration in America is a failure by almost any measure. But what if the prisons could be turned inside out, with
convicts released into society under constant electronic surveillance? Radical though it may seem, early experiments
suggest that such a science-fiction scenario might cut crime, reduce costs, and even prove more just.
One snowy night last winter, I walked into a pizzeria in Morrisville,
Pennsylvania, with my right pant leg hiked up my shin. A pager-size black box was strapped to my sockless ankle, and another,
somewhat larger unit dangled in a holster on my belt. Together, the two items make up a tracking device called the BI ExacuTrack AT: the former is designed to be tamper-resistant, and the latter broadcasts the wearer’s
location to a monitoring company via GPS. The device is commonly associated with paroled sex offenders, who wear it so authorities
can keep an eye on their movements. Thus my experiment: an online guide had specified that the restaurant I was visiting was
a “family” joint. Would the moms and dads, confronted with my anklet, identify me as a possible predator and hustle
their kids back out into the cold?
Well, no, not in this case. Not a soul took any notice of the gizmos I wore. The whole rig is surprisingly small and unobtrusive,
and it allowed me to eat my slice in peace. Indeed, over the few days that I posed as a monitored man, the closest I came
to feeling a real stigma was an encounter I had at a Holiday Inn ice machine, where a bearded trucker type gave me a wider
berth than I might otherwise have expected. All in all, it didn’t seem like such a terrible fate.
Unlike most of ExacuTrack’s clientele, of course, I wore my device by choice and only briefly, to find out how it
felt and how people reacted to it. By contrast, a real sex offender—or any of a variety of other lawbreakers, including
killers, check bouncers, thieves, and drug users—might wear the unit or one like it for years, or even decades. He (and
the offender is generally a “he”) would wear it all day and all night, into the shower and under the sheets—perhaps
with an AC adapter cord snaking out into a wall socket for charging. The device would enable the monitoring company to follow
his every move, from home to work to the store, and, in consultation with a parole or probation officer, to keep him away from kindergartens, playgrounds, Jonas Brothers concerts, and other places where kids congregate.
Should he decide to snip off the anklet (the band is rubber, and would succumb easily to pruning shears), a severed cable
would alert the company that he had tampered with the unit, and absent a very good excuse he would likely be sent back to
prison. Little wonder that the law-enforcement officer who installed my ExacuTrack noted that he was doing me a favor by unboxing
a fresh unit: over their lifetimes, many of the trackers become encrusted with the filth and dead skin of previous bearers,
some of whom are infected with prison plagues such as herpes or hepatitis. Officers clean the units and replace the straps
between users, but I strongly preferred not to have anything rubbing against my ankle that had spent years rubbing against
someone else’s.
Increasingly, GPS devices such as the one I wore are looking like an appealing alternative to conventional incarceration,
as it becomes ever clearer that, in the United States at least, traditional prison has become more or less synonymous
with failed prison. By almost any metric, our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has proved at
best ineffective and at worst a national disgrace. According to a recent Pew report, 2.3 million Americans are currently incarcerated—enough
people to fill the city of Houston. Since 1983, the number of inmates has more than tripled and the total cost of corrections
has jumped sixfold, from $10.4 billion to $68.7 billion. In California, the cost per inmate has kept pace with the cost of
an Ivy League education, at just shy of $50,000 a year.
This might make some sense if crime rates had also tripled. But they haven’t: rather, even as crime has fallen, the
sentences served by criminals have grown, thanks in large part to mandatory minimums and draconian three-strikes rules—politically
popular measures that have shown little deterrent effect but have left the prison system overflowing with inmates. The vogue
for incarceration might also make sense if the prisons repaid society’s investment by releasing reformed inmates who
behaved better than before they were locked up. But that isn’t the case either: half of those released are back in prison
within three years. Indeed, research by the economists Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago and M. Keith Chen of Yale
indicates that the stated purpose of incarceration, which is to place prisoners under harsh conditions on the assumption that
they will be “scared straight,” is actively counterproductive. Such conditions—and U.S. prisons are astonishingly
harsh, with as many as 20 percent of male inmates facing sexual assault—typically harden criminals, making them more
violent and predatory. Essentially, when we lock someone up today, we are agreeing to pay a large (and growing) sum of money
merely to put off dealing with him until he is released in a few years, often as a greater menace to society than when he
went in.
Devices such as the ExacuTrack, along with other advances in both the ways we monitor criminals and the ways we punish
them for their transgressions, suggest a revolutionary possibility: that we might turn the conventional prison system inside
out for a substantial number of inmates, doing away with the current, expensive array of guards and cells and fences, in favor
of a regimen of close, constant surveillance on the outside and swift, certain punishment for any deviations from an established,
legally unobjectionable routine. The potential upside is enormous. Not only might such a system save billions of dollars annually,
it could theoretically produce far better outcomes, training convicts to become law-abiders rather than more-ruthless lawbreakers.
The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost, and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain.
Moreover, such a change would in fact be less radical than it might at first appear. An underappreciated fact of our penitentiary
system is that of all Americans “serving time” at any given moment, only a third are actually behind bars. The
rest—some 5 million of them—are circulating among the free on conditional supervised release either as parolees,
who are freed from prison before their sentences conclude, or as probationers, who walk free in lieu of jail time. These prisoners-on-the-outside
have in fact outnumbered the incarcerated for decades. And recent innovations, both technological and procedural, could enable
such programs to advance to a stage where they put the traditional model of incarceration to shame.
In a number of experimental cases, they already have. Devices such as the one I wore on my leg already allow tens of thousands
of convicts to walk the streets relatively freely, impeded only by the knowledge that if they loiter by a schoolyard, say,
or near the house of the ex-girlfriend they threatened, or on a street corner known for its crack trade, the law will come
to find them. Compared with incarceration, the cost of such surveillance is minuscule—mere dollars per day—and
monitoring has few of the hardening effects of time behind bars. Nor do all the innovations being developed depend on technology.
Similar efforts to control criminals in the wild are under way in pilot programs that demand adherence to onerous parole guidelines,
such as frequent, random drug testing, and that provide for immediate punishment if the parolees fail. The result is the same:
convicts who might once have been in prison now walk among us unrecognized—like pod people, or Canadians.
There are, of course, many thousands of dangerous felons who can’t be trusted on the loose. But if we extended this
form of enhanced, supervised release even to just the nonviolent offenders currently behind bars, we would empty half our
prison beds in one swoop. Inevitably, some of those released would take the pruning-shears route. And some would offend again.
But then, so too do those convicts released at the end of their brutal, hardening sentences under our current system. And
even accepting a certain failure rate, by nearly any measure such “prisons without bars” would represent a giant
step forward for justice, criminal rehabilitation, and society.
In the 18th century, the
English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon, a hypothetical prison. Inside the Panopticon
(the name is derived from the Greek word for “all-seeing”), the prisoners are arranged in a ring of cells surrounding
their guard, who is concealed in a tower in the center. The idea is that the guard controls the prisoners through his presumed
observation: they constantly imagine his eyes on them, even when he’s looking elsewhere. Bentham promoted the concept
of the Panopticon for much the same reasons that spur criminal-justice innovation today—a ballooning prison population
and the need for a cheap solution with light manpower demands. Whereas the guard in Bentham’s day had only two eyes,
however, today’s watcher can be virtually all-seeing, thanks to GPS monitoring technology. The modern prisoner, in other
words, need not wonder whether he is being observed; he can be sure that he is, and at all times.
The hub of the American penal system’s largest open-air Panopticon is in the Indianapolis suburb of Anderson, population
57,496, at the call center of a company called BI Incorporated. The firm manufactures and services the ankle device I test-drove,
as well as a suite of other law-enforcement gadgets designed to track offenders. Though BI has a handful of rivals in the
monitoring business, it is the most prominent and best-known, with 55,000 offenders wearing BI anklets at any given moment.
(The company monitors another 10,000 using lower-tech means: for instance, by having them call from particular landlines at
designated times.)
I drove to Anderson from Indianapolis, past clapboard houses and cornfields, to visit BI’s offices, located on a
few discreet and highly secure floors above the local branch of KeyBank. I was buzzed up to meet Jennifer White, the BI vice
president in charge of monitoring. From her office window, we looked out not on the backs of the 30,000 offenders this branch
monitors, but on the sedate midwestern bedroom community that is, by her description, “a little bit less happening than
Muncie,” 20 miles away. Even the sleepy streets of Anderson have their secrets, though. White told me that below us
were about 120 criminals with BI anklets—roughly one for every 500 residents in the town.
White, an Indiana native, has been at BI since 1988. Over a turkey salad from Bob Evans, she explained that the company’s
first “clients” (as the monitored are always called) were not human beings but Holsteins. In 1978, BI began selling
systems that allowed dairy farmers to dispense feed to their cows automatically. The company fitted a radio-frequency tag
on each cow’s ear so that when the cow approached the feed dispenser, a sensor in the latter caused it to drop a ration
of fodder. If the same cow returned, the sensor recognized the unique signal of the tag and prevented the cow from getting
a second helping until after enough time had passed for her to digest the first. (The worlds of bovine and criminal management
have in fact been oddly intertwined for many years. Just as modern abattoirs have studied the colors that can distract and
agitate cows during their final moments—thus ruining their meat with adrenaline—prisons have painted their walls
in soothing shades to minimize anxiety and aggression in their inmates.)
In the 1980s, BI expanded into “tethering people.” As an early mover in the outpatient prison industry, BI
grew fast, and the Anderson office contains a one-room museum of the bulky devices from its early days, some the size of a
ham-radio set. The company now counts tracking people as its core business, and as a sideline it facilitates their reentry
into society, through treatment programs and counseling. BI monitors criminals in all 50 states, “everyone from people
who owe child support to ax murderers,” White told me. Most use the lowest-tech tracking equipment, a radio-frequency-based
technology that monitors house arrest. The system works simply: you keep a radio beacon in your home and a transmitter around
your ankle. If you wander too far from your beacon, an alert goes out to the BI call center in Anderson, which then notifies
your probation officer that you have left your designated zone—as Martha Stewart allegedly did during her BI-monitored
house arrest in 2005, earning a three-week extension of her five-month sentence.
The truly revolutionary BI devices, though, are the new generation of GPS trackers, which monitor criminals’ real-time
locations down to a few meters, enabling BI to control their movements almost as if they were marionettes. If you were a paroled
drunk driver, for instance, your parole officer could mandate that you stay home every day from dusk until dawn, be at your
workplace from nine to five, and go to and from work following a specific route—and BI would monitor your movements
to ensure compliance. If your parole terms included not entering a bar or liquor shop, the device could be programmed to start
an alert process if you lingered near such a location for more than 60 seconds. That alert could take the form of an immediate
notice to the monitors—“He’s at Drinkie’s again”—or even a spoken warning emanating from
the device itself, instructing you to leave the area or face the consequences. Another BI system, recently deployed with promising
results, features an electrostatic pad that presses against the offender’s upper arm at all times, chemically “tasting”
sweat for signs of alcohol. (In May, starlet Lindsay Lohan was ordered to wear a similar device, manufactured by a BI competitor,
after violating her probation stemming from DUI charges.)
To see the BI systems at work is to realize that Jeremy Bentham was thinking small. The call center consists of just a
few rows of desks, with a dozen or so men and women wearing headsets and speaking in Spanish and English to their “customers”
(the law-enforcement agents, as distinguished from the tracked “clients”). Each sits in front of a computer monitor,
and at the click of a mouse can summon up a screen detailing the movements of a client as far away as Guam, ensuring not only
that he avoids “exclusion zones”—schoolyards or bars or former associates’ homes, depending on the
circumstances—but also that he makes his way to designated “inclusion zones” at appointed times.
As a fail-safe against any technological glitch, whether accidental or malicious, BI is immensely proud of its backup systems,
which boast an ultrasecure data room and extreme redundancy: if, say, a toxic-gas cloud were to wipe out the town of Anderson,
the last act of the staff there would be to flip the switches diverting all call traffic to BI’s corporate office in
Boulder, Colorado, where a team capable of taking over instantly in case of disaster is always on duty.
I asked Jamie Roberts, a call-center employee who had previously been a BI customer as a corrections officer in Terre Haute,
Indiana, to show me a parolee on the move, and in seconds he pulled up the profile of a criminal in Newport News, Virginia.
The young man’s parole officer had used a Microsoft Bing online map to build a large irregular polygon around his high
school—an inclusion zone that would guarantee an alert if he failed to show up for class on time, every day. Roberts
showed me one offender after another: names and maps, lives scheduled down to the minute. There was a gambler whose anklet
was set to notify Roberts if the client approached the waterfront, because he might try his luck on the gaming boats; an addict
who couldn’t return to the street corners where he used to score crack; and an alcohol abuser who had to squeeze himself
into an inclusion zone around a church basement for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting from 9 to 10 p.m., three times a week.
A strict parole officer could plausibly sketch out a complete weekly routine for his parolee, with specific times when
he would have to leave home and specific stations he would have to tag throughout the week. He might allow, or even require,
the parolee to go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, and go for a jog along an authorized route every morning. Roberts
pulled up another Bing map for me, and set in motion a faster-than-real-time playback of one client’s day. As his dot
carefully skirted the exclusion zones around a school and a park, staying away from kids because of the absolute certainty
that BI would report him if he did not, his life on the outside looked fully set out in advance, as if he moved not on his
own feet but on rails laid by his parole officer. For BI clients, technology has made detection of any deviation a near certainty—and
with detection a swift response, one that often leads straight back to the Big House.
Arizona inmate escape puts spotlight on state private prisons
Arizona puts more of its inmates into privately run prisons
every year, even though the prisons may not be as secure as state-run facilities and may not save taxpayers money.
Lawmakers began
using private prisons to ease overcrowding and have supported their use so aggressively that today, one in five Arizona inmates
is housed in a private facility.
Many inmates from other states also are housed in private prisons in Arizona, but the state has little
information about who they are and limited oversight of how they are secured.
The state has 11 privately operated prisons.
A high-profile escape of three Arizona inmates last month from a Kingman-area private prison, which spurred
a nationwide manhunt and is believed to have resulted in two murders, raises questions about the industry's growth and the
degree of state oversight.
The last fugitives in that escape were caught Thursday, and the state's prison director has promised changes
to the private sites that house Arizona inmates.
State leaders in recent years have pushed for more privatization and have blocked efforts to regulate the
industry, which has invested heavily in local lobbying and contributed to political campaigns.
Last year, officials approved a plan to hand over the operation of nearly every state prison to private
companies. The plan was repealed only after no credible bidder came forward. This year, lawmakers approved 5,000 new private-prison
beds for Arizona prisoners.
Data suggest that the facilities are less cost-effective than they claim to be. A cost study by the Arizona
Department of Corrections this year found that it can often be more expensive to house inmates in private prisons than in
their state-run counterparts.
A growing industry
Arizona's use of private prisons dates back to the early 1990s, when lawmakers, grappling with overcrowding
in state facilities, authorized the construction of a 450-bed minimum-security prison in Marana to house drug and alcohol
abusers.
The prison is owned and operated by Management & Training Corp., the Utah-based company that also operates
the Kingman facility where the three inmates escaped.
Since then, Arizona has increasingly relied on for-profit operators to manage its own inmates. It also
has allowed private companies to import prisoners from other states.
Rapid growth began in 2003 and the years immediately following, when Arizona was again wrestling with prison
overcrowding.
To ease the shortage, Republican lawmakers agreed to build 2,000 new prison beds, compromising with a reluctant
Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, to make half of them private.
Around the same time, nearly a dozen other states grappling with the same issues began shipping their inmates
to private facilities elsewhere in the country.
Arizona, with cheap land and a receptive political climate, became a go-to destination for
private-prison operators, who began accepting inmates from as far as Washington and Hawaii.
Today, Arizona houses 20.1 percent of its prisoners in private facilities, according to state data from
July. Exactly how many inmates are here from other states is unclear.
Last year, lawmakers took the unprecedented step of exploring the privatization of almost the entire Arizona
correctional system, passing a bill that would have turned over the state's prisons to private operators for an up-front payment
of $100 million. The payment would have helped the state close a billion-dollar budget gap.
The bill, which also included a host of changes related to the state's budget, was signed by Gov. Jan Brewer,
but the language relating to prison privatization was repealed in a later special session.
The state now has an open contract for the construction and operation of 5,000 new private-prison beds.
Arizona's reliance on private facilities coincides with operators' increasing national political activity
in hiring lobbyists and donating to political campaigns.
The ties between the companies and Arizona elected officials - which go back nearly a decade - have become
a campaign issue in this year's gubernatorial race.
Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of private prisons, runs
six in Arizona, three of which house inmates for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Brewer's critics have suggested that she signed Senate Bill 1070, and has advocated for privatization of
some prisons, in part to benefit CCA's bottom line.
Democrats have called on Brewer, a Republican, to fire "aides" associated with the prison company. That
includes HighGround, a Phoenix consulting and lobbying firm managing Brewer's gubernatorial campaign. The firm counts CCA
among its clients.
Brewer's official spokesman, Paul Senseman, also used to lobby for CCA.
Campaign finance reports filed earlier this year show that eight executives with CCA contributed $1,080
of the $51,193 in seed money Brewer received for her gubernatorial campaign.
CCA also gave $10,000 to the "Yes on 100" campaign, which backed a temporary, 1-cent-on-the-dollar increase
in the state's sales tax. Brewer was the chief advocate for the tax, which was approved by voters in May.
In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Brewer said those connections have not
influenced her policy decisions. She said she never felt pressured by any of her advisers.
"It's absolutely political posturing and rhetoric," Brewer said. "I find it very disappointing. We have
a bed shortage here in Arizona, and we have to come up with some way to incarcerate (criminals). The best way, the least expensive
way, is to do it with private prisons."
The industry's political connections have extended to other Arizona politicians.
According to a 2006 report from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the private-prison industry
gave to the campaigns of 29 of 42 Arizona lawmakers who heard a 2003 proposal to increase state private-prison beds.
Between 2001 and 2004, the industry contributed $77,267 to Arizona's legislative and gubernatorial candidates,
the vast majority through lobbyists paid to represent their interests at the Legislature.
In most cases, donations ranged from a couple of hundred dollars to as much as $2,500.
Lax oversight
The state Department of Corrections has varying levels of oversight of Arizona's private-prison network.
Some prisons house criminals convicted in Arizona. The Corrections Department regulates those facilities,
though private-prison critics question whether those facilities maintain the same safety standards as their state-run counterparts.
Other private prisons house inmates from other states or on behalf of the federal government. Arizona does
not dictate what kinds of inmates they may accept, nor the manner in which they are secured.
In those situations, private-prison operators work with their outside-government partners on training specifications
and other operational details.
They report to Arizona only the names, security classifications and number of inmates housed at their facilities.
State stat- utes do not require private operators to provide Arizona officials details about the crimes the prisoners committed
or escape data.
In 2007, two convicted killers sent from another state stole ladders from a maintenance building and climbed
onto a roof at a private prison outside Florence. Brandishing a fake gun, they climbed over the prison walls and escaped to
freedom.
One was caught within hours, but it was almost a month before the other was caught hundreds of miles away
in his home state of Washington.
As with the Kingman breakout, the 2007 escape drew attention to the largely unregulated growth of private
prisons in the state, particularly prisons that house other states' inmates.
To address security concerns, a bipartisan bill drafted by Napolitano's office in 2008 and introduced by
Republican state Sen. Robert Blendu would have required private prisons to be built to the state's construction standards.
The proposal also would have ended the practice of private prisons importing murderers, rapists and other
dangerous felons to Arizona. And it would have required the companies to share security and inmate information with state
officials.
After an initial flurry of activity, the bill died.
"The private-prison industry lobbied heavily against that bill, and they were successful," said Michael
Haener, Napolitano's lobbyist at the time.
Blendu later left the Legislature, and the bill was not reintroduced.
What little regulation private prisons have in Arizona stems from a series of escapes in the late 1990s.
In response, the Legislature passed a law requiring the reimbursement of law-enforcement costs from private-prison
operators in the event of an escape.
Arizona laws also require companies to carry insurance to cover law-enforcement costs in cases of escape,
to notify state officials when they bring new prisoners into the state and to return out-of-state prisoners to their home
states to be released. But there are no penalties if the companies don't comply.
Costs questioned
Notwithstanding lawmakers' concerns about security, private prisons gained favor in part because of the
promised savings they could deliver to a cash-strapped and overcrowded prison system. Yet studies have questioned whether
those savings are real.
In making their pitches, private-prison companies played on the desire of many lawmakers to shift more
state services to the private sector.
Direct cost comparisons between for-profit and public prisons can be difficult, however.
According to the National Institute of Justice, private prisons tend to make much lower estimates of their
overhead costs to the state for oversight, inmate health care and staff background checks.
Officials at public prisons often argue that the state winds up paying a higher cost for those services
than is advertised, mitigating savings that private prisons are built to deliver.
A study this year by the Arizona Department of Corrections found that when various costs are factored in,
it can be more expensive to house an inmate in a private prison than it is to house one in a state-run prison.
The cost of housing a medium-security inmate is $3 to $8 more per day in a private prison, depending on
what assumptions are made about overhead costs to the state, the study found.
Travis Pratt, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University, said there is
no evidence that private prisons save government agencies money, even though they typically promise up-front savings.
To maintain profit margins, Pratt said, companies often cut back on staff training, wages and inmate services.
"Cost savings like that don't come without consequences," Pratt said. "And that can present a security
risk that's elevated."
Odie Washington, a senior vice president at Management & Training Corp., acknowledged Thursday that
the Kingman prison employed an inexperienced staff.
"We have a lot of very young staff that have not integrated into very strong security practices," Washington
said.
Private-prison operators disagree with Pratt's assessment, contending that they can deliver services efficiently
and safely.
"That's one of the more frustrating misconceptions out there for us that we have to repeatedly respond
to," said Steve Owen, director of public affairs for Corrections Corporation of America.
Owen said it is CCA's "general experience" that private prisons can save states and the federal government
5 to 15 percent on operational costs. The company also can build facilities more cheaply, he said.
CCA is contractually required to meet or exceed training requirements that states they work for set for
themselves, Owen said. In addition, the company has made sure its prisons in Arizona comply with accreditation standards put
in place by the American Correctional Association, a Virginia-based trade group.
Many communities, meanwhile, eagerly welcome private prisons because the facilities generate jobs and economic
activity. CCA prisons in Florence and Eloy, for example, employ 2,700 people. Last year, the company paid $26 million in property
taxes, Owen said.
What's next
Lawmakers from both parties have called for hearings into what went wrong in Kingman. Presumptive Democratic
gubernatorial nominee Terry Goddard has said he would push to bring back the 2008 private-prison bill.
Goddard also is calling for an immediate re-evaluation of the system used to classify and place inmates
in facilities.
The five-tiered system, which allows some violent criminals to migrate to lower-security facilities for
good behavior, met with bipartisan criticism in the wake of the escapes.
Two of the three inmates who escaped from the medium-security Kingman prison had been convicted of murder.
Goddard said the three recent escapees never should have been in a medium-security prison.
Charles Ryan, director of the Department of Corrections, announced Thursday that the state would slow its
bidding process for the 5,000 new private-prison beds pending additional review.
Brewer has said little publicly about the escape but told The Republic last week
that she is committed to holding prison operators responsible for mistakes they made. She said she has ordered Ryan to conduct
a "complete review to make sure that inmates are appropriately secured and in the right kinds of facilities."
While Brewer remains confident that private prisons are well suited to house less-violent offenders, she
said: "What has happened is unacceptable, and I am absolutely pushing for more accountability.
Union: Federal prison reacted poorly to ‘gang’ fights (update)
RAY BROOK - The union that represents corrections officers and other workers at the Federal Correctional
Institution in Ray Brook says prison officials responded poorly to a recent outbreak of what it described as "gang-related"
violence at the medium-security facility.
The American Federation of Government Employees and its Council of Prison Locals, in a press release, said
two gang-related incidents earlier this month led to the hospitalization of one inmate and the near assault of a corrections
officer. Despite the violence, prison management mostly kept operations running normally, the union said, citing information
from officials at AFGE Local 3882, which represents FCI-Ray Brook's roughly 200 corrections officers and other staff.
"The warden's refusal to lock down FCIRay Brook in the wake of this violence is nothing more than a dismissal of reality,"
CPL President Bryan Lowry said in the release. "Management continues to turn a blind eye toward dangerous situations that
put correctional officers, inmates and the surrounding communities at risk, while categorizing each instance
as an isolated incident."
But Robin Van Weelden, FCI-Ray Brook's public information officer, argued that staff did take appropriate steps to address
the Aug. 1 incident, which involved a pair of inmate fights. In a prepared statement, Van Weelden said the prison was placed
on lockdown, during which security is tightened and inmates are confined to their cells, "as a routine precaution to allow
prison officials to assess the situation.
"The institution gradually resumed normal operations starting on August 6, 2010, with a complete return to normal operations
on August 9, 2010," Van Weelden wrote. "The institution remains secure, all inmates are accounted for, and at no time was
there a threat to the community."
Two inmates received minor injuries, Van Weelden said. One of the two was transported to a local hospital, evaluated and
returned to the facility the same day. There were no staff assaults or injuries, she said.
Van Weelden declined to provide further information as an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
But local union officials dispute some of the information provided by the prison's administration.
Steve Bartlemus, president of AFGE Local 3882, told the Enterprise claim there were four or five fights between the same
two groups of inmates, some of them wielding homemade weapons or "shanks," spread out over a period of six days. The prison
was placed on a full lockdown status for a day-and-a-half, but each time officials tried to bring the facility back to normal
operations or to run it in a modified lockdown status, new fights broke out, Bartlemus said.
"When we go in a lockdown, normally it's locked down, nothing happens, and we go in 12-hour shifts until we figure out
the root of the problem," said Bartlemus, who lives in Ellenburg and has worked at the prison for 15 years. "In my opinion
they never figured out the root of the problem. I could understand the first two times it happened. But when the second and
third incidents happened, that should have told somebody upstairs, 'You know what, we've got a big problem. Let's slow things
down and figure out what's going on.'"
Contrary to Van Weelden's report, Bartlemus said staff were hurt trying to break up the fights.
"There were staff that got injured," he said. "It was nothing life threatening. If (prison officials) had handled it in
a different manner, would they have gotten injured? Probably not."
"If they had locked down sooner, some of these other incidents may not have occurred," said CPL Northeast Regional Vice
President Bill Gillette, who works at a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
Gillette said the union's local members are reluctant to talk about the incidents in more detail because the last time
they reported something to the media, several staff were placed under investigation by prison officials for alleged violation
of security regulations.
"They were all found innocent of those charges," he said. "It took about seven or eight months for that investigation to
be complete. It was just an attempt to stop them from going to the press."
CPL officials said they are raising concerns about the incidents at FCI Ray Brook to send a message to the U.S. Bureau
of Prisons to fully staff and fund its prisons. The union also wants correctional officers, who don't carry weapons inside
the facility, to be issued stab-resistant vests and pepper spray.
"The days of 'doing more with less' must end," Lowry said in the release. "If management continues to operate the BOP under
its current conditions - understaffed, overcrowded, and with an increasingly violent inmate population - more tragic incidents
are sure to follow."
Last year, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer held a press conference at the prison to announce he would push for additional federal
funding to increase the facility's staffing levels.
FCI Ray Brook houses 1,214 inmates, according to the most recent BOP prison count. The facility was originally build as
the athletes' village for the 1980 Winter Olympics and became a prison shortly thereafter.
DOJ Foot- Dragging on Prison Rape Unites Left- Right Coalition
Focus on the Family, George Soros's Open Society Policy Center,
the American Conservative Union and the American Civil Liberties Union are all furious with Attorney General
Eric Holder -- and amazingly enough, it's about the same thing.
The incitement for such an unusual alliance is the Justice Department's failure to act in the
face of a challenge to fundamental human dignity: The ongoing, almost commonplace rape of prisoners at the hands of other
prisoners or prison guards.
Estimates based on a 2007 DOJ survey of inmates
suggest that more than 60,000 prisoners -- or about 1 in 20 -- are sexually assaulted each year.
A law passed in 2003 created an independent commission to develop national standards to
address the problem. The commission issued its exhaustive report in June 2009. And
the attorney general was required by law to enact new standards by June 23, 2010.
That was nearly two months ago.
In a June letter June, Holder expressed his "regret"
that he would not be able to meet Congress's deadline. He explained that the working group he commissioned -- which represents
13 different Justice Department offices and the Department of Homeland Security -- is moving as fast as it can.
So on Tuesday, the unusual coalition gathered at the National Press Club to demand faster action.
Prison rape continues because "the system looks the other way," said David Keene, chairman of
the American Conservative Union. And now the regulations are lagging "because this is not at the top of anybody's agenda."
But the net effect is that Holder "is asking for time so that another 60,000 can be raped,"
Keene said.
"We can't tolerate the attitude that it is inconvenient to do what's necessary to stop the problem
today, before we rack up thousands of more victims," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU's National
Prison Project.
"When you look at the political spectrum that's represented at the podium here this morning,
you realize that there is something very fundamental at stake here, a question of the most fundamental human dignity, human
rights and constitutional rights," Winter said.
The message for Holder: "You've had long enough. The recommendations are there. The recommendations
are obvious. And they need to be put in place," said Barrett Duke, an official with the Southern Baptist Convention.
What makes this such an important issue for conservative evangelical Christians?
"We believe in law and order," Duke said. "We expect law and order everywhere." There's also
the matter of moral failing. Our leaders "have failed to fulfill the responsibilities that have been entrusted to them," Duke
said.
Tim Goeglein, spokesman for Focus on the Family, said his group's position on the issues is
prompted "by the sanctity of every human life."
"The fact that people are not safe in our prisons ... is a scandal, that's a stain on
our honor," said Pat Nolan, vice president of the Prison Fellowship and a former member of the independent commission. (See
his blog post.)
Nolan noted that prisoners are "stripped of all ability to defend themselves" as they have no
choice over who to associate with, or where, or when -- and they "can't arm themselves to defend themselves."
Bill Mefford, civil rights director for the United Methodist Church, said the issue is important
to the "thousands and thousands" of churchgoers who minister in prisons. "They are seeing and witnessing firsthand the brokenness
of the system and the way it impacts human lives," he said.
Holder, he said, should "stop dragging his feet, and stop listening to people who are trying
to protect their turf."
Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, said there is nothing inevitable
or innate about prison rape. "Prison rape is basically a management problem," she said. The proof is that the rate of rape
varies widely from state to state and from prison to prison.
A Justice Department spokeswoman on Tuesday said that a proposed rule will be sent to the White
House's Office of Management and Budget "in the fall." Hannah August wrote in an e-mail: "We are working hard not only to
draft the standards, but also to ensure that the standards are successful after they're put into place. We want to be a force
multiplier, enabling best practices to gain recognition and enabling correctional systems with less experience to benefit
from the prior efforts of other jurisdictions. It is unacceptable for anyone in the care of our country's correctional facilities
to be sexually assaulted, and we are working diligently towards eliminating such abuse."
In Hill testimony in March, Holder described the pushback he's getting, much of it related to
the fact that no additional funding comes with the new rules. "When I speak to wardens, when I speak to people who run local
jails, when I speak to people who run state facilities, they look at me and they say 'Eric, how are we supposed to do this?'
If we are going to segregate people, build new facilities, do training, how are we supposed to do this? And that is what we
are trying to work out, ways in which we can follow the dictates of the statute and do something that is going to be meaningful,
not something that is simply going to be a show thing, something that is going to have a measurable impact."
Central to the commission's recommendation is the call for independent, outside monitoring of
prisons. "Unfortunately, there is concern that the attorney general will backpedal on this key part," said Amy Fettig, staff
attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project.
FCI inmate dies after altercation
TALLADEGA — An inmate at Talladega’s
Federal Correctional Institute was pronounced dead early Thursday morning after being involved in an altercation with another
inmate Wednesday.
Bobby Wayne Cowley, 32, “was pronounced dead
at a local hospital” at 3:40 a.m., according to Charles Sansom, executive assistant to the warden at FCI.
“Cowley was serving a 60-month sentence for possession of a firearm in furtherance
of drug trafficking,” he said. “The next of kin have been notified
(and) the death is currently under investigation.”
Cowley was sentenced to prison by the federal court for the
Northern District of Texas. According to the online federal inmate locator,
he was due to be released April
9, 2012.
Sansom declined to comment on Cowley’s cause of death or any details of the altercation leading
up to it.
Freeze on bonuses could have trickledown effect
By
Elizabeth Newell
While the executive order President Obama signed on Tuesday suspending bonuses and
cash awards for political appointees through the end of fiscal 2011 does not directly affect career civil servants there could
be trickledown effects, according to a group representing senior executives.
In justifying the freeze in any bonuses or discretionary payments or salary adjustments for political officials, Obama
said he appreciated the work of federal employees and understood these payments were important to them. "Yet like households
and businesses across the country, we need to make tough choices about how to spend our funds," the president said.
Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, said the freeze was
not surprising, but she was concerned there will be indirect effects on the career civil service.
"When you're a political appointee who is suddenly not eligible to receive a cash
award, your inclination to be appropriately generous to your career executives will be decreased," she said.
Performance awards, which are completely discretionary, are a substantial part of
senior executives' compensation, according to Bonosaro. Members of the SES do not receive the same annual pay raises as General
Schedule employees; senior executives' pay is based on job performance, under a system established by the fiscal 2004 National
Defense Authorization Act.
"We have already heard some concerns from executives that agencies might be cutting
back on performance awards for the same reasons the president cited," she said. "When you add this [executive order] to the
mix, it does raise concerns."
Matthew Biggs, legislative and political director for the International Federation
of Professional and Technical Engineers, said the order was a clear extension of the president's earlier statements that political
appointees should not expect raises. But Biggs said any future actions affecting the bonuses of career federal employees could
have unintended consequences.
"In terms of the potential of things to come, if a similar freeze on bonuses were
to be extended to the rank and file, it would not be a stretch to assume that such an action would seriously endanger any
future effort by [the Office of Personnel Management] to put in place governmentwide performance management," Biggs said.
Presidential Memorandum--Freeze Discretionary Awards, Bonuses
and Similar Payments
MEMORANDUM FOR THE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OF STAFF THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS
AND AGENCIES
SUBJECT: Freeze on Discretionary Awards, Bonuses, and Similar Payments for Federal Political Appointees
At a time when so many American families are struggling to make ends meet, I am committed to making sure the Federal Government
is spending the taxpayers' money wisely and carefully, and cutting costs wherever possible. I am committed to ending
programs that do not work, streamlining those that do, and bringing a new responsibility for stewardship of tax dollars.
Like households and businesses across the country, the Federal Government is tightening its belt. This effort began
during my first days in office, when I froze the salaries of the senior members of my White House Staff.
As a next step in this effort, I direct you to suspend cash awards, quality step increases, bonuses, and similar discretionary
payments or salary adjustments to any politically appointed Federal employee, commencing immediately, and continuing through
the end of Fiscal Year 2011. I also direct the Office of Personnel Management to issue guidance, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, to assist departments
and agencies in implementing this policy.
In addition to these actions freezing discretionary payments, I have proposed in my Budget for Fiscal Year 2011 a salary
freeze for senior political appointees throughout the Federal Government. Unlike the administrative action I have taken
today in this memorandum, my proposed salary freeze requires legislation, so it cannot be implemented absent legislative action
by the Congress.
I appreciate the hard work of our Federal workforce, and understand how important these payments can be to many workers
and their families. Yet like households and businesses across the country, we need to make tough choices about how to
spend our funds.
This memorandum shall be carried out to the extent permitted by law and consistent with executive departments' and agencies'
legal authorities. Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to affect payments or salary adjustments for Federal
employees who are not political appointees. This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit,
substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies,
or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
The Director of the Office of Management and Budget is hereby authorized
and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.
BARACK OBAMA
Prison inmate dies after assault
An inmate at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg died
Tuesday from injuries he suffered when assaulted by another inmate two weeks ago.
Arnold Smith, 54, of Huntington Beach,
Calif., was assaulted June 1 in a housing unit and died at an unidentified Valley hospital Tuesday evening, according to a
statement released by penitentiary spokesman Andrew Ciolli.
The injuries Smith suffered were not disclosed and the
cause of death is pending an autopsy.
The FBI is investigating the assault, the statement said.
The press office
at the penitentiary did not respond to calls for further information Wednesday.
A spokeswoman from the Federal Bureau
of Prisons in Washington, D.C., said the agency did not have information regarding inmate deaths at specific prisons and referred
questions to the Lewisburg Penitentiary.
Smith was serving an eight-year, four-month sentence for conspiracy to provide
contraband to federal prisoners, attempt to obtain and possess contraband by a federal prisoner and conspiracy to distribute
a controlled substance-heroin.
He had been housed with about 1,200 prisoners at Lewisburg since Aug. 10.
The
assault was one of three violent incidents involving inmates in a nine-day span in late May and early June.
Prison
officials are usually tight-lipped about inmate assaults, which are investigated by federal officials.
Local 148 President
Dave Bartlett, who represents prison employees, said the number of reported assaults were not unusual and inmates seem to
get restless and unruly during warmer months.
Mother of Slain Correctional Officer Jose Rivera Files Civil Rights Lawsuit
Against Administrators at USP Atwater/Federal Bureau of Prisons for the Wrongful Death of her Son
"This tragedy was avoidable. Officer Rivera faithfully served the people of the United States as a peace officer managing violent criminals and his life was unnecessarily cut
short," said Mark Peacock attorney for Terry Rivera. "Why wasn't
a correctional officer working at a maximum security prison given anything to protect himself? A stab-resistant vest? Pepper
spray? A Baton? Why were prisoners drunk? It's time to get answers," added Peacock.
The lawsuit contends that the defendants were responsible for multiple dangerous
conditions at USP Atwater which existed at the time of the murder. For example, misclassification/mishousing of inmate Guerrero;
inmates making & consuming alcohol (getting drunk); inmates choosing their own cells; inmates making weapons; inmates
controlling prison environment; exploding inmate population; seriously undermanned work force; etc. Officer Rivera was repeatedly
subjected to these dangerous conditions (and others). The defendants acted with deliberate indifference by participating
in the creation of these dangerous conditions and failing and refusing to protect Officer Rivera from them.
"This was a totally unnecessary murder which could have been avoided. These individuals
dishonored the correctional staff, and this dishonor contributed to the death of Officer Rivera," said Peacock.
Federal prison officials hold employment fair for potential
Thomson Prison jobs
DAVENPORT, Iowa - For the past nine years in Thomson, Illinois, no inmates has meant no
jobs. But with the proposed sale of the prison, that could soon change.
"We are very excited. This a very
large facility with a lot of bed space," said Michael Prater, Federal Bureau of Prisons Public Information Officer.
Officials
with the Federal Bureau of Prisons held a job fair Thursday talking about potential jobs at the prison should it's sale to
the federal government go through.
"Once we acquire the prison, if it does come to fruition, the next day we'll start
hiring," said Prater.
Dozens wanting more information listened to a speech inside a Palmer College hall. Some are having
trouble funding a job, finding themselves falling on hard times.
"There's no jobs in the paper. If you
look in the classifieds there's nothing," said Dayla Jones, a job fair attendee.
"I don't have a job at all. I've been
going through a lot," said Cheryl Peel.
Eight to nine-hundred jobs would be created through the sale. More than half
of those jobs would be hired locally.
"We're really look forward to the possibility of going through this and giving
this area an economic boost," said Prater.
Money for the prison is included in next years federal budget. In the Quad
Cities, hundreds are waiting to put in their application as soon as the funding is approved.
President
Barack Obama's budget may not be approved until November or later. Once it is approved, the Federal Bureau of Prisons says
it will hit the ground running, immediately beginning the hiring process.
Inmate dies after fight at Pollock prison
POLLOCK, La. (AP) - Authorities say a prison fight led to the death of a 42-year-old inmate in the federal
prison in Pollock.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons says Steven Prater died Thursday after he was involved in a fight
with another inmate in the high-security section of the Federal Correctional Complex in Pollock. The agency says Prater was
taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 3 p.m. Prater was serving a 51-month sentence on a weapons charge.
No other inmates were injured in the fight.
The FBI is looking into the death.
Thomson prison sale to feds still on track
No one knows who will be housed there, but the administration of President Barack Obama is moving to buy the Thomson
prison by the end of the year.
The nearly empty state-built lock-up north of the Quad Cities had been eyed as a destination for terror suspects when
the U.S. military's prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba closed. That has yet to happen, but now there's word that Thomson will
be bought regardless of who will be housed there.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and northern Illinois Congressman Don
Manzullo have said the federal Bureau of Prisons is moving ahead with the sale.
Ronald Weich, an assistant attorney
general, told the lawmakers that the federal government is standing behind its commitment to buy the facility.
If Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, terror suspects are not brought to Illinois or anywhere else in the U.S., Thomson may be used for federal inmates
from other prisons across the country.
Gov. Pat Quinn's office released a statement saying the purchase of Thomson
would be great news for that section of Illinois. Thomson is about 200 miles north of Jacksonville.
The governor's
office predicts thousands of jobs and a $1 billion impact on the Illinois economy.
But there are a number of people
who live near the prison who are not excited about the prospect of bringing terrorists to the state. Lawmakers in Springfield
have also questioned the wisdom of the sale.
Illinois built the Thomson prison in 2001 to ease overcrowding in state
prisons.
Budget cuts and political in-fighting have kept the prison nearly empty.
Bill Would Ban Transfer of Gitmo Detainees to Thomson
A House Appropriations panel approved an amendment to the Justice Department’s annual funding bill Tuesday that
would prohibit the DOJ from incarcerating terrorism suspects currently held at Guantanamo Bay in an Illinois prison.
The subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, science and related agencies approved the $30 billion dollar bill — which
would provide funding for programs in the Department to Justice in fiscal 2011 — by voice vote. The measure would include
$170 million for the Justice Department to acquire Thomson Correctional Facility in Thomson, Ill., but the subcommittee adopted
an amendment at the markup Tuesday that is intended to prevent the DOJ from moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to the site.
The panel’s ranking Republican Frank Wolf of Virginia offered an amendment that would prohibit the
DOJ from using any of the funds in the bill to construct, acquire or modify a facility in the U.S. to hold Guantanamo Bay
detainees. The panel adopted the amendment by voice vote.
Wolf said the amendment would still allow the DOJ to purchase the Thomson facility so long as it didn’t hold Guantanamo
detainees. The DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons has said it intends to acquire the prison — even if the Guantanamo prisoners
cannot stay there — to help alleviate crowding in the federal prison system.
The opposition to housing Guantanamo detainees in the U.S. is not new. The House Armed Services Committee also included
a provision in the fiscal 2011 defense authorization measure that would prohibit the Department of Defense from using its
funding to pay for the prisoner transfer.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) offered several amendments — all of which failed — including
one that would have banned the Justice Department from filing a lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law.
House
Passes Bill To Create Criminal Justice Commission
The U.S. House yesterday passed a bill
to create a commission that would undertake a top-to-bottom review of the nation’s criminal
justice system, says its main sponsor, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA). “Today our
prison population is expanding at an alarming rate, with costs to the taxpayers that are unsustainable,” Delahunt said. ”The
bill passed tonight will assess the current crisis, reverse these disturbing trends and help save taxpayer money.”
The Senate has passed this bill out of the Judiciary Committee, but, it
hasn't passed the full Senate.
The nation's unemployment crisis is now reaching far inside
prison walls.
Since 2008, thousands of inmates have lost their jobs as federal authorities shutter and scale back operations at prison
recycling, furniture, cable and electronics assembly factories to try to make up $65 million in losses. The job cuts, prison
officials say, mean a dramatic reduction in job training for inmates preparing for release, lost wages for prisoners to pay
down child support and other court-ordered fines, and more tension in already
overcrowded institutions. "Anytime we have a loss of inmate jobs ... it becomes more challenging to keep inmates constructively
occupied," federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says. Bureau records show
the job cuts during the past two years coincide with slight increases in serious inmate assaults on staff and other prisoners.
Slightly more than 7,000 federal
prisoners have been cut from the work rolls in the past two years, and up to 800 more are expected to be dropped in
the next several months, according to Federal Prison Industries records.The latest cut, announced last week, will closenine
factories scattered from Pennsylvania to California
and includes reductions in staff at 11 others, Federal Prison Industries spokeswoman Julie Rozier says. She says the cuts
represent some of the largest reductions in the 75-year history of the federal prison workforce. "We're feeling the same pressures
that are present in the overall economy," she says. This year, 16,115 of the system's 211,146 inmates are working in the factory
jobs, down from 23,152 in 2008. Federal Prison Industries is a government
corporation established by Congress in 1934 that provides training for federal inmates. The industries generate about 80 products and services for
sale to the federal government. In return, inmates are paid up to $1.15 per hour. Much of that goes to child support, fines, restitution and other court-ordered obligations. Prison guards and others fear
the cuts could spark inmate unrest in overcrowded institutions where jobs — however menial — have kept prisoners
occupied. Last year, serious assaults on staffers increased to 105, up from 100 in 2008, while inmate-on-inmate assaults totaled
524, up from 475 in 2008. "This is a big concern for us," says Bryan Lowry, president of the federal prison employees association.
Because of yearly prison population increases, he says, the federal system is running 37% over capacity.Fewer jobs mean more
downtime for inmates and more crowded recreation yards and housing units.
In some places, Lowry says, there is only one prison officer for about 150 inmates: "It's not a good situation."
Break silence
on prison violence
There have been
three inmates killed in the U.S. Penitentiary in Lewisburg since the beginning of May. The most recent
homicide inside the walls of the penitentiary took place on Tuesday. The trio of deaths come less than a
year after a guard was stabbed by an inmate wielding a metal-tipped
spear fabricated
from rolled-up newspapers and magazines. Last month, three staff members were attacked as they tried to
quell a brawl at the U.S. Penitentiary in Allenwood. A union Web site indicates that the fight arose from conflict
between unidentified prison gangs. At least one of the inmates killed in Lewisburg was a known gang member. In
1992, Juan "China Boy" Arias survived getting shot in the chest during a gang gun fight. Arias
was 27 in 1997 when he was sentenced to 32 years in federal prison for his involvement in the Los Angeles Mexican
Mafia. Arias was one of 13 men prosecuted under federal racketeering laws for an array of crimes, including
jailhouse murder, street stabbings, extorting "tributes" of thousands of dollars from other Latino street gangs,
and drug trafficking. At the time, the judge said he was cutting Arias a break because of his young age.
News reports noted that he would be in his 60s when he was released from jail. Arias was 40 when he died in Lewisburg.
We
raise Arias' background not to glorify his notoriety, but to convey just what prison guards say when they describe
working with the "worst of the worst" criminals in the federal prison system. Danger is their business. Professional
pride may often make prison employees reluctant to complain or suggest that more ought to be done
to protect them. After a correctional officer was stabbed in November, union officials said staff levels were
too low. In recent weeks, it has been difficult to judge how safe
conditions are,
because neither the Bureau of Prisons, nor the correctional officers union are saying much. It is difficult to
feel like conditions could have improved much, though, as the death toll rises. We hope federal prison officials take
adequate steps to ensure that staffing levels are sufficient and guards receive all the equipment and training
they need. The unwillingness to share information only fosters uncertainty and fear. We urge prison
officials begin to speak as openly as they can without creating any lapses in security.
Sick leave is a job benefit, not a privilege
While
managers may have the legal right to use sick leave restriction letters ["How to fight sick leave abuse," Ask the Lawyer column,
April 19 issue], I could find no guidelines during my career on what constitutes sick leave abuse. There was no usable
definition of what constitutes incapacity. Is a headache sufficient reason to take sick leave? What about depression and
other gray areas? Simply having a chronic condition may be reason for days off. Having to submit to interrogation by a
manager who may already be hostile toward an employee for absences is demeaning and rife with potential for abuse by the manager. Not
all conditions require a visit to the doctor, so requiring this documentation is not an effective way to respond to sick leave
abuse. Managers are not doctors and are not qualified to make decisions about what constitutes incapacity, especially in
the absence of agency guidelines. Managers are not employment lawyers and are not qualified to make judgments about what
constitutes abuse. My solution to the problem is simply to recognize that the employee's sick leave is his to use or conserve
as he sees fit. When employees exhaust their sick leave, they may have to
leave the service or take leave without pay if their incapacity continues. While this may seem harsh, it is a policy that
recognizes that employees are responsible for their actions, and it treats all employees with dignity and respect. When
employees minimize use of sick leave, and provide exemplary service, they should be rewarded by payment or compensation for
unused sick leave, as all now are at retirement since Congress in November approved sick leave credit for Federal Employees Retirement System employees.
Because sometimes the need is real, I would also allow employees who build large sick leave balances to donate portions
of their sick leave to employees who have exhausted their sick leave. Currently, employees can only donate annual leave. This
policy results in broadcast appeals for donations, and probably little response from employees, who value their annual leave
more than their sick leave. Policies are based on a mistaken idea that sick leave is a privilege and not a job benefit.I
did not abuse sick leave; I managed my health and medical needs. I treated my sick leave as an asset to be used. At one point,
I had more than 1,500 hours of accumulated sick leave. On the day I retired I had no balance. My management went along, as
I was upfront and had every hour approved, generally in advance. I went to human resources and inquired about standards, and
found there were none. I went to the department website and found there were no rules to follow. I went to the Office of Personnel Management and found no assistance there, either. If there is an understandable
standard, it isn't being promoted.As I was not compensated under FERS for
my unused sick leave, the result was a zero balance. This was the result of the way FERS was implemented. If I were still
working, and under the current policies, I would probably save my sick leave aggressively.The problem is that managers pretend
that the problem is employees who abuse something that isn't theirs. This is a result of the way the agency treats employees,
not the way employees "abuse" the system. Agencies should view excessive sick leave as a symptom of another problem, depression,
job burnout, disagreements with management or whatever. They should address the cause, not the symptom. Another idea: Rather
than have categories of annual and sick leave, combine the two and provide leave, up to an annual limit, and allow unlimited
accumulations.
That way, workers can manage their leave in a self-interested way. The agency, in turn, will get a
better-motivated employee.Federal managers have more important work than jousting with employees about coughs and sneezes. ——— James
Stephens retired in 2009 after a 31-year federal career. He worked at the Navy, Treasury and Interior departments.
PAY FREEZE
MOTION TO RECOMMIT
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentlewoman opposed to the bill?
Mrs. BACHMANN. Yes, in its current form.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order against the motion to recommit.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The point of order is reserved.
The Clerk will report the motion to recommit.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mrs. Bachmann moves to recommit the bill back to the Committee on Armed Services with instructions to report the same back
to the House forthwith with the following amendment:
At the end of the bill, add the following new title:
TITLE__--PAY FREEZE
SEC.X01. PAY FREEZE.
(a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, for purposes of computing compensation for service
performed during fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of fiscal year 2012, the rate of salary or basic pay for any office
or position within the civil service, as defined by section 2101 of title 5, United States Code, shall be deemed to be equal
to the rate of salary or basic pay payable for such office or position as of September 30, 2010.
(b) Congressional Pay Freeze.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no adjustment shall be made under section
601(a) of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (2 U.S.C. 31) (related to the Compensation of Members of Congress) during
fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of fiscal year 2012.
(c) Rule for New Positions.--For purposes of subsection (a), the rate of salary or basic pay payable as of September
30, 2010, for any office or position which was not in existence on such date shall be deemed to be the rate of salary or basic
pay payable to individuals in comparable offices or positions on such date.
(d) Rule of Construction.--Nothing in this section shall be considered to apply with respect to any office or
position within the uniformed services, as defined by section 2101 of title 5, United States Code.
Mrs. BACHMANN (during the reading). Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the reading.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from Minnesota?
Mr. SKELTON. I object.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The reading will continue.
The Clerk continued to read.
Mr. SKELTON (during the reading). Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the continuing of the reading.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Missouri?
There was no objection.
POINT OF ORDER
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order against this motion as it is not germane, and I insist on that point
of order.
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I ask to be heard on the point of order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman from Minnesota is recognized.
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, the motion to recommit proposes to add a new amendment to the bill freezing the rate of pay
for ourselves, Members of Congress, and for the non-uniformed Federal employees. The amendment relies on the definition of
civil service provided in title V of the United States Code which covers positions in the executive, the judicial, and the
legislative branches.
The bill before us contains numerous and repeated references to title V of the United States Code, yet the gentleman makes
the point of order that this amendment is not germane to the bill.
Mr. Speaker, the bill before us includes provisions, such as the recently adopted Sarbanes amendment, that affect the policies
of all executive branch agencies, not just the Department of Defense. And on that basis, I believe that the Chair will find
the provisions of the amendment limiting pay for civilian executive branch employees germane. I also believe that the bill
is broad enough to cover judicial employees as well.
So, Mr. Speaker, that then leaves the question of ourselves, our pay, and that of non-uniformed Federal employees, legislative
branch employees. So, therefore, Mr. Speaker, I believe it would be improper for the Chair to use a point of order for the
purpose of protecting the employees of the legislative branch and for the purpose of protecting and shielding us Members of
Congress from the pay freeze herein being proposed. And it would otherwise be in order for employees of the executive branch.
And so, Mr. Speaker, I ask the question: Do we really want to go on record saying that the rules of this House should not
be used to shield our own Members of Congress' salaries and also those of the legislative salaries of the non-uniformed branch
from being fiscally irresponsible?
So, Mr. Speaker, I urge you not to sustain the point of order because when the average wage and benefit package of government
workers is double that of private employees, then we should not use--
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I insist on my point of order.
Mrs. BACHMANN. I am speaking on the point of order, Mr. Speaker.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman is reminded to confine her remarks to the point of order.
Mrs. BACHMANN. Yes, Mr. Speaker.
We should not use the arcane rules to somehow exempt ourselves as a Member of Congress from our own pay increases and that
of the non-uniformed Federal offices under the responsibility of tightening our belt.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I insist on my point of order. It is not germane.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will rule.
The gentleman from Missouri makes the point of order that the instructions proposed in the motion to recommit offered by
the gentlewoman from Minnesota are not germane. The bill broaches a range of subject matters related to both national defense
and to general operations of the Federal Government. This range of subject matters implicates the jurisdiction of several
committees.
The instructions proposed in the motion to recommit seek to prohibit certain future increases in pay for Members of Congress
and employees across the Federal Government. This prohibition, by addressing the legislative branch, involves the jurisdiction
of the Committee on House Administration.
One of the fundamental principles of germaneness is that an amendment must confine itself to matters within the jurisdiction
of the committees with jurisdiction over the pending text. To the Chair's knowledge, the underlying bill is devoid of subject
matter within the jurisdiction of the Committee on House Administration. Thus, the motion offered by the gentlewoman from
Minnesota is not germane. The point of order is sustained. The motion is not in order.
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I appeal the ruling of the Chair.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is, Shall the decision of the Chair stand as the judgment of the House?
MOTION TO TABLE
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I move to table the appeal of the ruling of the Chair.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to lay the appeal on the table.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
RECORDED VOTE
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 and clause 9 of rule XX, this 15-minute vote on tabling the appeal will be
followed by 5-minute votes on passage of H.R. 5136 and adoption of H. Res. 407, unless sooner followed by further proceedings
in recommittal.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 227, noes 183, not voting 21, as follows:
[Roll No. 334]
AYES--227
Prison inmate dies after assault
LEWISBURG — An inmate at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg died Tuesday from injuries he suffered when
assaulted by another inmate two weeks ago.
Arnold Smith, 54, of Huntington Beach, Calif., was assaulted June 1 in a
housing unit and died at an unidentified Valley hospital Tuesday evening, according to a statement released by penitentiary
spokesman Andrew Ciolli.
The injuries Smith suffered were not disclosed and the cause of death is pending an autopsy.
The
FBI is investigating the assault, the statement said.
The press office at the penitentiary did not respond to calls
for further information Wednesday.
A spokeswoman from the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C., said the agency
did not have information regarding inmate deaths at specific prisons and referred questions to the Lewisburg Penitentiary.
Smith
was serving an eight-year, four-month sentence for conspiracy toprovide contraband to federal prisoners, attempt to obtain
and possesscontraband by a federal prisoner and conspiracy to distribute a controlledsubstance-heroin.
He had been
housed with about 1,200 prisoners at Lewisburg since Aug. 10.
The assault was one of three violent incidents involving
inmates in anine-day span in late May and early June.
Prison officials are usually tight-lipped about inmate assaults,
which areinvestigated by federal officials.
Local 148 President Dave Bartlett, who represents prison employees, saidthe
number of reported assaults were not unusual and inmates seem to getrestless and unruly during warmer months.
Supreme Court upholds search of a police officer's
messages
By Dawn Lim06/17/10
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled a search of a police officer's personal text
messages on a government-issued pager was constitutional. But it avoided tackling a thornier and broader question: What level
of privacy can public employees expect on work-provided communications devices?
In City of Ontario v. Quon, the high court unanimously found that, contrary to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
ruling, a police department's search of a SWAT officer's texts was reasonable, because it "was motivated by a legitimate work-related
purpose, and because it was not excessive in scope."
At issue was the fact the City of Ontario, Calif., police department uncovered hundreds
of racy texts by Sgt. Jeff Quon, after it ordered transcripts of his messages to investigate whether monthly limits on texting
on department-issued pagers were too low.
The discovery prompted Quon to sue the city and police department for violating his
Fourth Amendment right of protection against unreasonable searches and the Stored
Communications Act, which prevents the unauthorized access of a facility through
which an electronic communication service is provided.
The Supreme Court decision, delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted, "As a law
enforcement officer, [Quon] would or should have known that his actions were likely to come under legal scrutiny, and that
this might entail an analysis of his on-the-job communications."
The city and the police department had a legitimate interest in ensuring they were
not paying for extensive personal communications, and -- at the other extreme -- that employees were not forced to pay for
work-related correspondence out of their own pockets, the court ruled.
Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the civil liberties group Center
for Democracy and Technology, said, "The message to government employers is that the courts will continue to scrutinize employers'
actions for reasonableness, so supervisors have to be careful."
This is the first time the high court has tried to define Fourth Amendment rights
in the context of electronic communications.
While some advocates had hoped the courts would make a ruling that established broad
privacy rights for federal employees, the justices were unwilling to resolve the hot-button issue head on, instead acknowledging
it was uncertain how workplace norms would change in a time of rapid technological advances.
"Prudence counsels caution before the facts in this case are used to establish far-reaching
premises that define the existence and extent of privacy expectations of employees using employer-provided communication devices,"
the decision stated. In a dissent on only that section of the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia hinted the court should have
made a broader ruling. "That we should hedge our bets by concocting case-specific standards or issuing opaque opinions --
is in my view indefensible," he wrote. "The-times-they-are-a-changin' is a feeble excuse for disregard of duty." Jared
Kaprove, a domestic surveillance counsel with the research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, said while he had
hoped a stronger framework would be established to reduce the intrusiveness of searches, "the narrowness of the ruling does
give cause for optimism."
Senate deals another blow to efforts to freeze federal
pay
By Elizabeth Newell
After strong debate from both sides of the aisle, the Senate on Thursday rejected
a legislative provision that would have frozen federal pay and the size of the government workforce.
The chamber voted 57-41 to let stand a budgetary point of order against a GOP alternative
amendment to the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. The point of order essentially blocks the amendment, offered
by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., which sought to avoid $113 billion in spending, partly by freezing federal employees' salaries,
eliminating their bonuses and collecting their unpaid taxes. It also would have held the number of government workers at current
levels, and rescinded $38 billion in unobligated stimulus funds.
"The alternative amendment I proposed was a common sense step toward restoring fiscal
sanity to our nation's runaway spending and ballooning deficit," Thune said after the vote. "The defeat of my amendment was
a missed opportunity for Congress to prove they are serious about tackling our dangerous spending habits and $13 trillion
national debt. This amendment would have lowered taxes for families and small businesses as they struggle through these challenging
times."
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell urged colleagues to vote in favor of the
amendment.
"Senators will have a simple choice today. They can either vote to reduce the deficit,
or they can lock arms with the Democrat leadership and dig an even deeper hole of debt when most Americans think $13 trillion
is far too much already," the Kentucky lawmaker said. "If you're even remotely attuned to what Americans are asking of us,
this would be an easy choice." During debate of the amendment, Delaware Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman chastised the Republicans,
saying they were using incorrect information on federal pay to scapegoat hardworking employees.
"Over the years, as I've witnessed countless acts of personal courage, devotion to
country and real sacrifice" by federal employees, Kaufman said. "I have also seen and heard such disheartening and baseless
attacks against those who choose to serve. The pending amendment is just the latest assault."
Kaufman said it has become too common for politicians to criticize Washington by
"defaming" civil servants.
"Now is not the time to talk about laying off federal workers, or freezing their
pay," he said. "We should be talking -- seriously and on this floor -- about how to invest in recruiting the next generation
of federal employees."
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on Tuesday called the proposed spending cuts "arbitrary
and restrictive." He also warned that the provision to cap the total number of federal employees would dramatically reduce
agencies' flexibility to make hiring decisions, forcing them to find an existing employee to fire if they needed to hire a
new one.
Treasury kicks off effort to go paperless with federal benefits
The Treasury Department is kicking off an initiative to move recipients of
federal benefits away from paper payments to direct deposit by March 2013, the Obama administration announced Monday.
New enrollees receiving a range of benefits administered by the Social Security Administration,
Veterans Affairs Department, Railroad Retirement Board and Office of Personnel Management will be required to receive payments
beginning March 1, 2011, either through direct deposit into a bank account or through a Treasury-issued debit card. All existing
check recipients will have to enroll to receive electronic payments by March 1, 2013.
Treasury announced
the initiative in April, saying that moving all recipients of these benefits to electronic payments would save more than $300
million in the first five years. Currently, 85 percent of federal benefit recipients receive their payments electronically.
On Monday, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag said the shift
to electronic payments will continue to save $120 million each year after the first five, and he painted the initiative as
part of the administration's efforts to reduce wasteful spending in the federal government.
"This is a win-win for the American public, because it makes government more convenient
and cost-effective," Orszag wrote on the OMB blog.
"This is precisely the type of smart, streamlined improvement that this administration is committed to making across government
to boost efficiency and modernize how we do business. And OMB is working with agencies across the government to bring more
ideas like this one online in the months to come."
Orszag said not only will electronic payments be more convenient for many beneficiaries,
they also will eliminate the risk that checks will be lost, stolen, altered, or fraudulently signed, which happens more than
500,000 times a year with paper checks.
"The benefits of electronic transactions are well-documented," the Treasury announcement
stated. "Aside from the large cost savings, electronic transactions provide safety, convenience and control for payment recipients,
taxpayers and savings bond holders."
The department pledged that the shift would be accompanied by strengthened protections
for those who receive direct deposits. Treasury and the federal agencies that issue benefit payments have published a notice
of proposed rule-making to ensure that federal benefit payments that are protected from garnishment remain safeguarded after
being directly deposited into accounts.
Treasury also will issue a proposed rule reaffirming the long-standing policy that
federal benefits must be deposited directly into an account in the name of the recipient and not into an account of a third
party. The announcement stated that the rule will prevent entities such as payday lenders from establishing master accounts
to receive payments on behalf of multiple beneficiaries. It will allow for direct deposit into master accounts established
by reputable organizations such as nursing homes, as long as those organizations establish certain consumer protections.
Pay-freeze pitches are 'demoralizing,'
says Virginia Democrat
By
Amelia Gruber
Proposals to freeze federal employees' pay might make good headlines in lawmakers'
home districts, but they are "demoralizing" to public servants, a Virginia Democrat said on Thursday.
Such proposals
also make it that much harder for the government to compete against the private sector for talent, said Rep. Gerry Connolly,
during a breakfast discussion in Washington hosted by Government Executive. Lawmakers should be more supportive of
civil servants and the critical work they do, he said. But he noted one of the things he has learned during his first term
in Congress is the further from the Beltway his colleagues' constituencies get, the harder it is to explain the complex issues
the federal workforce faces and build sympathy.
Connolly said he wants no part of the government-bashing that has emerged in the
run-up to the midterm elections. Skepticism of government is healthy, he said, but it should not get carried so far that citizens
lose faith in public institutions and stop participating in politics.
"I'm certainly not going to campaign on freezing civilian pay," Connolly said. "That's
a campaign pledge."
The freshman Democrat noted he is a strong advocate for giving civilians and military
members the same annual raise and is pleased President Obama returned to the concept of pay
parity in his second budget request. Connolly also said he supports the idea
of paying employees based on how well they perform their jobs, but that it could be a nightmare to implement across an organization
as large as the federal government.
Any performance-based pay system must be transparent and objective, and have safeguards
against abuse, Connolly said. Agencies could have separate systems, but the Obama administration should establish some baseline
parameters and expectations, he said.
Connolly said he is confident that Defense Department officials will be able to come
up with a performance management arrangement to replace the ill-fated National Security Personnel System, but added Congress
will help them if they don't. He said he supports measures to ensure employees moving from NSPS back to the General Schedule
aren't unintentionally penalized for the pay raises they received under NSPS, noting he is not entirely comfortable with the
idea of holding those employees back until the General Schedule catches up to them. He said he would consider a proposal adding
steps to GS pay grades to resolve the issue.
Other changes that could make government more attractive as an employer according
to Connolly include more robust telework and internship programs. He said he is optimistic the House will pass a bill to increase telework once it is brought
up under regular order requiring a simple majority vote, and noted a bill he introduced to strengthen
student internship programs (not to be confused with the Federal Career Intern
Program, which he has criticized), has been incorporated into the fiscal 2011 Defense authorization measure.
The Crunch in Federal Prisons
by Jessica Pupovac
More prisoners are doing federal time than ever, but Congress isn't allocating
enough funds to pay for them. Prison officials and reformers say a rethink of the system is long overdue.
While cash-strapped
states are responding to the nation's economic crisis by looking for ways to reduce their prison populations, the federal
prison system is heading in the opposite direction.
Last year, the 115 federal prisons added 7,000 inmates to their
rolls, making a total of 211,000 inmates in federal facilities as of early June-and the figure is expected to grow. The number
of federal criminal cases filed annually has increased from 69,575 in fiscal year 2005 to 76,655 in FY 2009.
To make
matters more difficult, federal funding isn't keeping up with the extra burden.
At a U.S. Sentencing Commission hearing
in Washington, D.C. last week, U.S. Attorney for Atlanta Sally Quillian Yates said that federal facilities are currently operating
at 34 per cent above capacity. And that, she warned, will have "real and detrimental consequences for the safety of prisoners
and guards, effective prisoner reentry, and ultimately, public safety."
The White House appears to have recognized
the problem. President Barack Obama is seeking a $600 million increase in the prison system's budget for next year.
The proposal includes filling an additional 1,200 correctional staff positions and opening three new facilities.
But
the question is whether a budget-conscious Congress will go along. The prison system already eats up $6.8 billion, making
it the second-largest component of the Justice Department's budget, just below the FBI.
What accounts for the rise
in federal prison inmates?
While white-collar criminals like Bernard Madoff get a big share of news coverage, they
constitute only a small minority of the federal prison population. Slightly over half of current federal prisoners (52 percent)
are doing time for drug-related crimes. While the average sentence for drug trafficking has held steady in recent years (six
to seven years), it is a key factor contributing to the pressure on federal prisons. Another factor is the government's
crackdown on immigration violators, who account for another 11 percent of federal prisoners. An additional eight percent
are in for for violent crimes. Adding to the pressure, about 11 percent of federal prisoners require high-security facilities.
Concerns
about federal prison overcrowding are shared by prison workers as well. Bryan Lowry, president of the American Federation
of Government Employees' Council of Prison Locals, which represents most of the 35,800 federal prison workers, says the crowding
contributes to an increasingly hostile environment for both inmates and those charged with watching over them.
And
the results can be fatal. In June 2008, correctional officer Jose Rivera, who had returned from serving in Iraq with
the U.S. Navy and had worked in the Atwater, California, federal maximum-security prison for 10 months, was stabbed to death
by two inmates. According to Lowry, if not for funding cuts and changes in Bureau of Prison policy, Rivera would have had
another officer working alongside him, as well as better equipment to fend off his attackers.
There have been 340 inmate-on-staff
assaults in federal prisons nationwide since Rivera's death.
"These aggressive acts by inmates against staff illustrate
a common reality facing staff daily at their workplace," Lowry told a House Appropriations subcommittee in March. "[Federal]
prisons have continued to be increasingly dangerous places to work, primarily because of serious correctional worker understaffing
and prison inmate overcrowding problems."
Meanwhile, the growing prisoner count, coupled with aging facilities, are
requiring more renovations and new construction every year.
Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin told Congress
this spring that the rising federal inmate population has made the funding pressure to pay for them relentless. In order
to combat overcrowding, he said, officials must make some hard choices. Either more prisons must be built, or there
should be movement towards reducing sentences, and "significantly" increasing community-based alternatives such as home confinement.
But
making those choices involves bringing together the multiplicity of players involved in the system: the prison bureau,
Congress (which determines the bureau's budget), and the U.S. Attorney General's office (which determines prosecution priorities).
Federal courts, meanwhile, are in charge of setting parameters for community supervision.
In other words, the solution
is political.
The escalating costs and rising population in the federal prison system are "fundamentally a political
problem," says Chris Innes, research and evaluation chief at the National Institute of Corrections, an arm of the prison bureau
that provides training and technical assistance to corrections agencies. "It's going in the opposite direction of the way
that [state] prisons are going, and that's a function of Congress, of the federal sentencing guidelines and the insulation
that the federal budget has, which is not a luxury at the state and local levels."
Many reformers believe that the
government needs to focus on the handling of drug cases, which account for the biggest single component of the federal prison
population.
Most of those prisoners were subject to tough mandatory minimum sentences imposed by federal law, "which
make it easier for legislators to look tough on crime," says Julie Stewart, founder of Families against Mandatory
Minimums (FAMM).
Stewart speaks from painful experience. She started her group nearly 20 years ago after her brother
was given a five-year sentence in federal court for growing marijuana in his garage in the state of Washington. If he
had been prosecuted in state court, the same crime would have earned him just two years, based on Washington's mandatory minimum
terms, she says.
Stewart's complaint is shared by a growing number of both conservative and liberal critics who believe
that punishments should be left to the discretion of judges.
But is anyone listening?
At a time of relatively
low crime rates, federal prison woes get little public attention. All the same, there are signs of activity. Congressional
appropriators have asked the National Institute of Corrections to report by September on evidence-based policy changes that
the prison bureau could make that would help "manage its offender population while reducing recidivism, improving public safety,
and reducing future costs to the American taxpayer."
In the meantime, Attorney General Eric Holder has assigned an
internal group in the Department of Justice to come up with a sweeping review of federal sentencing guidelines, taking into
account current available data on racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing, alternatives to incarceration, and recidivism
reduction strategies.
U.S. Attorney Yates told the sentencing commission that some of the group's recommendations will
be issued soon, but it was not clear that they would have a significant impact on the federal prison population.
A
more-extensive review could also occur if Congress approves legislation proposed by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to create a blue-ribbon
bipartisan commission to examine the nation's criminal justice system and recommend reforms. The bill was approved by the
Senate Judiciary Committee in January and awaits a vote on the Senate floor. Its companion bill was introduced in the House
in April.
FAMM's Stewart says one promising sign of action by Congress on sentencing is that in 2008, lawmakers passed
the Second Chance Act, which authorizes federal grants to government agencies and nonprofit organizations to help released
inmates with services including mentoring, finding housing and jobs, and substance abuse treatment. The law was enacted with
bipartisan support.
One thing federal officials might do is look at the states.
A report this spring from the
Pew Center on the States said that at least 22 states slashed their corrections budgets in 2009, many with reforms that have
signaled the potential for long-term savings.
Kansas, Arizona, and Illinois are using community-based alternatives
to incarceration, keeping some offenders out of the prison system and helping them get services they need to stay crime-free.
Colorado and Oregon increased the number of days inmates can chip off of their sentences as an incentive for good behavior.
Michigan, Idaho, California, and Mississippi are working to expedite their parole processes and move more inmates out of prison
and into increasingly comprehensive re-entry services.
While Congress and the Justice Department ponder the options,
the federal court system is making some changes of its own. With 45,000 federal inmates being released every year, some judges
are seeking ways to make sure they don't return to prison. The judges are operating re-entry courts, modeled after more than
2,100 drug courts that have proven effective around the nation over the past 20 years. The re-entry courts give judges an
option of mandating drug treatment and giving released convicts the option of making one last effort to get clean before they
are forced to return to prison.
According to the National Drug Court Institute, at least 30 federal re-entry courts
are currently in operation-most of them started within the past two years.
Federal courts are also working to educate
probation and parole officers about evidence-based practices that will help people stay crime-free once released. Dick Carelli,
spokesman for the U.S. Administrative Office of the United States Courts says that the effort is one of the judiciary's "highest
priorities in the last year or two."
Federal prison director Lappin says that if politicians want to spend less public
money running prisons, they should support changes like creating more community corrections programs to help prevent inmates
from committing new crimes.
But he noted that many politicians don't want such projects located in their districts.
"In
this past year, you can't imagine the number of locations we have tried to place halfway houses, (and their answer has been)
'absolutely not,'" he said.
"Literally, people calling me saying, 'We don't want them back, Director, don't send them
here.' These are governors. These are congressmen and senators. These are community leaders. That's got to change."
Jessica Pupovac is a free-lance writer based in Chicago.
Filed under: Article, Federal Prisons, Prisons One Response to "The Crunch in Federal Prisons" 1. Federal
Prisons More Crowded, Less Funded; DOJ Lagging on Prison Rape Standards; and More Prison Law Blog says: "The
Crunch in Federal Prisons": The Crime Report notes that federal prisons are now at 34% above capacity, but Congress isn't
keeping up with the growth by allocating more funding. The federal prison system now holds over 200,000 inmates, i.e., more
than California. Slightly over half of federal prisoners are doing time for drug-related crimes, and most of them are subject
to tough mandatory minimum sentences.
Federal prisoners will no longer make helmets for U.S. troops after the Army recalled 44,000
helmets that were made by UNICOR –- also known as Federal Prison Industries.
Testing revealed that the helmets did
not meet the Army’s ballistic standards. The company has suspended
making helmets indefinitely, said Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The decision to stop making the helmets was made a few months ago, she said on Wednesday.
“I can tell you that the decision to stop making helmets was prompted by an audit
by defense and an investigation by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General,” she said in an e-mail.
The news comes a day after U.S. Rep. Christopher Carney, D-Pa., called for a review
of military contracts to Federal Prison Industries after the Army’s recall.
“Our military men and women deserve the best-made equipment and this recall further
demonstrates the pitfalls of trusting prisoners with the lives of our Soldiers and Marines,” Carney said in a news release
on Tuesday.
Carney
also questioned the Federal Prison Industries’ preferred status, which gave it the edge over private industry. Gentex
Corporation and BAE Systems, which make helmets, have large facilities employing hundreds of people in Carney’s district,
said his spokesman, Josh Drobnyk.
“We want to make sure that we protect the troops, first and foremost, and in
doing so we looked at what was being provided to the troops and who was providing it. ... The folks in our district were providing
a very good quality piece of equipment and FPI wasn’t making the grade,” Carney said Wednesday.
If Federal Prison Industries decides to make helmets again, Billingsley said, it will
no longer have “mandatory source preference.”
Carney called the company’s decision to stop making helmets a “victory.”
When asked if his stand against the company might be election-year posturing, he said, “The recall of the 44,000 [helmets]
had nothing to do with the election year.” He said he is considering whether Congress needs to review all products that
prisoners make for the military.
The helmet recall, prompted by a Justice Department probe, included about 20,000 issued
to Soldiers. Earlier this month, the Army acknowledged it had no idea where the helmets were.
“They could be on some Soldier’s head in Iraq or Afghanistan. They could
also be anywhere else in the world,” said Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, head of Program Executive Office Soldier, the Army’s
center for advanced equipment.
Federal Prison Industries had two contracts with the Defense Logistics Agency, but
stop-work orders were issued in February and no helmets were issued to troops.
Dublin, California (CNN) -- It's a Monday morning, and Vince Cefalu just got into work at his more than $150,000-a-year-job
as a special agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"It's 9:30. This is what I affectionately refer to as the cage," Cefalu, 51, said. "I am sitting here with an empty in
box and nothing to do. I'll keep you apprised."
CNN gave Cefalu a video camera to document what he does at work. For five days, he recorded himself inside his own office.
Cefalu said he was put in a job with little or nothing to do because he's the victim of retaliation by ATF managers. After
spending much of his nearly 24-year ATF career going undercover with motorcycle gangs and white supremacist groups, he now
oversees equipment inventory.
"I spent my whole life standing up to bullies," Cefalu told CNN in an interview to air on AC360 Wednesday night. "The bullies
right now are government bureaucrats who are abusing their oath and abusing the expectations of the public. I'm not leaving
until this is resolved."
Records show ATF supervisors claim he's had performance and discipline issues.
CNN has interviewed dozens of ATF supervisors, agents and employees around the country who said they've been demoted or
labeled troublemakers just for filing a complaint.
Later on the same Monday in which he brought a video camera to work, Cefalu was still having a slow day.
"I'm going to get something to eat, drag out the day a little bit, get some interaction with somebody ... Here I am, Safeway
sandwich, a little news on, catching up on current affairs. I've had a few phone calls, personal phone calls that I've made,
waiting for something to do."
At 3 p.m. that day, he records himself, saying "...watching a little news, surfing the net, reading some e-mails, doing
whatever, waiting for something to do. It's good money for not a lot of work, I guess. I'm being facetious, obviously."
He said ATF managers turned against him after he reported in 2005 what he said was an illegal wiretap plan in a racketeering
case. Records show ATF disputes his claims of the planned illegal wiretap. But he said that started a series of retaliatory
measures that ended up in 2007 with him in a desk job. His only negative evaluation, he said, was the year after he criticized
the planned wiretap.
"Had I not exposed some unethical, potentially criminal clearly outside policy conduct and actions by law enforcement that
I was working with, none of this would have happened," Cefalu said. "I would still be working in the field."
"I report to where they tell me to report to, and I sit for eight hours a day, and then I go home," he said. "I do nothing."
Cefalu filed a series of grievances and an age-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
but an administrative judge ruled against him. His attorney is appealing that decision.
And over the past several years, he's also sent letters to members of Congress complaining about alleged fraud and mismanagement
at the ATF.
"It's almost like being in an abusive relationship, actually. It's almost like domestic violence, really," said Hiram Andrades,
a supervisor in ATF's Washington field office. "It's just you think things are going to improve with each director, you think
things will get better and improve, but they don't."
Andrades, who has a pending discrimination complaint, claims he was discriminated against because he can't get promoted.
"I can't get a promotion even if my life depended on it. If my life depended on it, I'd be dead by now, OK?" Andrades told
CNN. "This type of retaliation isn't good for the agency, it's distracting and it's not good for the American people. We need
to make better use of our tax dollars. We need to use it for the mission versus this kind of stuff. This is very distracting
and not good for anybody."
ATF has not had a permanent director since Carl Truscott resigned in 2006. The agency is being run by Kenneth Melson, who
has been deputy director since 2009.
In an interview with CNN, Melson said he was not permitted to discuss employee cases. But he insisted that he does not
tolerate any type of retaliation.
"When I first came into ATF -- when I went around and talked to people at headquarters and around the country -- my specific
and very emphatic message was that everyone was to be treated with respect and dignity and there would not be retaliation,"
Melson said. "I will not stand for retaliation against people who are abiding by our orders and reporting violations of law
or regulations."
"Every allegation of retaliation doesn't mean it's true," Melson said. "Every person you talked to who perceives it's retaliation
doesn't mean that it's retaliation, because there's been no adjudication of that. They haven't brought it to anybody to try
to resolve it. Be careful when you talk to someone about retaliation, because there are many misconceptions and parameters
of retaliation -- some of which are misinformed."
Asked about an employee who does virtually nothing all day, he said: "Well, I will certainly look into it and find out
why he is not doing anything all day." He added, "I will make sure that he puts in a full day's work, because everybody is
going to put in a full day's work at ATF."
Since fiscal 2005, ATF has paid a total of $1.6 million to settle discrimination claims, according to federal government
records. For the same time period, the FBI paid out $1.3 million and the DEA paid $331,755.
In addition, records show, ATF has more discrimination complaints filed per employee than the DEA or the FBI.
But Melson said complaints have gone down 40 percent since last year. And ATF officials added that the U.S. Marshals Service
and Bureau of Prisons have more complaints per employee.
John Taylor, a former ATF special agent based in Las Vegas, Nevada, said he was the target of retaliation after he wrote
an anonymous letter to the agency's inspector-general. In his 2006 letter, he alleged taxpayer money was being wasted on agents'
unnecessary trips to Las Vegas.
Taylor told CNN he was the target of an investigation into who wrote the letter.
"They asked me did I write the letter. My response was, 'I don't have to answer' ... they tried to charge me with lying."
He said he left ATF as soon as he was eligible to retire after 20 years, on December 31, 2009.
"I told my wife, I'm not going to live if I stay here," Taylor told CNN. "I was depressed. It was hell for me."
Another agent in the Las Vegas office, who claims he was suspected of writing the anonymous letter, also alleged he was
the target of retaliation by managers, according to records obtained by CNN. That agent was fired for failing to pass a firearms
test, but later got his job back.
ATF agents tell CNN that managers are taught how to handle discrimination complaints at supervisor meetings.
CNN obtained a statement from a current ATF supervisor who attended such a meeting in March. During that meeting, ATF associate
chief counsel Eleanor Loos gave a presentation to supervisors in the Atlanta field division.
According to the statement, Loos stated that "she considers the EEO process as the employees' 'bitching platform' and "employees
use this as a means to complain."
"Loos stated in a bragging manner that the EEO process can be dragged on and can take up to three years," the statement
said.
Rafiq Ahmad, the ATF supervisor who wrote the statement, added: "This is not the first time that I have heard Eleanor Loos
making similar remarks. She has presented these same remarks in presentations in New Supervisor's training."
Melson told CNN he had not seen the statement. "But what I can tell you is that the direction that I have given people
is to make sure that we abide by the rules of the agency, that we abide by the process of the EEO, and the ombudsman. And
that's why we have the process in place," Melson said.
In a follow-up interview, Scot Thomasson, chief of ATF public affairs, told CNN that the bureau looked into the statements
made by Loos.
"What we found is those statements were being taken out of context," Thomasson said. "In addition, they
were being characterized in a slanted matter by the person who wrote it."
1. Iran Hostage Rescue Mission Remembered
April 25, 2010
The White House Commission on the National Moment
of Remembrance
On Sunday, April 25, David Kolbe, Political and Legislative
Director of the Ironworkers (U.S. Army) represented the Union Veterans Council at the 30th Anniversary Remembrance Ceremony
Honoring Iran Hostage Rescue Mission Casualties: Arlington National
Cemetery, Section 46
A Remembrance Tribute honored the eight American servicemen
who died during the1980 attempt to free the 53 Americans held hostage in Iran . The ceremony marked the 30th Anniversary of
the tragedy. An all-volunteer military mission to rescue the American hostages was planned for April 25, 1980. On that day,
three Marines and five Air Force servicemen were killed when a helicopter and a transport plane collided on the ground during
a refueling operation in Iran ’s Great Salt Desert , after the ill-fated rescue mission had been aborted.
The eight servicemen honored are: MAJ Richard L. Bakke,
USAF; SGT John D. Harvey, USMC; George N. Holmes, Jr., USM; SSGT Dewey L. Johnson, USMC; MAJ Harold L. Lewis, Jr., USAF; TSG
Joel C. Mayo, USAF; MAJ Lyn K. McIntosh, USAF; CAPT Charles T. McMillan, USAF
During the Iran Rescue Mission, the eight Air Force
Special Operations/Air Commando crew members sacrificed their lives at Desert One Iran so that many of their comrades could
survive. After a Marine RH-53 helicopter collided with their C-130 aircraft, their individual actions contributed to the survival
of over 53 mission personnel trapped in the cabin of the aircraft.
2. Machinists Union (IAM)
Pledges Money for Upkeep of Vietnam Veterans Memorial Grounds
The AP (5/12, Zongker) reports the
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a labor union based in Maryland, is "pledging $50,000 for upkeep
of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial grounds on the National Mall." The union "also plans to restore a bronze sculpture of three
soldiers at the memorial."
The Tricare Affirmation Act, aimed at protecting
people in the military health care program from being penalized for not having private insurance, was signed into law Monday
by President Obama.
The new law provides a specific exemption
for Tricare beneficiaries and for nonappropriated-fund civilian employees of the Defense Department from a requirement of
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that will require people without minimal health cover to either buy private
insurance or face a $750 penalty.
Tricare health insurance is specifically
defined by the law signed Monday as minimal essential coverage, which provides an exemption from the penalty.
Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the House Armed
Services Committee chairman who opposed the national health care reform law but was a key sponsor of the Tricare Affirmation
Act, said he hopes this resolves questions by active-duty family members, retirees and their families about how national health
reform might affect them.
Signing the new law “reinforces that
military health care coverage will not be adversely affected by the health care reform law,” Skelton said.
Skelton’s committee will consider
legislation in May that would extend to Tricare beneficiaries one of the provisions of the new health reform law that allows
unmarried children to remain covered by a parent’s insurance until age 26. That legislation is expected to be included
in the 2011 defense authorization bill.
4.Vets
Salute Obama on Funding
Great article on President Obama keeping
his campaign promises to Veterans—IN THE WASHINGTON TIMES NO LESS!!
5. Obama Signs the Caregivers and Veterans
Omnibus Health Services Act
On May 5, 2010, President Obama signed an important
piece of legislation—the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act. As the President said:
“With this legislation, we’re expanding
mental health counseling and services for our veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq , including our National Guardsmen and Reservists.
We’re authorizing the VA to utilize hospitals and clinics outside the VA system to serve more wounded warriors with
traumatic brain injury. We’re increasing support to veterans in rural areas, with the transportation and housing they
need to reach VA hospitals and clinics. We’re expanding and improving health care for our women’s veterans,
to meet their unique needs, including maternity care for newborn children. And we’ll launch a pilot program to
provide child care for veterans receiving intensive medical care. We’re eliminating co-pays for veterans who are
catastrophically disabled. And we’re expanding support to homeless veterans, because in the United States of America
, no one who has served this nation in uniform should ever be living on the streets. Finally, this legislation marks
a major step forward in America ’s commitment to families and caregivers who tend to our wounded warriors every day.
They’re spouses like Sarah. They’re parents, once again caring for their sons and daughters. Sometimes
they’re children helping to take care of their mom or dad. These caregivers put their own lives on
hold, their own careers and dreams aside, to care for a loved one. They do it every day, often around the clock.
As Sarah can tell you, it’s hard physically and it’s hard emotionally. It’s certainly hard financially.
And these tireless caregivers shouldn’t have to do it alone. As of today, they’ll be getting more of the
help that they need.”
Please share this important news with your Veterans and Military Family networks. Today is a victory for all Veterans,
their loved ones and all who advocate on their behalf.
You can see the video of the President’s speech
here:
6. First Lady Michelle Obama Announces Presidential
Directive on Military Families, May 12, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC – First Lady Michelle Obama today announced that President Obama has directed the National Security
Staff to lead a new 90-day review to develop a coordinated Federal government-wide approach to supporting and engaging military
families. Building on work and expertise by the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, the
review will involve nearly twenty federal agencies as well as the White House Domestic Policy and National Economic Councils
and the Offices of the Vice President, the First Lady, and Dr. Biden.
Specifically, the review will:
Set strategic military family priorities for the next
ten years and identify key military family concerns and challenges;
Review a cross section of public and private programs
to identify the most promising ideas and programs that positively support military families;
Develop options for departments to integrate military
family matters into their strategic and budgetary priorities;
Examine opportunities for Federal policies and programs
to stimulate new and support existing state and local efforts achieving military family readiness goals and meeting military
family priorities;
Identify opportunities to leverage the skills and
experience of military family members in national and community life; and
Strengthen existing feedback mechanisms for military
families to voice their concerns and views on the effectiveness and future direction of relevant Federal programs and policies.
The review builds on the Obama administration’s
efforts to forge an enduring national commitment to support and engage military families. These combined national efforts
will help ensure that:
The United States military continues to recruit and
retain the highest-caliber volunteers contributing to the Nation’s security;
Service members can have strong family lives while
maintaining the highest state of readiness and focus on their military responsibilities;
Civilian family members can fulfill their own potential
while supporting service members; and
The general population better understands military
families and seeks more opportunities to support military families.
“With just one percent of our population—our
troops—doing 100 percent of the fighting our military families are being tested like never before,” said First
Lady Michelle Obama. “This government wide review will bring together the resources of the federal government,
identify new opportunities across the public and private sectors, and lay the foundation for a coordinated approach to supporting
and engaging military families for years to come.”
The First Lady made the announcement during an address
to the National Military Family Association’s summit – When Parents Deploy: Understanding the Experiences
of Military Children and Spouses. Mrs. Obama addressed the state of America ’s military families today, outlined
a vision of the nation supporting them over the long-term, and how, as a country, all segments of society can work together
to turn that vision into a reality. The First Lady, along with Dr. Jill Biden, uses their platform to support military
families by:
Championing a national call to action that both addresses
the unique challenges facing military families and recognizes and taps their skills, strength and commitment to service;
Building stronger civilian-military community ties;
and
Engaging and highlighting the service and sacrifice
of military families to ensure their voices are heard inside the administration.
The Winter Haven (FL) News Chief (5/9, 10K) reports, "The Polk County Stand Down event for veterans and homeless veterans will be held Saturday, May 15, Armed
Forces Day, at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, to provide all available services for veterans at one central location."
There, "services will be provided by the Veterans Administration, Polk Veterans Council, Polk County Veterans Services, Social
Security Administration, Blind Vets Association, Department of Health, Florida Department of Veterans Affairs, Florida Rural
Legal Services, Paralyzed Veterans, Peace River, Polk Health care Plan, Polk Works, Tampa Crossroad, Tri-County and local
veterans organizations."
8. Union Veterans Council Supports Mark
Critz for Congress
This week the Union Veterans Council will make its
first foray into politics this year.
We polled the UVC officers and Executive Committee,
and we have unanimous support for backing Mark Critz in the 12th Congressional District in Pennsylvania to fill
the seat held by John Murtha in a special election next Tuesday. Mark Critz was Murtha's Chief of Staff for many years
and carries with him Murtha's dedication to veterans. You can find out more about his positions on veterans issues on
his website. Critz also has the backing of the Pennsylvanial AFL-CIO and many affiliates. http://www.critzforcongress.com/home.
Thursday, May 13, in Johnstown , PA , Phil Glover of
AFGE will represent the UVC in an event with the candidate and other area veterans in a roundtable discussion when he will
make the announcement of our support for Critz.
9. Book Recommendation: Sebastian Junger's
'War'
Book review by Philip Caputo
Sunday, May 9, 2010, Washington
Post
WAR
By Sebastian Junger
The ambitiousness of Sebastian Junger's "War" is summed up in its title. It's a story about war that is much more than a war story.
As a correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, Junger made five trips to
Afghanistan 's Korengal Valley in 2007 and 2008, embedded with the 2nd Platoon, Battle Company of the storied 173rd Airborne
Brigade. "War" is the result of those journeys into a world so alien to civilians it might as well be a planet in some distant
solar system.
The paratroopers' mission was to deny the valley to Taliban insurgents,
and it proved difficult and costly. Junger and his photographer, Tim Hetherington, arrived utterly unprepared for the level
of violence they experienced. The bloodshed was futile, it turns out. Last month, U.S. troops were withdrawn from the Korengal, leaving it to the insurgents. I was reminded of the battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam , when a battalion from the 101st
Airborne Division took heavy casualties in seizing the hill from the North Vietnamese army and then was ordered to abandon
it.
Most of what we read and hear about the conflict in Afghanistan focuses
on politics and strategy. Junger makes plain that he isn't interested in such abstractions but in the men we've sent far away
to do our dirty work. I say "men" because this book takes place among the hyper-male front-line infantry, where women are
prohibited from serving.
With his narrative gifts and vivid prose -- as free, thank God, of literary
posturing as it is of war-correspondent chest-thumping -- Junger masterfully chronicles the platoon's 15-month tour of duty.
But what elevates "War" out of its particular time and place are the author's meditations on the minds and emotions of the
soldiers with whom he has shared hardships, dangers and spells of boredom so intense that everyone sits around wishing to
hell something would happen (and wishes to God it was over when, inevitably, it does).
"War" is divided into three long sections: "Fear," "Killing" and "Love."
In each, Junger makes us see the terror, monotony, misery, comradeship and lunatic excitement that have been elements of all
wars since, say, the siege of Troy . He thus becomes a kind of 21st-century battle singer, narrating the deeds and misdeeds
of his heroes while explaining what makes them do what they do. These reflections, drawing on his wide-ranging research into
military history, biology and psychology as well as on his personal experiences, overreach once or twice. Otherwise, it's
the best writing I've seen on the subject since J. Glenn Gray's 1959 classic, "The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle
."
An eight-man squad caught in a Taliban ambush suffers 100 percent casualties.
Their sergeant is mortally wounded. A team leader named Sal Giunta takes over and saves the unit from annihilation. The action
appears chaotic but possesses an underlying choreography that requires each man to make "decisions based not on what's best
for him, but on what's best for the group," Junger writes. "If everyone does that, most of the group survives. If no
one does, most of the group dies. That, in essence, is combat."
He points out that while all animals defend their young and some their
mates, only human beings are willing to die for a cause. And for these paratroopers, as for most warriors, their most cherished
cause, maybe their only one, is each other. It is understood that each soldier will give his life for his comrades, if necessary.
Here is a paradox of war: Comradeship redeems it from becoming total
savagery; yet that sense of brotherhood, the fierce protectiveness it arouses, can make men savage -- or seem so. After a
prolonged firefight, a Taliban guerrilla whose leg has been blown off is seen crawling on a mountain slope. When he stops
moving and scouts report that he has died, the troops cheer. Their joy troubles Junger. "It seemed," he observes, "like I
either had to radically reunderstand the men on the hilltop or I had to acknowledge the power of a place like this to change
them."
He has to do a little of both when a soldier named Steiner explains that
he and his comrades weren't being senselessly sadistic. What tore that wild whoop from their throats was knowing that "this
guy could have murdered your friend . . . we just stopped someone from killing us. . . . That's where the fiesta comes in."
Junger's sketches of the men are deft, his ear for their quirky speech
(aided by video recordings) spot on. A partial platoon roster includes Jones, a former drug dealer who joined the Army to
avoid being killed on the streets; Moreno, an ex-prizefighter and prison guard from Texas; Murphy, a rich kid who went to
etiquette school and wonders which side of the plate the sherbet spoon goes on; the supremely weird Sgt. Buno, a man of indeterminate
ethnicity who wanders around listening to his iPod and muttering bizarre things (asked where he'd spent one night, he replies
that he was in a village "killing werewolves").
The main character, so to speak, is Brendan O'Byrne. Pugnacious and hard-drinking,
O'Byrne is very tough -- he humps up mountains carrying a machine gun as heavy as a jackhammer -- but also gifted with an
ability to articulate thoughts his comrades can't or won't. He confesses to Junger that he prayed only once in Afghanistan
, for a dying medic to live. "But God, Allah, Jehovah, Zeus . . . wasn't in that valley," he says. "Combat is the devil's
game. . . . That's why our prayers weren't answered: the only one listening was Satan."
Junger thinks of O'Byrne as the platoon's collective mind and voice --
"a way to understand a group of men who I don't think entirely understood themselves." This splendid book should help the
rest of us understand them -- and war itself -- a little better.
Philip Caputo is the author of
"A Rumor of War" and, most recently, "Crossers," a novel.
4 staffers hurt in brawl at LA federal jail
LOS ANGELES—Authorities say four staffers at a federal detention center
in downtown Los Angeles had minor injuries after a brawl involving about 10 inmates.
Steve Gagliardi, a case management coordinator at the Metropolitan Detention Center, says two of the
staff members were sent to a hospital as a precaution after the Wednesday night melee.
Gagliardi says the security of the institution was never in jeopardy.
There were no reports of injured inmates.
Los Angeles police officers were called to the scene to assist after the fight broke out at about 7
p.m. They shut down the street outside the jail, but it was soon reopened.
The Bureau of Prisons operates the facility, where men and women charged with federal crimes are held,
including immigration violators awaiting deportation.
LAPD responds to report of disturbance at federal detention
center downtown [Updated]
Los Angeles police cars on Wednesday night were stationed outside the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, where
a reported disturbance had broken out inside.
The nature of the disturbance was unclear, the Los Angeles Police Department
said. A dispatcher at the downtown center declined to comment.
Several LAPD patrol cars were stationed near the
500 block of Alameda Street securing a perimeter around the detention center.
Operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the facility houses both male and female inmates.
[Updated 10:10 p.m.: Federal authorities have the situation under control, and LAPD units have been released,
police said.]
Labor-management council delays reporting on bargaining
expansion
By Elizabeth Newell
The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations will delay its deadline
by 30 days to report to President Obama on how to implement pilot programs that would require agencies and unions to bargain
over more issues.
"I think we have to admit that we don't have a strong proposal to take back to the
president at this time," said John Berry, co-chairman of the council, during a meeting on Wednesday. "But we believe we're
making serious progress and have a good faith proposal and the clear majority of the federal government coming to the table
and saying we're willing to work on this issue."
The White House asked the council to report by May 8 on recommendations for implementing
pilot programs to test bargaining over issues not normally subject to negotiation in the federal sector. These so-called (b)(1)
bargaining issues include the number and qualifications of employees assigned to work on projects, technology involved and
work methods, among other topics.
Berry, along with co-chairman Jeffrey Zients, Office of Management and Budget deputy
director for management, recommended the council delay reporting to the president by 30 days and, in the meantime, form a
work group to develop guidance on creating the pilot programs.
Berry said four of the five departments with the largest union representation have
committed to working with the council on the bargaining pilots and their representatives will participate on the team.
"Now is the time to actively involve our union partners at the table to bring back
to this council an approach forward on the pilot that we could undertake within the next 30 days," he said.
A number of union representatives, including National Treasury Employees Union President
Colleen Kelley, Federal Education Association Executive Director H.T. Nguyen, and National Federation of Federal Employees
President William Dougan, agreed to represent labor in the discussions.
At the meeting, the council also debated the findings of a work group tasked with
providing guidance on establishing labor-management forums at various levels within agencies. The group outlined two models
for agencies to use, avoiding a one-size-fits-all recommendation.
Under the first model, agencies would create a forum at the departmental level with
unions that have consultation rights with them at that level. Additional forums could then be created at the component level
for agencies with consultation rights within those agencies or offices.
According to the second model, where there are no unions with department-level recognition,
agencies would create forums at lower levels, including any union with consultation rights within that smaller organization.
Ad hoc labor-management work groups then would be established as needed to address departmentwide issues.
Veterans Affairs Department Deputy Secretary Scott Gould called the work group's
recommendations a "very sensible final determination," but they would like to strengthen the language for some of the recommendations
to clarify that the council encouraged certain actions, rather than just permit them.
Bill Bransford, general counsel for the Senior Executives Association, and Darryl
Perkinson of the Federal Managers Association, expressed their desire to have managers associations included in these agency-level
forums. Jane Holl Lute, Homeland Security deputy secretary, said it needs to be clear whether the managers associations' representatives
are speaking as employees or as management.
"Management speaks for management," Lute said. "There can't be two management voices
at the table."
Gould, a member of the work group, and the rest of the council agreed to review and
fine-tune the language of the recommendations and represent them at the council's next meeting in June.
Four guards hurt in L.A. jail disturbance
LOS ANGELES, May 6 (UPI) -- A brawl that broke out in the Los Angeles federal Metropolitan Detention Center injured four
guards before it was brought under control, U.S. officials said.
Two of the guards were treated at a hospital after Wednesday night's disturbance at the facility.
Los Angeles police responded to the jail to help secure the perimeter while the center's staff quelled the disturbance,
the Los Angeles Times said.
It was not known what caused the melee. The MDC, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility, houses more than 1,000 male and female
inmates.
Benefits payments will go paperless by 2013
By Alyssa Rosenberg
Federal benefits payments will go exclusively electronic by 2013, the Treasury Department
announced on Monday.
Treasury's decision applies to all recipients of Social Security, Supplemental Security
Income, Veterans Affairs, Railroad Retirement and Office of Personnel Management benefits. Enrollees will be able to choose
between direct deposits and balances added to Treasury debit cards. All new program enrollees will receive their benefits
electronically starting on March 1, 2011, and current recipients will make the transition by March 1, 2013.
Treasury said 85 percent of federal benefits recipients already are receiving electronic
payments. By moving the remaining 15 percent off paper, the government will save $300 million over five years, the department
estimated.
Matt Biggs, legislative director for the International Federation of Professional
and Technical Engineers, praised the decision as a cost-saving and environmental measure. The debit cards program, he said,
is a good alternative for beneficiaries who might not have access to conventional bank accounts. But he suggested that electronic
enrollment should be a default, rather than the only option.
"There is still some justifiable concern from veterans and others that should not
be ignored," Biggs said. "While this is clearly the right time to make the transition, the government should also allow beneficiaries
the option to continue to receive their benefits in a paper form."
In a Federal Register notice posted on Monday, OPM also proposed a number
of changes to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Open season -- the time when federal employees can change their FEHBP enrollments
-- runs from the beginning of the second full work week of November to the end of the second full work week of December. OPM
proposed switching it to run from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30.
"This will simplify the annual announcement of the time period for open season and
allow agencies and employees to better plan for the enrollment opportunity since they will know well in advance when it will
occur each year," the agency said in the notice.
In addition, OPM suggested changes to the kinds of plans health care companies can
offer through FEHBP. Right now, insurers can offer two regular options and one high-deductible plan, in which enrollees pay
most of their costs out of pocket in exchange for low premiums. OPM proposed allowing companies to choose between offering
two plans and a high-deductible option, or three regular plans.
Deadline for burning accumulated comp time is fast approaching
By Amelia Gruber
The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday reminded agencies that the clock
is ticking on a three-year grace period for a rule that bars federal employees from stockpiling compensatory time off.
Employees have until May 22 to use up comp time they accumulated in lieu of overtime
pay before the March 2007 policy went into effect. That regulation required workers to use comp time within 26 pay periods. But it applied only to comp
time earned after May 14, 2007. Employees had three years to burn time they'd gathered previously.
If employees fail to use their grandfathered time off by May 22, then they either
will receive pay for the unused hours, or they will be forced to forfeit them, according to the March 30 memorandum from OPM Director John Berry. There will be no exceptions, he said.
Employees covered by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act are entitled to receive pay
for unused comp time. Those exempt from the law can be paid or forced to forfeit the time, depending on their agencies' internal
policies. Agencies, however, must pay employees who cannot use the time due to certain circumstances beyond their control.
TSP
annual leave investment bill unveiled
By Alex M. Parker
Leaders of a House oversight subcommittee have officially introduced a bill
that would allow federal employees to invest the cash value of unused annual leave in their Thrift Savings Plan retirement
accounts.
The bill (H.R. 4865), sponsored by Reps. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, would
let employees roll over the value of their leftover leave as long as it did not push them above the cap on annual retirement
contributions of $16,500 for employees younger than 50 and $22,000 for those who are 50 or older.
The National Treasury Employees Union praised the measure.
"Many federal employees carry over the maximum amount of 240 hours of annual
leave on a yearly basis, and this legislation could significantly boost their TSP accounts," NTEU President Colleen Kelley
said.
The bill grew out of a September 2009 pledge from President Obama to make
it easier for Americans to save money. One idea was to let workers roll leftover leave into retirement savings, but the Federal
Thrift Retirement Board found that current law precludes this option for feds.
The Lynch-Chaffetz bill would remove that restriction. The legislation
has been referred to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Lynch and Chaffetz lead the panel's Subcommittee
on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia.
Pushing For Possible Prison
PRINCESS ANNE, Md. - It's an economic boost that Somerset
County could use, but there are no guarantees it will happen.
Resident Roger Daugherty said, "It'll provide ongoing
jobs in the future. A lot of construction monies going on in the county, so I don't think it can be bad."
At a public hearing Wednesday night, there were mostly
praises and arguments for a possible prison in Princess Anne. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is deciding between this location
and another one in Winton, North Carolina.
The project would bring less than 1,400 low-security
inmates from Washington D.C., in addition to hundreds of jobs.
Michael Pelletier is the Senior Vice-President of Community
Education Centers, the proposed contractor for the project in Princess Anne, and he touts the economic benefits. He explained,
"During construction, for example, there's another 245 to 300 jobs, the majority of are all hired locally... In terms of goods
and services you're talking $50 million coming back to the surrounding communities."
And these are numbers this community says they can't
ignore. Many came to the public hearing with comments in favor of their area. One resident said, "In terms of us being a capable
workforce, you need only to look to ECI to see the successful effort Somerset County has had."
State delegate Jim Mathias said, "What we will bring
to this is the ability to get this job done."
In response to safety concerns, officials say the inmates
would not be released into the community. They would be first transferred to another federal facility and released there.
Those opposed to the proposal say they were concerned
the facility would become a FEMA camp, or internment camp.
The Bureau will conclude a public comment period on
March 8. Then they will publish a final environmental impact statement that will be available to the public for 30 days. Then
it will be left to the discretion of the Bureau of Federal Prisons to discern when they will select a location. No decision
will be made until mid-May at the earliest.
Federal prison warden indicted on 6 charges
RIVERSIDE, Calif.—The warden of a federal prison in San Bernardino County is accused of disclosing
confidential information about ongoing criminal investigations and lying to investigators.
U.S. attorney's office spokesman Thom Mrozek says Scott Holencik was charged Wednesday in a six-count
indictment in federal court in Riverside.
Holencik is warden of a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Adelanto.
He is charged with making false statements to investigators last year in connection with a probe into Internet postings
that disclosed confidential information about criminal investigations at the prison.
Prosecutors say Holencik faces a maximum 14 years in federal prison if convicted of all charges.
He's scheduled to be arraigned on April 21.
UPDATE:
GEO Prison Decision
It is a disappointing
decision for supporters of a northern Michigan prison.
The GEO Group prison will stay closed after investing millions
of dollars into renovations, aimed at attracting Federal prisoners.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons says they had to
cancel the contract with the GEO prison in Lake County. The prison closed in 2005, leaving hundreds of people without jobs.
The
Lake County Chamber of Commerce says it's disappointing news, but they will stand behind GEO and hopes the future holds another
positive option.
Northern Michigan's News Leader is working to bring you continuing coverage of the decision and it's
impact.
Shuttered Baldwin Prison Will Not Reopen
A private prison facility shuttered in Baldwin in 2005 will not
be reopening to house illegal immigrants. That dashes hopes of an influx of hundreds of jobs to the community, where one-in-five
workers are unemployed.
The Florida-based company that owns the prison has been expanding
its facility, in hopes of getting a contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons. But the bureau announced this week it has
no money to open another facility, even though it does need more beds.
Lake County Chamber of Commerce President Sandy Crandall says,
with all the building activity at the prison site, the community had been optimistic.
"It's a lot of money to invest and I'm sure they are considering
a Plan B at some point," she says. "And we'll just have to be patient as to what that is, and support them in that endeavor."
The facility was built by a company now known as The GEO Group
during the Engler years to house Michigan's serious young offenders. It was placed in Baldwin to boost the economy of a region
that has some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in Michigan. It was closed in budget cuts under Governor Granholm
in 2005. And when prison workers left, Crandall says there was a ripple effect.
"That means no gas, no groceries, no shopping at the local stores,"
she says." People who've had a job in the area, that would transfer in, would maybe sometimes want to spill over into our
recreation, that kind of halted. That's the effect I felt."
In a written statement the owner, The GEO Group, says it will continue
to market the detention center throughout the country.
White House reconsiders holding terror trials in civilian court
Suspected Sept. 11 plotters may be tried before military tribunals after all, administration
officials say. Holding the trials in civilian court is deemed 'politically untenable.'
Reporting from Washington — The White House is considering an end to its effort to prosecute the suspected Sept.
11 plotters in a civilian court and may send them instead before military tribunals, in an apparent retreat from President
Obama's pledge to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies.
Last year, the Obama administration announced it would try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others in federal court in New York.
That step came after Obama overhauled interrogation policies and ordered the shutdown of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba.
But safety concerns about the trial have grown, and support for holding the trial in New York has eroded.
"It is politically untenable," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity because a decision had not been made.
"No place wants to hold a trial."
A return to military commissions, as the tribunals are known, would be a major concession to Republicans. And administration
officials appear to be using the potential shift as a down payment on a political deal to speed the closure of the Guantanamo
prison by allowing the federal government to purchase an Illinois prison to transfer detainees.
A formal recommendation has not yet been made to Obama, and an administration official said a decision remains weeks away.
Still, the idea, first reported in the Washington Post, represents a trial balloon to test how the administration's reversal
would be received by liberals and conservatives.
Though several Republicans endorsed the plan to try the Sept. 11 suspects in military commissions, few seemed convinced
Friday that Guantanamo should close.
Liberal groups reacted angrily, seeing the potential about-face as a betrayal of the president's campaign promise and an
unwelcome endorsement of Bush administration practices. They said the Obama administration would be closing Guantanamo only
to re-create the same problematic situation on U.S. soil.
"The world wasn't clamoring to close Guantanamo because it was built on some sacred Indian burial ground," said Tom Malinowski
of Human Rights Watch. "It was clamoring to close Gitmo because it stood for the militarization of justice in America and
indefinite detention without charge. Keeping all of that preserves the essence of what people were objecting to at Gitmo."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been negotiating with the White House, including with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, on
a way to close Guantanamo but ensure that the government had the legal authority to hold detainees without trial. As part
of his compromise, Graham had proposed moving several of the civilian trials to military commissions.
Graham said the potential shift by the White House was a "good start." "It would give us a chance to close Guantanamo Bay
safely," Graham said on Fox News.
Charles Stimson, a former Pentagon detention official, said conservatives should embrace Graham's proposal.
"You are going to see national security hawks like me get out in front and support the administration and try to convince
skeptics, members of the conservative caucus, that they need to get behind this," Stimson said.
But not all Republicans may be amenable to a deal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the prospect
of a military tribunal trial for Mohammed, but continued to assert that Guantanamo should remain open, despite the controversy
it has generated around the world.
He argued that closing Guantanamo and opening a long-term detention facility within the United States would not neutralize
international objections to the U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects.
At least on that point, human rights groups who opposed Bush administration detention policies agreed with Obama's critics.
"Closing Guantanamo and moving the military commissions to the United States doesn't really close the concept of Guantanamo,"
said William Nash, a retired Army major general. "This bastardized version of justice known as military commissions . . .
is leaving the job undone."
Nash was among military officers who appeared with Obama on his second day in office last year as the new president signed
an executive order to close Guantanamo.
"It is times like this, when things are difficult, that we need the president to stand up and do the right thing, and the
smart thing, the thing that will protect our troops," said John Hudson, a retired vice admiral and former Navy judge advocate
general.
Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said abandoning trials in civilian court will not prevent the political headaches of trying
to close Guantanamo, but will sap the benefits of shuttering the prison.
It would also make the administration look weak in Washington, Malinowski said. "The political cost is catastrophic," he
said. "It will invite endless bullying on national security. It is not the way to look strong."
But some Democrats hoped the call to move Mohammed to military court would soften opposition to closing Guantanamo and
moving detainees to the prison in Illinois. Before such a transfer could take place, Congress would have to give its stamp
of approval.
Under the plan, the Bureau of Prisons would purchase the near-empty state prison in Thomson, Ill., to house both federal
inmates as well as some of the detainees displaced by the closure of Guantanamo.
It would take time to upgrade the Thomson prison before any military commission trial could be held there. The prison needs
security upgrades and construction of a trial facility, changes that would take until next spring, by some estimates.
Proposal for Lake City prison put on hold
A proposal to build a federal prison in Lake City has been
put on hold.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the plan involved
constructing a 2,500 bed facility east of the Lake City Municipal Airport off U.S. 90. The primary purpose of the prison would
have been holding inmates from other countries until they could be deported. Federal officials had proposed having the prison
developed and operated by a private company under a federal contract.
The bureau held two public hearings on the proposal a year
ago and had begun the initial bidding process. However, companies that were expected to submit bids were notified a week ago
that the $65 million construction project was no longer in the bureau's budget for this year. The prison was expected to create
250 full-time jobs with a $10 million annual payroll.
The companies were also notified that they could rebid on
the project if funding becomes available for it.
Budget Request for Thomson Prison Doesn’t Mention Terrorists
The Justice Department’s fiscal 2011 budget request asks for funding to buy the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois,
but the proposal sent to Congress leaves out one key piece: it does not mention that the facility would be used to house accused
terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay.
Instead, the Bureau of Prisons’ request seeks $170 million to buy and renovate the Thomson, Ill., prison because of inmate crowding conditions at high security facilities.
“Inmate crowding, especially at high security levels, is at maximum manageable proportions and additional bed space
is crucial to provide some relief for staff and inmates,” the request states. “Inmate crowding that is not addressed
will continue to endanger staff, inmates, and the community.”
According to a DOJ spokeswoman, the department’s fiscal 2011 budget also requests an additional $67 million to upgrade the facility to a high security federal penitentiary. In all, the DOJ is seeking $237 million for use on the facility.
The Bureau of Prison’s budget proposal says that high security facilities are operating at 51 percent over capacity
and that the trend is “projected to worsen in future years, as the population continues to outpace capacity.”
As of May 2009, according to the request, 18,630 high security inmates — or 93 percent of all high security population
in federal facilities — were double bunked. Under the BOP standards, no more than 25 percent of high security inmates
should be double bunked. The Thomson facility would provide an additional 1,600 high security cells.
The request does mention that prisons have taken on significantly greater risks because of several high-profile terrorists
already housed in the federal prison system including former al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, Oklahoma
City bomber Terry Nichols and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, among others.
The final sale of the prison still has several hurdles to overcome. In Illinois, the state legislature voted last month to require the governor to obtain approval from the legislature before selling state properties worth more than
$1 million — a new requirement that would apply to the state-owned Thomson facility.
For their part, federal officials have tried to focus on the benefits the purchase would bring to the local community.
Harley Lappin, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons told The Christian Monitor that of the 850 to 900 staff positions at the prison, 60 percent would be local. Lappin estimated that 1,200 to 1,700 private-sector
jobs will be created as a result of prison activity – all indirect ways the prison will create jobs and reduce unemployment.
Setback for grieving family: Mother of slain correctional officer struggling with legal battle
The U.S. Department of Justice has denied a Merced family's $100
million administrative claim against the Federal Bureau of Prisons and several of its employees over the 2008 death of correctional
officer Jose Rivera, at the hands of two inmates.
An administrative claim is a precursor to a lawsuit. The claim gives the government a chance to address a
complaint and make reparations.
The claim was denied because of missing documentation, according to a letter from Harlan W. Penn, regional
counsel for the Department of Justice. The letter claims Mark Peacock, a Newport Beach-based attorney for Terry Rivera on
behalf of her son, didn't submit documentation verifying his authority to represent the Rivera family or verifying Terry Rivera's
authority to represent her son's estate.
Peacock was unavailable for comment Wednesday but he said earlier this week his firm is finishing work on
a federal lawsuit he intends to file soon on behalf of the Riveras.
Terry Rivera said she had not known the reason for the denial.
"He's a very good lawyer, I'm just thinking that they are just giving us the runaround," Rivera said.
Tears still creep up on Rivera as she talks about her son.
"It's not about the money. It's just about justice and for them to see the tragedy that has happened to this
family. We don't want it to happen to anyone else," she said.
Jose Rivera, 22, had worked at U.S. Penitentiary Atwater for 10 months when he was attacked and stabbed to
death about a half-hour before the end of his shift while locking down inmates into their cells.
In the many months since the attack several disturbing details about the case have been unearthed, including
that Jose Rivera and other correctional officers at the time did not have access to stab-resistant vests and could not carry
nonlethal weapons such as pepper spray or batons.
Jose Rivera was alone, as was policy, with around 100 inmates. His attackers, James Leon Guerrero and Joseph
Cabrera Sablan, were drunk at the time of the stabbing, according to investigators.
Both of his attackers had previous records of assaulting correctional officers. The men knew each other and
when Guerrero was transferred to USP Atwater the day before the attack, one penitentiary official warned the two should not
be in the same unit together. According to an FBI investigation, that official was told by a co-worker to put Guerrero with
Sablan instead of a higher-security unit.
When Jose Rivera triggered his body alarm during the attack, several of the first responders did not have
keys to get into the unit. The attackers continued to stab him -- a total of 28 times -- as staff could not reach him.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza testified before a House subcommittee in 2009 that USP Atwater's warden at the time, Dennis
Smith, ignored Cardoza's attempts to communicate with him about concerns and conditions at the prison before Jose Rivera was
killed.
"My son would be here today if he would've had the right tools and if they had the staffing they need," Terry
Rivera said tearfully.
Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Guerrero and Sablan for the killing. A routine evidentiary
hearing in the criminal case is set for Monday at the U.S. District Court in Fresno.
Coming upon the second anniversary of her son's death, Terry Rivera has hundreds of T-shirts, lapel pins and
commemorative coins that honor her son and his service as a correctional officer.
She's selling the items to raise money to create a scholarship fund in honor of her son. She says she wants
to work with Le Grand school officials to create the scholarship that would be given out yearly to a high-performing senior
to use for college.
To inquire about purchasing a T-shirt, lapel pin or commemorative coin, residents can view the Facebook page
dedicated to Correctional Officer Jose Rivera and send a message to Terry Rivera.
The page is a very public chronicle of a mother's pain. Only a few days go without a message from Terry to
her son.
Beating the Backlog Blues
By Alyssa Rosenberg
This week, the Federal Labor Relations Authority announced it had worked its way
through a stack of 340 unfair labor practices cases. Getting rid of that backlog, which built up during a period when the
George W. Bush administration lacked a general counsel and enough members for a quorum, was a victory for the small agency
in the quest to keep its workload manageable. But that wasn't the only benefit. Employees and their representatives agree
that backlogs take the bite out of unfair labor practice and discrimination charges, and make employees more vulnerable to
retaliation.
Now that unfair labor practice filings can be addressed more promptly, they "actually
mean something again," said Matt Biggs, legislative director for the International Federation of Professional and Technical
Engineers.
He said the knowledge FLRA will address new cases quickly could make agencies more
willing to work with employees and their union representatives instead of violating labor rules. Such an incentive could lower
the number of unfair labor practice cases filed overall, he said.
In "the recent past...management was well aware that cases before the FLRA simply
languished in no man's land, or when unions knew that there was little chance of prevailing despite how strong of a case we
had," he said. "There are teeth to this FLRA."
Employee advocates said they hoped other agencies that handle workplace complaints
will be able to follow in FLRA's footsteps.
Backlogs at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hurt employees governmentwide
who file discrimination complaints, said Gabrielle Martin, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council
of EEOC Locals. In fiscal 2008, the most recent year for which numbers are available, EEOC faced a pile of 73,951 federal
and private sector cases, and it took an average of eight months to process a complaint.
Employees often suffer additional discrimination, harassment and hostile workplace
practices while they wait for EEOC to review their cases, according to Martin. "The longer cases sit, we tend to see an increase
in retaliation charges," she said.
"This raises the question [of] whether people have lost faith in the system and go
to federal court rather than to EEOC," Martin added.
Janet Kopenhaver, Washington representative for the affinity group Federally Employed
Women, said even if retaliation does not occur, the prospect of a long wait could discourage workers from filing legitimate
grievances.
"Employees know that if and when they file a complaint, the work environment is obviously
completely changed and awkward for both the employees and their supervisors," she said. "An employee might decide not to file
anything knowing that two years in an uncomfortable workplace would be extremely stressful each day. Second, these cases are
quite costly -- both emotionally and financially. Considering that the case might never be resolved or will take years to
do so would definitely impact a decision to move forward."
In the movies, justice often is sweet no matter how long the protagonist has to wait
to avenge his family, win a dramatic court case, or escape from an island where he's been unfairly imprisoned. In real life,
and in the federal complaints process in particular, the late British Prime Minister William Gladstone's observation that
"justice delayed is justice denied" can be painfully true.
Federal Prisoner Convicted of Attempted Murder for Slashing Deputy
Marshal’s Throat Sentenced to 20-Year Maximum
HOUSTON—Jose Garcia Jr., 31, of Mercedes, Texas, has been sentenced
to the statutory maximum punishment of 20 years' imprisonment for the attempted murder of a deputy U.S. marshal (DUSM), United
States Attorney José Angel Moreno announced today. Garcia, a federal prisoner in custody, used a razor to slash at the throat
of DUSM at the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, on May 22, 2009. In June 2009, Garcia was indicted for attempted murder
of a federal agent in the Houston division.
Garcia pleaded guilty to the attack on a DUSM in December 2009. At a hearing
late this afternoon, United States District Judge Ewing Werlein sentenced Garcia to 20 years in federal prison to be followed
by a three-year term of supervised release. The 20-year sentence is to be served consecutive to his 50-year state prison sentence.
According to the factual basis in support of the guilty plea, Garcia was in
a holding cell in the federal courthouse awaiting a hearing before United States District Judge Randy Crane in McAllen for
the possible revocation of the term of supervised release imposed as part of a 2000 federal robbery conviction prompted by
Garcia’s recent state conviction for murder and 50-year sentence. While being lead into Judge Crane’s courtroom
from a holding cell through a door being held by a DUSM, Garcia walked through the door into the courtroom and lunged at the
DUSM slashing his throat with a razor blade. As the DUSM and other deputy marshals attempted to subdue Garcia, Garcia continued
to slash at the DUSM’s throat several more times. Eventually, Garcia was subdued. Bleeding profusely from the injury
to his neck, the DUSM was transported to the hospital and received nine stitches to close the wound.
FBI agents arrived at the scene and recovered the razor blade used by Garcia.
FBI agents then interviewed Garcia, who told them he felt a “vibe” when he saw the DUSM earlier in the day. Before
going in the courtroom, Garcia said he found a razor blade on the floor by the urinal in the holding cell located on the first
floor of the federal courthouse building. Garcia admitted he hid the razor blade in his upper lip then later moved it to his
hand where he had it when the cell door opened. As he walked closer to the DUSM, Garcia admitted he wanted to “get him
right there,” and was trying to kill the DUSM when he attacked him. Garcia told FBI agents he felt “relaxed”
after the attack.
Garcia, who has been in federal custody, will remain in custody to serve this
sentence.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney
Mark McIntyre. Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Cook represented the government at today’s hearing.
Report
shows jump in use of incentive payments
By Alex M. Parker
March
8, 2010
A new report shows that the amount federal agencies paid in relocation incentives
-- to compensate employees asked to move from one area to another -- nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008.
The Office of Personnel Management report shows than the rise in relocation bonuses, often to law enforcement officers and supervisors,
made up a sizable portion of the 37 percent overall increase in the amount paid out for what are known as "3Rs" incentives
for relocation, retention and recruitment.
Such increases have led OPM to ask
agencies to review their use of the incentives. The total number of bonuses handed
out increased by 7,027 between 2007 and 2008, to 39,511. The dollar amount spent on them went up by more than $77 million,
to nearly $285 million. Citing recent labor market conditions, OPM Director John Berry asked agencies to make sure incentives
were justified.
All three categories of incentives saw increases from 2007 to 2008. On a percentage
basis, relocation incentives went up the most - nearly 86 percent, or about $20 million. Retention bonuses remained the most
popular type of incentive, with a $28.9 million increase from 2007 to 2008.
According to the report, the Defense Department awarded the most incentives, handing
out more than 19,000 bonuses totaling more than $135 million. The Veterans Affairs Department was second, with more than 9,000
incentives totaling almost $54 million. Other departments near the top of the list included Justice, Health and Human Services,
and Commerce.
According to the report, 34 percent of all retention incentives were paid to employees
in the health care field, including nurses, medical officers and pharmacists. For recruitment incentives, the most common
occupation was patent examiner, which represented 11 percent of all such incentives.
Relocation incentives went to a mix of criminal investigators, contract officers,
administrators and engineers.
Two of the agencies that manage federal benefits handed out some of the largest incentives.
According to the report, OPM itself handed out five incentives averaging $23,600, including one relocation incentive of $70,000.
The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board gave out two awards, totaling $54,500 -- including a $38,650 retention incentive
to its executive director. Both made the top five list for largest average incentive payments.
Is
There Skepticism About Merit System Principles?
'A growing skepticism'
Federal workers who want to advance might want to look at a report issued last week
by the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Through interviews and surveys, the MSPB came up with a list of 10 "career accelerators."
These are workplace situations that help employees move up the promotional ladder. The two top items relate directly to personal
contacts.
"A supportive supervisor to encourage my development and advancement" and "senior
person/mentor (other than my supervisor) looking out for my interests" each were identified as having a positive impact by
85 percent of those surveyed.
"Clearly, one should not underestimate the power of personal connections in the workplace,"
the report says. "Given their nearly absolute control over the developmental opportunities employees receive, supervisors
play crucial roles in determining the fate of their employees."
This, of course, allows for bias and favoritism. The report says fears about unfair
and inequitable treatment are on the rise, even as perceptions of ethnic and racial discrimination have declined.
"Suspicions regarding traditional/blatant forms of discrimination have been supplanted
by a growing skepticism about managers making their decisions in accord with the merit principles," the MSPB found in responses
to its Career Advancement Survey.
The flip side of having encouraging supervisors and mentors is the feeling that "who
you know," which carries a negative connotation, is what counts when it comes to promotions. Far more respondents, 72 percent,
picked that as a reason for advancement, than did those who cited competence (40 percent) or hard work (36 percent).
Disturbingly, "over 70 percent of employees believed that some supervisors practiced
favoritism," according to the report. And those views cross racial and ethnic lines. My mail indicates that's a prime factor
undermining confidence in federal pay-for-performance systems.
Showing what you can do is an important way to be promoted. Being appointed an acting
supervisor presents a "critical opportunity for employees who aspire to demonstrate that they can handle the responsibilities"
of being the boss, the report says.
"Opportunity" seems to be the operative word here.
"Unfortunately, our survey results indicate that members of minority groups report
that they have less opportunity to serve in an acting capacity than White employees," the MSPB found. "Further, these discrepancies
do not appear to be diminishing."
The MSPB urged agencies to measure how their policies and practices help or hinder
progress toward workplace fairness. The measurement should include a workplace analysis that covers, among other things, "possible
barriers to a fully representative workforce." They also should "emphasize to supervisors their influence over -- and responsibility
for -- the career development of the employees they supervise."
Among other recommendations, the MSPB advises employees to seek or create developmental
opportunities and to develop productive relationships with supervisors or other mentors.
A view inside federal lockup
The nation's largest federal prison facility opened its doors to media for the first
time ever.
COLEMAN - Encircling the perimeter of United States Penetentiary-1, one of two maximum-security prisons here, are coils
of barbed wire, the last buffer of security separating the concrete structure from the rest of the sprawling Federal Correctional
Complex of which it is part.
Here, an ordinary day for an inmate in general population
might go as follows: breakfast at 6 a.m., early morning work call by 7:40 a.m., vocational training or continued work duty,
leisure time in the recreation yard, and two more meals, before it's back to a bland 84-square-foot cell by the time lights
go out at 10 p.m.
With an average confinement period of 10 years, inmates
at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, the nation's largest federal prison facility, must adapt to a certain way of living
- work, education, recreation, thriftiness - that prison staff hopes will prepare them for the world to which they might eventually
return.
"Our prison is very reflective of the community," Bill Bechtold,
associate warden of U.S.P-2, said Wednesday during the first-ever media tour Coleman has conducted since opening in 1995.
Following a spate of recent bad publicity - staff smuggling
in contraband, the conviction of a correctional officer for violating an inmate's civil rights and contributing to his death
- Coleman employees hope to reinforce a positive message about the prison.
"Those people involved in those activities," Bechtold said,
"are not representative of the many great people here."
With a staff of about 1,300, Coleman is one of the largest,
if not largest, employers in Sumter County.
It's actively seeking to hire additional correctional officers,
especially medical personnel, to help supervise the 7,120 inmates it currently houses across four different facilities: a
low-security institution; a medium-security institution with adjacent satellite female work camp; and the two high-security
penitentiaries, known as U.S.P-1 and U.S.P-2.
With the exception of the female work camp, all inmates
are male, and the vast majority of their offenses are drug-related.
During the guided tour of U.S.P-1, led by a handful of associate
wardens and other staff, a scrubbed and smoothly functioning operation was on display: polished floors, immaculate hallways,
a GED class in session, colorful artwork on easels in a recreation room.
Even the general population inmates released into an enclosed
outdoor recreation yard, many sporting headphones, seemed to blend as naturally into the undisturbed calm as the beige on
their prison jumpsuits to the rural landscape.
Although both U.S.P-1 and U.S.P-2 have a segregated housing
unit reserved for the most violent, maximum-security offenders and for those who require protective custody, such areas were
not opened to the media Wednesday.
Subject to metal detection screening, media also were advised
not to participate in spontaneous interviews with inmates or correctional staff they happened to come across. No photography
was allowed.
At Coleman, each inmate is given a job assignment, in which
they can earn money to use at the prison commissary, for instance, to purchase things like snacks, aspirin, or personal hygiene
items, though these items are marked up 30 percent.
Depending on the pay grade, such jobs will net anywhere
between 12 cents to 40 cents an hour.
Coleman also offers an industries-oriented work program
- building office furniture, for instance - that nets higher salaries of 23 cents to $1.15 an hour.
Prison employees place a high emphasis on inmate productivity,
especially since it employs no outside contractors to perform maintenance work.
"We like to keep them busy because they stay out of trouble,"
said Steve Mora, associate warden at U.S.P-1.
Phil Geistfeld, who oversees educational services at Coleman,
added that the prison is "keeping these guys busy with something legitimate."
He noted that 42 percent of inmates are enrolled in at least
one educational or recreational program, such as an art or musical activity, and that 228 inmates obtained their GEDs in 2009,
while 447 completed some sort of vocational training.
This is a complex that serves 2,900 meals a day, and where
5,000 pieces of incoming mail are pre-screened daily. If anything is slight, it's the average daily number of visitors that
inmates receive, with Father's Day and Christmas being the busiest.
There are no plans to build an additional institution on
the 1,600-acre complex, although the inmate count has already reached official capacity, according to Bechtold. Still, he
said none of the facilities are so full as to be "packed to the gills."
If there is any one challenge over the next year that officials
say they hope to overcome, it's increasing staffing levels to sustain a high inmate population.
"They (the federal Bureau of Prisons) are locking up more
and more inmates but they're not hiring staff to equal it," said Jose Rojas, the new president of the local chapter of the
American Council of Prison Locals. "Of course that makes for a volatile cocktail."
Rojas, whose also teaches inmates at the Coleman prison,
said additional precautionary measures have been instituted over the last year.
He, too, rebuffed the notion that the Sumter County complex
is any more rife with staff misconduct than anywhere else in the nation.
"That's prison. Every now and again, there's cracks," he
said. "You'll always get folks that slide through the cracks. Hopefully those who do, get caught."
As Coleman seeks to burnish its image as a facility intent
on better preparing its inmates for life on the outside, all the while embracing a newfound philosophy of greater transparency,
it knows how it wants to do it.
As one of its staffers put it Wednesday, "Here at Coleman,
we take the attitude that we want to be good neighbors."
Mandatory Overtime = Sleep Deprivation
Remember that one little
question on your application process that stated, “Are you able to work mandatory overtime” and you marked yes
because you were excited to get into the system and started on your chosen career? Looking back do you ever wish you would
have marked NO? In no other profession is there such a high turnover rate requiring so much forced or mandatory overtime on
its personnel. It was not uncommon for the entire third shift officers to be mandated to stay for the entire first shift 5
days a week making for an 80 hour work week. 40 plus hours of overtime a pay period was the normal not the unusual and after
a while you began to hate telephone calls after 4:00 in the morning. I always wondered what the effects of the daily stress
and forced overtime did to a body.
From shift to shift the correctional officer is tasked with policing this violent institutional subculture.
Being subjected to this violent subculture on a daily basis is a stressor in the career and life of a correctional officer.
These stressors can cause the correctional officer to experience more health issues, have a shorter life span and on
average die at an earlier age than the average worker. Stress is not only harmful to the stressed officer or correctional
worker but is also difficult to the profession and to the lives of others working in the institution. Burned-out officers
frequently loose interest in their jobs, become passive instead of active in carrying out post and institutional orders, and
let things inmates do, go without consequence. Thus harmful incidents may occur that could have been avoided if handled properly
from the beginning.
Stress is not always a direct association of the inmate population. Other byproducts of the profession
can cause stress and impair functioning of the correctional officer. Shift Lag is one of these byproducts. Shift Lag is when
the stress and physiological fatigue of shift
work causes one to become irritable, experience impaired performance, and a feeling of being hypnotic both on the job
and in personal affairs
In a study published recently in the British journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine,
researchers in Australia and New Zealand report that sleep deprivation can have some of the same hazardous effects as being
drunk. Getting less than 6 hours a night can affect coordination, reaction time and judgment, posing “a very serious
risk.” Drivers are especially vulnerable, the researchers warned. They found that people who drive after being awake
for 17 to 19 hours performed worse than those with a blood alcohol level of .05 percent. That’s the legal limit for
drunk driving in most western European countries, though most U.S. states set their blood alcohol limits at .1 percent and
a few at .08 percent.
For correctional, in particular, current research has indicated a relationship between extended
shifts and generalized poor performance. Overtime often comes at the expense of sleep. A 1992 study, conducted by the American Journal of Public Health, found that nurses in Massachusetts who worked
variable schedules (including mandated overtime shifts) were twice as likely to report an accident or error and two-and-one-half
times as likely to notify supervisors of near miss accidents. With regard to healthcare professionals, sleep deprivation has
been implicated in deadly medication administration errors and decision-making processes during critical patient assessments.
Studies have shown that night shift workers have the highest incidence of
fatigue due to sleep deprivation.
Many correctional professionals will attest that sleep deprivation from shift work
may lead to occurrences that jeopardize not only themselves, but also other officers and inmates. Fatigue from long shifts
can reduce attention to detail, affecting critical thinking and performance. Although sleep is not cumulative, sleep deprivation
is. The more hours a person works, the longer it takes to complete a task. More mistakes are made, and alertness is markedly
decreased. In addition to reduced efficiency, sleep deprivation slows down recovery processes and impairs host defenses, increasing
susceptibility to infection. It influences the potential for developing other disorders as well. In particular, losing sleep
heightens the risk for type II diabetes, moodiness, and obesity. All these ailments will in turn lead to more call offs and
more need for mandatory overtime.
Shift working correctional officers affected by sleep deprivation experience
a greater incidence of diarrhea, constipation, ulcers, and heartburn. As if this were not enough, their risk of cardiovascular
disease is increased by to 50 percent. Women shift workers are more vulnerable to reproductive problems, from disrupted menstruation
and difficulty conceiving, to miscarriages and premature births. For example,
55% on midnights showed “elevated waist circumference,” more
than double the percentage found in the other 2 shifts. Half had sub-desirable levels of “good” cholesterol, compared
to 30% on days and 44% on afternoons, and 25% had high blood pressure, compared
to 15% on days and 9% on afternoons.
Getting six or fewer hours of sleep each night is just like being drunk. Consider
that most the legal blood alcohol content is .08. When you’ve been
up for 18 hours, studies show that you function as if your blood alcohol content
were .07. After 24 hours without sleep, you’re at 0.1 the same as a drunk driver. Now picture yourself after a 16 hour
mandated overtime from third shift to first. At that point, you’re fighting sleepiness, you’re more irritable,
and you have increased risk of accidents both at work and while driving. That is when you see people drinking a lot of caffeinated
beverages, popping out of their chairs at work more, using physical activity to keep themselves awake.
So administrators
you now have to calculate more than the financial cost of forced or mandatory overtime at your facilities. What would a legal
suit bring against your agency for an auto accident following an officers 16 hour shift of mandatory overtime? What about
the obvious policy violations overlooked by sleepy officers on the pod? Inmates love staff shortages because they then know
that there will be a new officer working their unit, who does not necessarily care what happens as long as the shift
goes off without a major incident. Staff shortages and mandatory overtime may be the number one complaint in corrections.
It is like a revolving door happening, the more overtime within an agency the more call offs it creates, the more staff resignations
and unplanned illnesses you have.
Healing Touch
Despite the often exemplary care given at most Veterans Affairs Department medical facilities, sometimes the best care
for a wounded warrior comes from a loved one. A provision tucked away in the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization Act will make
it easier for federal employees and other workers to take time off to care for family members injured while on active duty.
The measure -- summarized in a Dec. 29, 2009, memorandum from Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry to agency
heads -- allows federal employees to take up to 26 weeks of unpaid leave annually through the 1993 Family and Medical Leave
Act to care for an injured veteran. To qualify, a veteran must be undergoing medical treatment or therapy for the injury,
and he or she must have served in the military within five years of the treatment.
The new law builds on a provision passed in the fiscal 2009 Defense Authorization Act, which granted leave to help care
for injured active-duty soldiers, by allowing time off to care for veterans as well.
"That's pretty significant," said Carl Bosland, a Colorado attorney who specializes in family and medical leave issues.
"There are a lot of vets out there."
The 2010 law also broadens the types of injuries that qualify for the leave to include existing injuries aggravated by
active-duty service.
In addition, the policy measure allows family members to take time off when active-duty troops are deployed to Iraq or
Afghanistan. This leave can used to spend more time with the soon-to-be deployed soldier and settle financial or family issues.
Previously, this benefit was available only to families of reservists called to certain types of duty.
Leave taken under FMLA -- whether for military care, medical issues, or the birth of a child -- is unpaid. But employees
who have saved up other types of paid leave can apply that to make up some of the lost wages.
OPM announces reorganization
The Office of Personnel Management announced on Tuesday a significant restructuring
of its divisions, changes that observers say could place a greater emphasis on senior executives, veterans and diversity hiring,
as well as OPM's oversight and compliance responsibilities.
The reorganization creates five
core divisions at OPM: employee services, retirement and benefits, merit system audit
and compliance, federal investigative services, and human resources solutions. Currently, OPM's organizational chart lists
13 offices, a setup Director John Berry called confusing and counterintuitive during a June 2009 meeting with agency employees.
"When the president nominated me for this job, I said, 'Let me see the [organizational]
chart,' and I sat down with it," Berry said at the meeting in which he promised a restructuring. "Ten minutes, 20 minutes,
30 minutes [later], I still couldn't tell you [what the agency was focusing on]."
Some of the biggest changes will be the new employee services division, to be led by Nancy
Kichak, who currently heads OPM's strategic human resources policy division. Kichak will oversee the work of the agency's
deputy chief human capital officer, and offices specifically dedicated to recruitment and diversity issues; pay and leave
policy; executive resources and employee development; partnership and labor relations, and support for agencies and the veterans
they hire.
"I think what John Berry is telegraphing here, and I don't disagree, is there is a benefit
for these public policy programs to have a champion, someone whose job it is to be concerned about veterans affairs, someone
whose job it will be to oversee everything related to the Senior Executive Service, and equal opportunity employment, and
labor relations," said John Palguta, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.
OPM announced in August that it would create an office dedicated to the SES, replacing the one disbanded in a 2003 reorganization.
And the creation of veterans- and diversity-specific offices reflects the emphasis Berry has placed on federal hiring of veterans and increased diversity in federal
employment.
Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, praised the reorganization
but cautioned that implementing the details would be important.
"I'm pleased that the director has re-established a focal point for the federal career
executive corps, though we would have preferred to see a stand-alone office," she said. "The policy issues and unmet needs,
which can and should be addressed, are substantial, so it remains to be seen whether the Executive Resources Office receives
the resources it will need to make a real difference."
Palguta said the creation of the merit system audit and compliance division as a discrete
entity would sharpen OPM's oversight efforts. The new division will be led by Jeff Sumberg, who is currently the deputy associate
director responsible for the Center for Merit System Accountability. The previous division, called human capital leadership
and merit system accountability, was "kind of a strange mix," Palguta said.
Berry credited OPM employees, particularly Michelle Tolson, president of the American
Federation of Government Employees local that represents OPM workers, for making the reorganization possible.
"Now, all of OPM's customers -- both internal and external -- will know exactly where
to go for answers," Berry said in a statement.
Federal agencies must post public data online
The White House released a series of wide-ranging mandates Tuesday designed to make agencies more transparent and cooperative
in the public's requests for information about the inner workings of government.
Among other things, federal agencies have until the end of January to post three "high-value" data sets on Data.gov, the online home of such government information.
The Open Government Plan delivers a victory to open-government groups that have long sought to transform how the government
presents and shares information with the public.
The plan says that agencies must publish information online in a timely manner and present their data in a Web-friendly
format that is available to download. Agencies with significant backlogs of Freedom
of Information Act requests will have to reduce that number of requests by 10 percent each year.
Peter Orszag,
director of the Office of Management and Budget, said he expects that federal agencies and
departments will comply.
"Failure to follow through on this will generate displeasure from the White
House and the president," he said in an interview. "I don't think we've had a problem with Cabinet secretaries embracing clear directives from the president."
Orszag's team spent months meeting with government officials and good-government groups after President Obama ordered on his first full day
in office a review of the government's transparency and openness efforts.
"The results appear to be well worth the wait," said Gary D. Bass, executive
director of OMB Watch, one of several groups that pushed for transparency reforms.
"The key will be how the public, the White House and federal agencies
work together in implementing the directive," Bass said.
Ellen Miller, executive director and co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation
in Washington, said that the new orders demonstrate "the seriousness of
the administration's commitment to data transparency and citizen engagement. It is evidence that the administration recognizes
that transparency is government's responsibility."
Orszag said that the Internet has made government transparency efforts much easier. Although an agency could require that
people visit their offices to review public records, he said, that would be "much less transparent than posting something
on a Web site."
"Ease of access is part of transparency," Orszag said.
Obama Tells Prison to Take Detainees
WASHINGTON — In ordering the federal government to acquire an Illinois prison to house
terrorism suspects who are currently held at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, President Obama on Tuesday took a major step toward
shutting down the military detention facility that its detractors say had become a potent recruitment tool for Al Qaeda.
But even before White House officials had released a letter informing Gov. Patrick
J. Quinn of Illinois of the plans to send a “limited number” of Guantánamo detainees
to the Thomson Correctional Center, an empty super-maximum-security prison in northwestern Illinois, Republicans were gearing
for what could be an emotional fight on Capitol Hill.
“The administration has failed to explain how transferring terrorists to Gitmo North will
make Americans safer than keeping terrorists off of our shores in the secure facility in Cuba,” Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, said in a statement. Representative
John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader,
told reporters he would not vote to “spend one dime to move those prisoners to the U.S.”
Administration officials acknowledged that the move would require Congressional approval, since
Congress now bars Guantánamo detainees from being brought onto American soil unless they face prosecution, and some of the
detainees may be indefinitely confined without being tried. But one administration official said that Democrats, who control
both houses, were planning to lift that restriction if the administration came up with an acceptable plan for closing the
military prison at Guantánamo.
Mr. Obama declared shortly after his inauguration that he would close the facility — a
signature component of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy — within a year. But dealing with the
detainees at the prison has proved difficult, and he has acknowledged that he will most likely miss that deadline.
The officials, speaking on grounds of anonymity under White House rules, said that they had
not yet determined how many Guantánamo detainees would be sent to Thomson, nor have they set a timetable for moving them there.
But several administration officials put the probable number of transferred detainees at about 100.
There are currently about 210 detainees at Guantánamo, administration officials said. Since
Mr. Obama took office, about 30 inmates have been transferred to other countries, and administration officials have said they
hope that 100 more prisoners may also be sent overseas.
The officials said they plan to prosecute more than 40 of the remaining detainees in either
military or civilian courts. Five have already been designated to face military commissions and five will be tried in civilian courts, including Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, the chief planner of the 2001 attacks, who will face trial in New York.
As many as several dozen prisoners would be held in indefinite detention in a category the Obama
administration refers to as “law of war” detainees — those deemed ineligible for prosecution but too dangerous
to release. Though the administration has not yet identified who would be included in that category, lawyers for many of the
detainees have filed habeas corpus petitions in federal
court challenging their detention.
Addressing critics’ concerns that those prisoners could be freed inside the United States,
administration officials said that if any of the habeas appeals succeeded, the detainees would be transferred out of the country
or brought to trial.
White House officials said moving terrorism suspects to Illinois would not put Americans at
risk. They walked through a list of upgrades that the Thomson prison will get — an additional security perimeter among
them — and added that the move would also bring an additional 3,000 jobs.
Most of the prison would house ordinary high-security inmates, but a part would be leased to
the Defense Department to hold the terrorism suspects. Administration officials said in a conference call with reporters that
the two parts of the facility would be managed separately.
In the letter to Governor Quinn, the administration promised that federal inmates at Thomson
would not interact with Guantánamo detainees.
“Not only will this help address the urgent overcrowding problem at our nation’s
Federal prisons, but it will also help achieve our goal of closing the detention center at Guantánamo in a timely, secure,
and lawful manner,” said the letter, signed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates,
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
It was not immediately clear how the government would pay for the prison and the required upgrades,
but White House officials have floated the idea of including financing for it in the 2010 military appropriations bill.
The decision to move the detainees to the United States generated criticism from both sides
of the political aisle. Senator John Cornyn, Republican
of Texas, called it “deeply troubling” in a statement. “This move will put our citizens in unnecessary danger,”
he said, “and that is unjustifiable and unacceptable.”
From the left, Amnesty International was equally critical. “The only thing that President Obama is doing with this announcement is changing the ZIP
code of Guantánamo,” said Tom Parker, Amnesty International USA policy director.
“The detainees who are currently scheduled to be relocated to Thomson have not been charged
with any crime,” Mr. Parker said. “In seven years, the U.S. government, including the C.I.A. and F.B.I.,
have not produced any evidence against these individuals that can be taken into a court of law.”
Earlier proposals to move detainees to Kansas, Michigan and South Carolina have been rejected
by local political leaders. The difficulty in finding a place to move them is a significant reason the Obama administration
has been unable to keep Mr. Obama’s pledge to close the Cuban prison by next month.
Earlier this year, lawmakers barred the Obama administration from releasing any Guantánamo prisoners
into the country. More recently, Congress kept in place the ban on releasing them in the United States, but authorized transfers
for prosecution to military or civilian courts, though it required a 45-day notice of all such moves.
President Obama gives feds half day off on Christmas
Eve
By Tom ShoopDecember 12, 2009
President Obama ordered late Friday that all federal agencies close for the last half of the
work day on Thursday, Dec. 24, to give employees a jump on the Christmas holiday.
In an executive
order, Obama also noted that the heads of departments and agencies may determine
that "certain offices and installations of their organizations, or parts thereof, must remain open and that certain employees
must remain on duty for the full scheduled workday" on Christmas Eve.
Traditionally, presidents grant employees an extra day of vacation when Christmas falls on Tuesday
or Thursday. This year it is on a Friday.
Last year, when Christmas fell on a Thursday,
President Bush ordered executive branch agencies to close on the next day, Friday, Dec. 26, giving
most federal employees a four-day weekend over the Christmas holiday.
The last time Christmas fell on a Friday, in 1998, President Clintongave federal workers a half day off. At that time, a White House spokesman said the half day was something of a tradition in years when Christmas falls
on a Friday.
In 2002, when Christmas fell on a Wednesday, Bush gave federal workers a half day of vacation
on Tuesday.
TODAY: Senior Administration Officials to Hold Background Briefing
Call on Decision to Acquire Thomson Correctional Center;
Quinn, Durbin to be Briefed at the White House
WASHINGTON – Today, senior administration officials will
hold a background briefing call with reporters to discuss the administration’s
decision to acquire Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois to house federal
inmates and a limited number of detainees from Guantanamo Bay , Cuba .
Today, the Secretaries of State, Homeland Security, and Defense, the Director of National
Intelligence, and the Attorney General wrote to Illinois GovernorPat Quinn announcing the administration’s
decision. Today’s announcement marks an important step towards
closing Guantanamo, which will protect our national security and help American
troops by removing a deadly recruiting tool from the hands of al Qaeda.
This afternoon, Governor Pat Quinn and Senator Dick Durbin will be briefed at the White House about the decision by General
James Jones, National Security
Advisor; William Lynn, Deputy Secretary of Defense; and Harley Lappin,
the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The meeting will be closed press but there will be a stakeout immediately
following the meeting.
Details about the background call and the stakeout are
below.
BACKGROUND BRIEFING CALL WITH REPORTERS
WHO: Senior Administration
Officials
WHAT: Background Briefing call on
the Administration’s Decision to Acquire Thomson Prison
WHEN: TODAY, 1:00 pm ET
Call in:
(800) 288-8976
Note: This
call is NOT embargoed.
STAKEOUT WITH GOVERNOR QUINN,
SENATOR DURBIN, ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS FOLLOWING WHITE HOUSE MEETING ON
THOMSON
WHO: Illinois Governor
Pat Quinn
Senator Dick Durbin
General James Jones, National Security
Advisor
William Lynn, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Harley Lappin, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons
WHAT:
Stakeout following briefing on Thomson prison
WHEN: TODAY, 3:15 pm ET
WHERE: Stakeout location outside of West Wing
Note: Press needing access to the White House to cover the stakeout must send their
vital information and RSVP to media_affairs@who.eop.gov by 1:30 pm ET today.
Rural Ill. prison to house some Gitmo detainees
Decision is key step to closing Cuba facility; town hopes for jobs boon
WASHINGTON - Taking
an important step on the thorny path to closing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the White House plans to announce Tuesday that the government will acquire an underutilized state
prison in rural Illinois to be the new home for a limited number of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo.
Administration officials
as well as Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will make an official announcement at the White House.
Officials from both
the White House and Durbin's office confirmed that President Barack Obama had directed the government to acquire Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a sleepy town near the Mississippi River about 150 miles from Chicago. The officials
spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting Tuesday's announcement.
A Durbin aide said
the facility would house federal inmates and no more than 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
The facility in Thomson
had emerged as a clear front-runner after Illinois officials, led by Durbin, enthusiastically embraced the idea of turning
a near-dormant prison over to federal officials.
The White House has
been coy about its selection process, but on Friday a draft memo leaked to a conservative Web site that seemed to indicate
officials were homing in on Thomson.
The Thomson Correctional
Center was one of several potential sites evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to potentially house detainees from the
Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay. Officials with other prisons, including Marion, Ill., Hardin, Mont., and Florence, Colo.,
have said they would welcome the jobs that would be created by the new inmates.
Closing Guantanamo
is a top priority for Obama, and he signed an executive order hours into his presidency directing that the process of closing
the prison begin. Obama has said he wants terrorism suspects transferred to American soil so they can be tried for their suspected
crimes.
The Thomson Correctional
Center was built by Illinois in 2001 as a state prison with the potential to house maximum security inmates. Local officials
hoped it would improve the local economy, providing jobs to a hard-hit community. State budget problems, however, have kept
the 1,600-cell prison from ever fully opening. At present, it houses about 200 minimum-security inmates.
Obama has faced some
resistance to the idea of housing terrorism suspects in the United States, but in Thomson many have welcomed the prospect
as a potential economic engine. Thomson Village President Jerry Hebeler, was asleep when the word came that Thomson had been
chosen.
"It's news to me,
but then I'm always the last to know anything," Hebeler said Monday night of the news affecting his town of 450 residents.
"It'll be good for the village and the surrounding area, especially with all the jobs that have been lost here."
But Hebeler said
he wouldn't rejoice until "the ink is on the paper" because previous plans for increased use of the nearly empty prison have
fallen through.
Some Illinois officials
have not supported the idea. GOP Rep. Mark Kirk, who is seeking Obama's old Senate seat, said he believes moving Guantanamo
detainees to Illinois will make the state a greater threat for terrorist attacks. Kirk has lobbied other officials to contact
the White House in opposition to using the facility.
To be sure, Thomson
will not solve all the administration's Guantanamo-related problems. There still will be dozens of detainees who are not relocated
to Thomson, other legal issues and potential resistance from Congress.
Thomson is a symbolic
step, however, a clear sign that the United States is working to find a new place to hold detainees from Guantanamo.
President Barack Obama owes a lot to the unions. It’s no secret that labor spent
massively on his behalf during the presidential election last year and directed a tsunami of voters to the polls. Union foot
soldiers helped make the difference for him in places like Ohio and other hard-hat-rich swing states. While the president
has already moved on several union-friendly initiatives, time is running out on what may be a one-time opportunity to pass
a cherished labor goal, the Employee Free Choice Act.
But the president faces a conundrum. To get EFCA passed, he must lean on some of the same politically imperiled
moderate Democratic Senators he’s pressuring now to approve a health care overhaul — and whose votes may be needed
for climate change legislation as well.
By soliciting their support for EFCA, he will expose himself and them to an all-hands-on-deck campaign —
teeming with negative ads — from the business community.
Little could be closer to the hearts of union leaders than the “card check” bill, which labor
leaders view as an act of simple justice that would also grow their membership by making it easier unionize workplaces. With
a Democratic president and Democrats in control of both the House and the Senate, union operatives want a vote ASAP, before
the political season heats up. The game is in the Senate, where EFCA backers are probably just a few votes short of the 60
they need to overcome a filibuster.
Top union officials say they believe Senate leaders are willing to move on card check early next year, after
Congress acts on the health bill and a jobs bill. They expect Obama to help make the fight.
“Obviously it’s a priority for us,” one veteran union operative said. “We’re
going to say to the White House, ‘Remember when you said you would do EFCA when health care is done? Well, now health
care is done.’”
Obama’s commitment to the legislation was spelled out in an appearance before the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia
on April 2, 2008, when he was still slugging it out with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
“If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union, it’s that simple,” Obama
said. “Let’s stand up to the business lobby that’s been getting their friends in Washington to block card
check. I’ve fought to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate. And I will make it the law of the land when I’m
president of the United States of America.”
Labor officials have been in intensive discussions with Senate Democratic leaders about the issue. According
to one labor source, union presidents will huddle with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday, and card check, along
with the health care bill now on the Senate floor, will be on the agenda.
Democratic aides seem unsure of the timing for the bill, despite the expectations of labor sources.
There will be an “awful busy start to next year,” a senior Democratic leadership aide said. The
unions “have a long list of ideas that they want,” he said.
Reid’s office was not willing to publicly commit to a date. “The Employee Free Choice Act remains
a top priority for Senator Reid, but he has not scheduled any specific time to begin debating the bill,” a Reid spokesman
said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a liberal who is close to the unions, said he thought a measure could get through
early in the year, asserting that Democrats need “only one or two votes” to get to 60.
One of those votes is Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), a moderate facing a tough battle for re-election. Obama
must have her support to pass health overhaul — a difficult vote for her — and he will be stretching her even
further politically by asking her to support card check.
Business lobbyists will focus on her and others they may be able to pick off, and they plan to play hardball.
“We will take no prisoners when it comes to lobbying the Senators we need to lobby, and they know who
they are,” said Randel Johnson, chief labor lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The business community
will go to the mat on the Employee Free Choice Act whenever it is scheduled,” he said.
Business officials believe they have a wider target than the “one or two” votes seen by Brown.
Included along with Lincoln on the list are Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.).
White House officials declined to comment.
“The expectation is that the White House will support this,” one top union lobbyist said.
Statements by OPM and OMB
on President Obama's Signing of an Executive Order Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services
From U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry
"Today, President Obama launched a new era of relations between workers and managers inside the Federal government.
His Executive Order Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services signals a new day for
collaboration and cooperation within government. By directing all agencies to sit down with their elected labor representatives,
we are restarting a collaborative process begun under the Clinton administration that yielded concrete improvements in agency
performance.
"I look forward to serving as a co-chair of the strong new National Council on Federal Labor-Management
Relations created by the executive order. This Council will work with leaders from the labor and manager communities
and the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that agencies and managers fully involve their workers and the workers'
elected representatives throughout decision-making processes. Together, we will create work environments where everyone
is heard and the best ideas for making government work better are brought to the fore and put into action.
"Our workers are our greatest asset, and we must unleash their energy and creativity to overcome the great
challenges our nation faces. This executive order begins to accomplish that goal by creating new space for collaboration
and cooperation between Federal workers and managers."
From Jeffrey Zients, Federal Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director for Management at the White
House Office of Management and Budget
"The President is committed to shaping the federal government to be more effective and efficient in providing
services to the American people. A key component of this effort is improving how labor and management work together.
The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations and the affiliated forums at federal agencies will provide venues
for all sides to work toward a stronger, more effective federal government.
"I look forward to co-chairing the Council with Director Berry and advancing the President's priorities."
For feds, more get 6-figure salaries
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
The number of federal workers earning six-figure
salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000
or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime
pay and bonuses are counted.
Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary
boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.
The highest-paid federal employees are doing
best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December
2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.
When the recession started, the Transportation
Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above
$170,000.
The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring
throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises
and new salary rules.
"There's no way to justify this to the American
people. It's ridiculous," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce
subcommittee.
Jessica Klement, government affairs director
for the Federal Managers Association, says the federal workforce is highly paid because the government employs skilled people
such as scientists, physicians and lawyers. She says federal employees make 26% less than private workers for comparable jobs.
USA TODAY analyzed the Office of Personnel Management's database that tracks salaries of more
than 2 million federal workers. Excluded from OPM's data: the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, intelligence agencies
and uniformed military personnel.
The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed
the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.
Key reasons for the boom in six-figure salaries:
• Pay hikes. Then-president
Bush recommended — and Congress approved — across-the-board raises of 3% in January 2008 and 3.9% in January 2009.
President Obama has recommended 2% pay raises in January 2010, the smallest since 1975. Most federal workers also get longevity
pay hikes — called steps — that average 1.5% per year.
•New pay system. Congress created
a new National Security Pay Scale for the Defense Department to reward merit, in addition to the across-the-board increases.
The merit raises, which started in January 2008, were larger than expected and rewarded high-ranking employees. In October,
Congress voted to end the new pay scale by 2012.
• Paycaps eased.
Many top civil servants are prohibited from making more than an agency's leader. But if Congress lifts the boss' salary, others
get raises, too. When theFederal Aviation Administration chief's salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees' had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too.
U.S. Attorney General Goes to N.Y. for Meetings on 9/11 Trials
Amid significant concern about security arrangements for the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Attorney GeneralEric
H. Holder Jr. made an unannounced visit on Wednesday to federal prosecutors and law enforcement
officials in New York.
Mr. Holder went to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the United States attorney’s office
and the adjacent federal court in Lower Manhattan, where Mr. Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind behind the Sept.
11 attacks, and four other 9/11 detainees will be tried, just blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood.
He met with security officials, including Raymond W. Kelly,
the city’s police commissioner, and Joseph M. Demarest Jr., the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, “to discuss coordination, cooperation and security for the potential upcoming
trials of the 9/11 terrorists,” said Special Agent Richard Kolko, an F.B.I. spokesman in New York.
Mr. Holder’s visit, and the range of people he huddled with, reflected the government’s
seriousness in approaching the as-yet-unscheduled trials and their potential to wreak havoc on a city battered by terrorism
plots, successful and not.
Once the Justice Department announced on Nov. 13 that it was bringing its case to Manhattan, the Police
Department began formulating plans for “security around the venue itself, and protection of the city,” including
its bridges, transit system and landmarks, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.
William T. Morris, a deputy chief in the department’s Criminal Justice Bureau, is collecting
information for Mr. Kelly from sectors like the Intelligence Division and the Counterterrorism Bureau, which oversees the
more than 100 detectives assigned to work with the F.B.I. on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
There will be the usual physical security elements, including roadway checkpoints, patrol officers
in the streets and snipers on rooftops. There will be unseen elements, too: plainclothes officers mingling with crowds. Protection
for the prosecutors, witnesses and the judge will also be factored in, officials said.
While the entire operation will be similar to the deployment for a New Year’s
Eve celebration, the difference this time is it will have to be sustained over months or more,
officials said.
Mr. Kelly has told the Justice Department that the costs for security operations, including paying
officers’ overtime, are expected to exceed the initial minimum estimate of $75 million.
When Senator Charles S. Schumer asked Mr. Holder in a Nov. 18 hearing in Washington if he would recommend
that the president include money in the federal budget for the city’s
extra security costs, the attorney general said, “New York should not bear the burden alone.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Holder also met with officials from the federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States
Marshals Service and federal prosecutors from Virginia, where Zacarias Moussaoui
was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 for his role in the Qaeda conspiracy.
“He was in New York to meet with the prosecution team working on the 9/11 case,” Matthew
A. Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Holder, said after the meetings. “There is broad agreement that we can safely and securely
hold these trials.”
Federal inmate killed during fight at W.Va. prison
A federal prison in northern West Virginia remains locked down a day after an inmate was fatally stabbed
during a fight.
Rodney Myers, a spokesman for the U.S. Penitentiary at Hazelton, said 26-year-old inmate Jimmy Lee Wilson
was pronounced dead at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. The lockdown remained in effect Monday evening.
Guantanamo Bay: depressed US towns battle to house detainees in 'Gitmo North'
Several blighted US towns are battling for the right to host Guantanamo Bay terror detainees in their own
backyards in an unusual case of reverse "nimbyism".
The strategy of requesting the Islamic extremists accused of some of the world's worst atrocities, including
the attacks of Sept 11 2001, as neighbours may seem perverse.
But local officials hope they will land a bonanza of jobs and investment by offering up their empty prisons
as President Barack Obama tries to close the infamous prison camp, on a US naval base on Cuba nicknamed "Gitmo".
In the process, they have thrust themselves on to the frontline of a fierce national debate as Republicans
accuse the Obama administration of endangering national security with plans to house and try terror suspects on US soil.
Amid the watermelon fields along the banks of the Mississippi River, the Illinois village of Thomson - down
to about 450 residents after business and stores closed - has emerged as a strong contendor for "Gitmo North".
Federal officials last week visited an almost empty high-security 1,600-cell prison there that has rarely
housed any inmates since it was completed for $128 million in 2001. The Bureau of Prisons and Department of Defence would
upgrade it to the standards of a "supermax" - as the country's most secure federal jail is called - if it is chosen.
The state's Democratic governor and senior senator have said that the moving the prisoners there could create
more than 3,000 jobs in the area - including 900 at the prison itself. htat sounds highly attractive to many residents. "We're
hurting here, hurting bad," said village president Jerry Hebeler.
But Republicans have raised the spectre of attempted rescues of inmates by fellow Islamisists and retaliatory
attacks on the skyscrapers and airport of Chicago, 150 miles to the west, as well as disputing the benefits for local coffers.
Federal officials have also visited a prison about to close in the economically-striken Michigan city of Standish,
where the jobless rate stands at 18 per cent. Michael Moran, the city manager, has little time for those opposed to re-locating
Guantanamo detainees. "We already have unemployment figures of the level of the Great Depression and we are losing the jobs
of 500 prison guards and yet we still get some people trying to stoke up fears," he told The Sunday Telegraph.
"I am a former corrections officer and a former military policeman and I am sure that there are no security
fears. It's unfounded scaremongering."
In Big Horn County in Montana, officials in Hardin are proposing their pristine new detention centre - empty
for two years - as an ideal site to locate the prisoners, arguing that their remote location in "cowboy country" is another
plus. Unemployment here is above 10 per cent.
And another Illinois town, Marion, has also made a bid for the detainees. "Bring them on," said Mayor Robert
Butler, hoping to reduce an unemployment rate just below 10 per cent.
Florence, home to the country's only current federal "supermax", has made a pitch too. But the prison would
probably only have space for the "worst of the worst" - such as self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who
is due to be put on trial in New York - as it already houses the likes of British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, the Unabomber
Theodore Kacynski, and other convicted Islamic terrorists.
Mr Obama admitted publicly last week that the deadline he set for closing Guantanamo Bay - Jan 22 2010, a
year after he took office - will be missed. One of the prime problems has been overcoming opposition in Congress to moving
detainees to the US mainland, so selecting an appropriate site is key to his strategy.
The camp is currently home to about 215 prisoners. If Mr Obama has his way, up to 100 could be transferred
for detention and later trial in the US, while the remainder would be cleared for transfer overseas, so long as countries
willing to accept them can be found.
As the debate rages, the residents of the competing towns are not the only interested parties - so are the
detainees in Cuba, for they know one thing is certain if they are moved. Their conditions will be a lot less comfortable,
and not just because of less clement climes of the main contendors for Gitmo North.
For while Guantanamo Bay may be the world's most notorious prison, life behind the barbed wire there has never
been better.
During a recent visit, the DVD in the recreational room was loaded with Spiderman 3, ready for an afternoon
viewing, while others detainees prepared to play football outside on a pitch built at their request Lunch was served with
the usual daily choice of six menus, all Middle Eastern and following halal rules of preparation. Fresh supplies of dates,
olive oil, honey and pita bread are also on offer.
Detainees spend at least two hours out in the Caribbean sun every day and have access to a library of 16,000
books, 1,600 magazines and 300 DVDs - Agatha Christie is surprisingly popular, although tomes on the Islamic faith are in
most demand. In every cell there is an arrow pointing towards Mecca, a prayer rug and beads; there is one medical member of
staff for every three detainees, After it was opened in Jan 2002 by then president George W Bush to receive suspected members
of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Guantanamo quickly bacame a symbol of detainee abuse and detention without charge and a stain
on America's reputation.
Now, incredible though it may sound, camp officials say that hardcore detainees, who are certain they will
never be free men, would rather stay in Guantanamo than spend a life sentence, or years waiting for execution, in the US.
"They know there will not receive the same privileges as here," Zak, an Arab American appointed in 2005 to
liaise with the exclusively Muslim detainees, told The Sunday Telegraph. "Given the choice of being sentenced forever in Guantanamo
or moved to supermax, it is 'No, can I stay in Gitmo?'. Here they can be outside, they can smell the sea."
By contrast, prisoners at the Florence "supermax" spend 22― hours a day in a 9ft by 9ft cell. The only natural
light comes from a 4in by 4ft window that only shows the sky, in order to prevent the prisoner from knowing his specific location
within the complex. Exercise time is strictly limited.
It took years for the Pentagon to grasp what damage conditions at Guantanamo were doing to America's reputation.
But Adm Thomas Copeman, the detention centre's commander, now confidently describes it as a "model detention facility".
Peter King, a Republican congressman who visited earlier this year and wants Mr Obama to keep the faciltiy
open, said that "if there's any scandal at Guantanamo, it is that the detainees are treated too well". It is, he complained
"a Club Med for terrorists".
Federal plan could bring 3,000 jobs to Thomson area
THOMSON, Ill. — When the Savanna Army Depot closed in 2000 and took 450 federally
funded jobs with it, the jobs were supposed to be replaced with jobs from a new state prison to be built on the site.
Instead, the prison was built down the road in Thomson, and most of the jobs have never been created
because the prison has been sitting mostly vacant since its completion in 2001.
Diane Komiskey, executive director of the Jo-Carroll Depot Local Redevelopment Authority, said a proposal
to sell the Thomson prison to the federal government for use as a federal penitentiary and terrorist detainee operation would
mean the return of federal dollars — and much-needed jobs — to the area, bringing the closing of the Army depot
full-circle.
“And it is long past time to close that circle,” she said.
The Obama administration has estimated that the plan could create more than 3,000 jobs and have an
economic impact of $1 billion over four years.
Up to 1,500 military and civilian Department of Defense employees would be part of the detainee operation,
and the Federal Bureau of Prisons would have 800 to 900 people running the federal side of the prison. Beyond that, more jobs
could be created through businesses that will serve the prison and the employees who move to the area to work and live.
Komiskey said federal officials expect prison employees would live within a one-hour radius of the
prison, which includes several cities in Illinois and Iowa, including the Quad-Cities.
In addition to jobs created by increased demand for goods and services in those communities,
the prison also could create more jobs by contracting with local businesses for services such as food delivery, building
supplies, office supplies, waste removal, equipment maintenance and specialty medical services, said Ed Ross, a spokesman
for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Jonathan Whitney, publisher of Thomson’s local newspaper, The Carroll County Review, said while
he expects most of the employees who would come to work at the prison will live in other communities, enough may relocate
to Thomson to provide a boost to local restaurants, gas stations or service businesses.
He said he does not expect a major development of new businesses or a change to Thomson’s small-town
atmosphere.
“The way of life here won’t be destroyed,” he said.
Dawn Burkholder, owner of Dian’s Original Grooming, said she has a real estate license she hasn’t
had much use for in Thomson in recent years.
She said the jobs created by the opening of the prison would benefit her dog-grooming business and
the real estate business and she did not agree with those who oppose the prison plan because of concerns about safety.
“Let’s face it, this area needs the jobs,” she said. “It would be silly not
to embrace employment in this area.”
Bruce Thomas, district manager for Allied Waste Services in Clinton, Iowa, said his company already
has a waste removal contract with the Thomson Correctional Center, which currently houses 200 medium-security prisoners for
the state. He said it was difficult to estimate how much more business his company would get if it is awarded a contract to
serve the prison if the federal government takes over.
The city of Pekin has benefited from the federal prison located there, said Bill Fleming, executive
director of the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce.
Fleming said the prison, which includes a medium-security unit for men and a minimum-security unit
for women, has been a good corporate partner with the city since it opened in 1994.
While some politicians and local residents have expressed concern about the Thomson prison plan to
send terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Thomson prison, Fleming said Pekin residents also expressed concerns
about the safety before the prison there was built.
“(Now), I don’t think you could find a person in town who would think it was a bad thing,”
he said.
Doug Wiersema, president and CEO of the Rock Falls Chamber of Commerce, said opening the Thomson prison
could have economic benefits in his city, particularly for businesses that could bid for contracts with the prison. Wiersema
said he was dismayed at how some politicians have reacted to the plan.
“The disappointment in this whole thing is that this has become one more political football,”
he said. “Quite honestly, that stinks. That’s why nothing gets done in this country.”
Several economic development leaders in the area said they think they have adequate housing in the
area to support any increase in need, while Komiskey said there is land at the former Army Depot site suitable to build housing,
commercial or industrial developments needed to support the prison.
Steve Clark, chief of the master planning division at the Rock Island Arsenal, said any military personnel
stationed at the prison would be eligible to participate in an Arsenal program that leases homes in the community for military
personnel to use.
Clark said the Arsenal leases about 50 homes in the Iowa and Illinois Quad-Cities, more than enough
to meet its current needs.
Komiskey said she asked federal officials who visited Thomson recently if there was anything the community
needed to support the prison that didn’t already exist and was told the community has everything the prison would need.
She said talk of the jobs and money the federal takeover of the prison would bring to the community
has created an “exciting time,” she knows nothing has been decided yet.
“I’m urging people to be cautious,” she said.
Projected economic impact of federal prison plan
Within three years, the plan could create 3,170 to 3,870 jobs in a seven-county area — Carroll, Whiteside,
Jo Daviess, Lee and Rock Island counties in Illinois and Clinton and Jackson counties in Iowa.
About 80 percent of the jobs created by the prison would be in Illinois.
The Department of Defense would operate 25 percent of the facility and employ 1,000 to 1,500 people. One-third
of those would be civilian government employees or private contractors earning $80,000 to $90,000 per year. The rest would
be military personnel. The Department of Defense expects few of its direct-hire employees will come from the local area.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons would operate 75 percent of the facility and have 900 employees, half of them
corrections officers. Corrections officers are expected to earn $82,000 in the first year, including benefits. Other staff
would earn about $93,000 in the first year.
The Department of Defense projects there would be about 200 outside visitors at the facility on any given
day, including attorneys and media. The Bureau of Prisons projects about 100 visitors per day once the facility is fully operational
in its third year. The visitors are expected to inject $3 million a year into the local economy.
Durbin to host briefing on sending Guantanamo detainees to Illinois
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) will host a closed-door briefing with his state’s congressional
delegation on Wednesday about sending Guantanamo detainees to an Illinois prison.
Durbin invited his state’s
19 House members and Sen. Roland Burris (D) to the lawmaker-only briefing, according to an e-mail obtained by The Hill.
The
briefing was organized to garner information about sending detainees held in Guantanamo to Thomson State Correctional facility
in Northwest Illinois.
The Obama administration is looking at buying the nearly empty Thomson Correctional Center in western Illinois
to use as a maximum security prison for Guantanamo detainees.
Those invited to the briefing hosted by Durbin were advised
that Pentagon and Justice Department officials will be on hand along with Illinois state officials “to discuss the state’s
Thomson Correctional Center as a possible site for a new federal maximum security prison which would also house a limited
number of Guantanamo Bay detainees,” according to the e-mail.
Wednesday’s meeting will be the first such
briefing hosted for all 21 Illinois federal elected officials since word spread two weeks ago of the administration’s
interest in transferring Guantanamo inmates to Illinois.
Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn (Ill.) were quick to support the
plan under consideration by the administration when officials from the Defense Department and federal Bureau of Prisons toured
the facility in mid-November.
GOP lawmakers from Illinois led by Rep. Mark Kirk, who is currently running for the senate
seat being vacated by Burris in 2010, howled in protest. Kirk and fellow GOP Illinois Reps. Aaron Schock, Pete Roskam, Tim
Johnson, Mark Kirk, John Shimkus, Judy Biggert and Don Manzullo introduced legislation to ban funding the transfer of detainees
from Guantanamo to the U.S.
Durbin and Quinn have maintained that selling off the little-used brand new state prison
facility would bring jobs to an area devastated by the economy.
Stupak touches on prison issues during healthcare-centered town hall
STANDISH -- Rep. Bart Stupak (D - Menominee) was in Standish Monday night to discuss healthcare legislation
passed in the United States House of Representatives, but Standish Max wasn't left out of the night's dialogue.
He said when it comes to the federal government using the empty prison as a replacement for Guantanamo Bay
or to hold federal prisoners in general, the issue isn't progressing.
"There's never been a proposal," Stupak said. "There's never been a plan offered."
The Congressman also addressed some of the rumors circulating about eminent domain were the feds to purchase
the facility. He said the prison and the surrounding area are property of the state of Michigan, and would be so until a federal
department makes an offer to buy or lease the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility.
Also, Stupak talked about a prison in Thomson, Ill. that is now being targeted as a Gitmo replacement, saying
it has "a lot of momentum right now." Officials in reports have said this location would provide about 3,000 jobs, however,
the number put forth by officials in Standish, who said they got the number from Department of Defense officials, was 1,000.
Stupak said both of these numbers are unfounded, since no proposal has been put forth for either prison.
But he said he's still hoping the Federal Bureau of Prisons, one government agency represented at an Aug.
13 site visit of the prison, will respond to a letter he sent it.
"I reminded them that we still have a prison you're (BOP) very impressed with," Stupak said.
Healthcare
While the Standish Max dilemma received attention, the night belonged to healthcare. Most who stepped up to
the microphones at the town hall expressed dissatisfaction with the House Bill, H.R. 3962, which was recently sent to the
United States Senate.
Most opposed said they were upset with the bill's passage and concerned it would lead to higher taxes and
ultimately be a failed government program. Comments ranged from people expressing anger about paying for "deadbeats" and others
said countries that have national healthcare programs, such as Canada and England, are learning the systems are seriously
flawed. Some who were opposed to the passage acknowledged that healthcare needed to be fixed, but said other methods like
fixing problems with medical malpractice lawsuits and letting people purchase insurance across state lines.
Stupak also presented a slide show presentation prior to fielding questions. During the slide presentation,
he said H.R. 3962 would provide insurance to 50,000 people in Michigan's First Congressional District and 1,100 families could
avoid bankruptcy, amongst other things.
Inmates Assault Guards at Federal Prison in Inez
Three guards at the Big Sandy Federal Prison in Inez were assaulted by
four inmates during a routine search of an inmate housing unit.
Philip Heffington, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, tells WSAZ.com that the
incident happened about 2:00 p.m. Sunday. He says additional staff responded and quickly contained the situation.
Heffington says the three guards were taken to a local hospital for treatment and later released. He says
the four inmates involved in the assault were not hurt.
The prison was placed in lock down following the incident.
The F.B.I. was notified and an investigation into the incident is underway
Dodd, DeLauro to Offer Emergency H1N1 Sick Days Bill
Dr. Anne Schuchat, an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
testified that the CDC advises people to stay home from work for three to five days if they come down with swine flu. The
organization encourages employers to institute flexible leave policies ‘so it’s easy for your employees to do
the right thing.’
Two leading members of Congress on the issue of employee leave will team up
to write a bill that would provide paid time off for workers who contract the H1N1 flu.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut and chair of the Senate health subcommittee on children and
families, announced at a hearing Tuesday, November 10, that he and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, intend to formally introduce
the legislation in coming weeks.
He and DeLauro portrayed paid sick leave as the best way for workers to follow government directives
to stay home if they fall ill.
“This isn’t just a workers’ rights issue—it’s a public health emergency,”
said Dodd, who was the author of the Family and Medical Leave Act. “Families shouldn’t have to choose between
staying healthy and making ends meet.”
Dr. Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and an official at the Center for Disease Control
and Prevention, testified that the CDC advises people to stay home from work for three to five days if they come down with
swine flu.
The organization encourages employers to institute flexible leave policies “so it’s
easy for your employees to do the right thing,” Schuchat said.
But DeLauro argued that 57 million workers lack paid sick days and “following this critical
advice is virtually impossible for far too many Americans right now.”
The Dodd-DeLauro measure will be based on a bill, the Healthy Families Act , that DeLauro unveiled
earlier this year. At the Senate hearing, Deputy Labor Secretary Seth Harris said the Obama administration supports HFA.
Like that proposal, the emergency legislation will provide up to seven paid sick days for workers
who contract H1N1 flu—also known as swine flu—or who need to care for a sick child.
The bill will be an alternative to an emergency sick days measure introduced on November 3 by
Rep. George Miller, D-California and chair of the House Education and Labor Committee. Miller’s bill would provide five
days of leave.
Another key difference between the two is that under Miller’s bill, the sick days would
go into effect if an employer tells a worker to go home or stay home. Under the Dodd/DeLauro bill, an employee would decide
when to use the days.
Both bills would go into effect within weeks of being signed into law and would sunset after two
years.
DeLauro, a critic of the Miller bill, said that her and Dodd’s measure hews to the “core
principals” of the Healthy Families Act and will gain the backing of the same 121 House members and 21 senators who
have co-sponsored HFA.
“I think we will get substantial support because we have substantial support for the Healthy
Families Act right now,” DeLauro said in an interview.
A hearing witness representing the Society for Human Resource Management, however, cautioned that
the bill poses potential burdens for companies.
“SHRM has strong concerns with the one-size-fits-all mandate encompassed in the Healthy
Families Act,” said Elissa O’Brien, vice president of human resources at Wingate Healthcare in Needham, Massachusetts.
“At a time when employers are facing unprecedented challenges, imposing a costly paid leave mandate on employers could
easily result in additional job loss or cuts in other important employee benefits.”
O’Brien’s organization provides its 4,000 employees with up to 33 days of paid leave
each year that they can use for any purpose. A survey of SHRM members this year showed that 81 percent offer some form of
paid leave.
She asserted that the HFA would disrupt paid leave programs if they fail to meet standards outlined
in the bill.
Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming and the ranking member of the Senate health committee, asked DeLauro
whether the bill addressed policies like compensating workers for unused sick time, allowing the use of partial and intermittent
leave, and letting workers carry leave over to the next year.
“Those are the details that can get worked out,” DeLauro said.
Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, testified that companies
with leave programs like Wingate’s would not be affected by HFA.
“We want this to be something that works well for employers and employees,” Ness said.
SHRM is promoting an alternative to HFA that revolves around exempting companies from federal
leave law if they work out flexible leave arrangements with their employees.
Mike Aitken, SHRM director of government relations, is wary of the emergency sick leave proposal.
“It’s not clear how it interacts with current employer policies,” Aitken said.
Quinn, Durbin ridicule GOP
opposition to Gitmo transfers
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Quinn today ridiculed mounting GOP opposition to
President Obama’s plan to transfer inmates from Guantanamo Bay to a near-vacant prison in northwestern Illinois .
Several Illinois lawmakers say the Chicago area would become a terrorist
target if Guantanamo Bay detainees are moved to a prison in Thomson, 150 miles west of Chicago .
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.),
who is running for Obama’s old Senate seat, said he intends to ask Congress to assess potential security risks the move
may pose to O’Hare International Airport and Willis Tower .
“Some of the criticism
about this decision has crossed the line,” Durbin said. “Talking about actual buildings as targets in Chicago
? Please, that doesn’t do any good. Speculation on where the terrorists might strike next, does that really help us
as a nation? I don’t think it does.”
Quinn said Illinoisans have
a duty to support using the near-vacant Thomson Correctional Center as a place to house roughly 100 Guantanamo Bay detainees
who are accused of terrorism.
“We’re not going
to have a bunch of nay-saying congressmen who are fearful lead us astray,” Quinn said. “The he people of Illinois
will do whatever is necessary to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice, and this is part of the job.”
Quinn sidestepped a question
about how much a purchase of Thomson by the federal government might yield the state, though the Chicago Sun-Times was told
over the weekend by a source close to the negotiations the state’s windfall from a sale could approach $200 million.
Any money that might come to
the cash-starved state from a sale of Thomson should be reinvested in statewide construction needs, Quinn said.
“We’d
have to pass a law about the proceeds. But I think something we ought to consider is . . . it’s a long-term capital
expense we had to begin with. We’d probably use that for capital expenditures.”
Officials
to inspect Ill jail for Gitmo inmates
THOMSON, Ill. —
Federal officials are due to arrive in rural northwest Illinois to inspect a prison that could be bought by the federal government
and used to house Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Officials from the Federal Bureau
of Prisons and the Department of Defense are expected Monday at the Thomson Correctional Center . It's about 150 miles west
of Chicago .
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S.
Sen. Dick Durbin say the potential sale could help create about 3,000 jobs in the economically depressed area.
But critics, including Republican
members of Congress from Illinois , have been quick to condemn the prospect of the sale because of safety concerns.
Federal officials are considering
Thomson along with a facility in Florence , Colo. and a site in Hardin , Montana .
Closing Gitmo: Feds Eye State and Military Prisons for Detainees
Officials Expect Dozens Of 'Enemy Combatants' to Be Distributed Across Country
By DEVIN DWYER and JASON RYAN
Nov. 16, 2009—
As the Obama administration's January deadline to close the detention camp at Guantanamo
Bay looms, officials are developing plans for the more than 200 detainees still held there, including their possible distribution
to civilian and military prisons across the country.
Attorney General Eric Holder Friday said
the United States would bring five Gitmo detainees, including four alleged 9/11 conspirators, to New York City to stand trial
in federal court. Holder also said that five suspects would be tried before revamped military commissions.
Roughly 40 to 50 more prisoners from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba will be
transferred to the United States , prosecuted in federal court or before a military tribunal, officials say. And at least
100 detainees have been approved for transfer to other countries.
The United States is actively negotiating additional transfer arrangements in pursuit
of its self-imposed deadline, administration officials said.
That leaves 70 to 80 men considered too dangerous for release but whom the administration
neither plans to charge in federal or military courts nor transfer to foreign countries.
The hope is that all but 10 to 30 of the unresolved cases will eventually be brought for
prosecution or transferred abroad, officials said. A number of Yemeni and Afghan detainees are expected to remain indefinitely
in "enemy combatant" status.
Those prisoners, officials say, will likely be distributed to several prisons and military installations throughout the country with none of the facilities having to completely shoulder the load.
Among the leading state prisons being considered to house detainees is Illinois' Thomson Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison complex 150 miles south of Chicago .
Feds Eye State Prisons for Gitmo Detainees
The Thomson facility has been underutilized since opening in 2001 and state officials,
including Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Richard
"Dick" Durbin, both Democrats, see the chance to house
Gitmo detainees there as an opportunity to create much-needed jobs, both at the prison and in the surrounding area.
Other communities, from the tiny town of Hardin , Mont. , to recession-struck Standish
, Mich. , have also been attracted to the potential economic boost and have actively lobbied the government to bring the high-level
prisoners there.
The Standish City Council
recently passed a unanimous resolution expressing interest in having a federal prison at the Standish Max Correctional facility,
which has faced closure because of budget cuts.
But critics
in Standish and elsewhere across the country have expressed
skepticism about the prospect of their communities becoming the Gitmo detainees' new hometowns.
"There are just too many things that could go wrong," said Tom Kerrins, chief of the Michigan
correction officers union. "The problem I have is ... you almost are putting a bull's-eye on the whole entire area."
In Illinois , GOP Rep. Mark Kirk has warned in a public letter, "We should not invite
Al Qaeda to make Illinois its No. 1 target."
But advocates for the adoption of Gitmo detainees in state prisons point to the federal
maximum-security prison in Marion, Ill., which already houses 35 convicted terror suspects, as proof that such inmates can
be held and at little danger to surrounding communities.
Federal officials have also been considering Colorado 's so-called supermax prison, south
of Denver , for placement of some of the detainees.
The prison is already home to Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Atlanta
Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, 9/ 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef
and failed airline shoe bomber Richard Reid.
U.S. Military Prisons Among Those to Replace Gitmo
Aside from state correctional facilities, the Obama administration is considering a list
of U.S. military bases that could house some of the detainees. Among the options are Camp Pendleton in California , Fort Leavenworth
in Kansas and the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston , S.C.
Representatives from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies
have conducted site visits at the brig in Charleston and consider the military complex a viable option, according to two administration
officials.
Officials had also considered Fort Leavenworth in Kansas but have recently shied away
from that option.
The congressional delegation from Kansas, led by Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Pat
Roberts, R-Kan., has fiercely opposed using the military compound north of Kansas City as home for detainees.
In August, the senators placed legislative holds on Justice Department and Pentagon political
appointees who were awaiting Senate confirmation to force the administration to provide information about its plans and prevent
Leavenworth from being one of the chosen locations.
A month later, the Kansas senators said they had released the holds on the nominees after
discussions with senior administration officials.
"We believe that the administration has a good understanding of obstacles and concerns
and is giving them proper consideration," the senators said in a joint statement. "In a good faith effort to continue moving
this dialogue forward, we are releasing our holds on all Department of Defense and Department of Justice nominees. We are
confident that because of this good faith dialogue, detainees will not be transferred to Fort Leavenworth ."
One major consideration that remains unresolved in the placement process is how state
prisons and military installations will handle staffing of the facility or at courthouses where potential trials would take
place, according to the Justice Department and federal law enforcement officials.
While there have been no specific funding requests
made yet to the federal government, officials said, the cost of holding detainees on U.S. soil is likely to be a matter of
concern for states, many already facing significant
budget crises.
Illinois prison top contender to house Gitmo detainees, official says
Washington (CNN) -- A prison in northern Illinois is the leading contender to house
some detainees transferred from the federal facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two Obama administration officials told CNN
Saturday.
Officials from the department of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security and federal Bureau of Prisons
will be will be visiting the maximum-security Thomson Correctional Center, about 150 miles west of Chicago, on Monday, the
officials said.
Earlier Saturday, a statement from Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn's office said senior Obama administration
officials would be visiting the Thomson prison to see whether the "virtually vacant, state of the art facility" could be of
use to the Bureau of Prisons.
The statement didn't mention the space possibly being utilized for Guantanamo detainees, but said
that overcrowding is a "serious issue and one of the reasons why the Bureau of Prisons is interested in viewing Thomson Correction
Center."
Quinn, whose administration hopes to generate jobs and economic growth in Thomson through the prison,
was scheduled to speak on the visit Monday.
If the Bureau of Prisons purchases the 1,600-cell site, it would operate primarily as a federal
prison and lease a portion of it to the Defense Department to house a limited number of Guantanamo detainees, one Obama administration
official said.
There are about 215 men held by the U.S. military at the Guantanamo prison camp. Among the detainees
are five suspects with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, including accused mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, who will be transferred to New York to go on trial in civilian court,
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.
As part of the conversion at Thomson, the same Obama official added, the Bureau of Prisons and Defense
Department would enhance security measures to exceed those of the nation's only supermax prison -- the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. No inmate has ever escaped
from the prison.
The likelihood of Thomson being tapped to house Guantanamo detainees was first reported by the Chicago
Tribune on Saturday, and sparked immediate concern from critics of the Obama administration.
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, whose district covers suburban Chicago, circulated a letter addressed
to President Obama to Illinois leaders Saturday, opposing the possible transfer of detainees. The letter says that doing so
would turn metropolitan Chicago into "ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization."
As home to Chicago's Willis (formerly Sears) Tower -- the nation's tallest building -- "we should
not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its number one target," said the statement by Kirk, who is running for the same Senate
seat once held by Obama.
"The United States spent more than $50 million to build the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to
keep terrorists away from U.S. soil. Al Qaeda terrorists should stay where they cannot endanger American citizens."
The Obama administration has vowed to close the Guantanamo facility, but acknowledges it is unlikely to happen by its self-imposed January 22, 2010, deadline.
However, one of the two Obama administration officials speaking to CNN Saturday said that, coupled
with the announced transfer of the alleged 9/11 conspirator, the likely developments at the Thomson prison are "good progress"
toward closing the Guantanamo site.
The federal prison system currently houses approximately 340 inmates linked to international terrorism,
including more than 200 tied to international incidents, the other Obama official said.
Of the total number, 35 inmates are housed in federal prisons in Illinois, including
Ali al-Marri, who pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to provide material support to al
Qaeda. Al-Marri is serving eight years and four months at the federal penitentiary in
Marion, Illinois.
A state prison inmate allegedly slashed the throat of one correctional officer and stabbed another in the
cheek with a homemade weapon Wednesday night at the Souza-Baranowksi Correction Center in Shirley after being told he would
be forced to double-bunk with another inmate, according to a union official.
"The inmate is alleging that he was told he would get a single cell when he was released from the segregation unit. ...
When he was told he wasn't on the list...he pulled out a shank and just started stabbing the officers,'' said Steve Kenneway,
president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union.
The officer whose throat was slashed "was dragged to safety by the other officer who was already stabbed; it was a pretty
heroic action,'' said Kenneway, adding that the officers were both released from the hospital early this morning after treatment
for their wounds and were lucky to be alive. Two other correctional officers suffered minor injuries when the inmate allegedly
assaulted them as they removed him from the housing unit, according to officials.
Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, confirmed that four correctional officers were injured during
a confrontation with an inmate and called their injuries "non-life-threatening.''
Citing privacy laws, she would not comment on whether the inmate became enraged after being told he would be forced to
share a cell with another inmate.
Kenneway and a lawyer who heads an agency that provides legal representation to inmates
said the incident was just the latest in a string of violent episodes at the Souza-Baranowski facility since the Patrick administration
made it the state's only maximum-security prison and then, in January, started double-bunking some inmates.
Calling
the prison "out of control,'' Kenneway said, "This policy of double-bunking has caused chaos and this administration is incapable
of admitting it's a bad plan."
Kenneway said there have been 30 to 40 assaults on correctional officers at the Souza-Baranowski
prison since double-bunking began 10 months ago, and that in the first 18 days of October, officers confiscated 75 weapons
from inmates.
The union plans to file a complaint in court to seek an order that would stop double-bunking at the facility,
Kenneway said.
"It's dangerous. It's going to lead to the death of an officer or an inmate or both,'' Kenneway said.
On Oct. 8, an inmate was stabbed 32 times, said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services,
who represents the inmate.
"This facility is full of violence,'' Walker said. "There are a number of people who are fearful they are going to be hurt
while double-bunked or walking down a hallway.''
Wiffin said statistics were not readily available on the number of assaults on officers or inmates at the Souza-Baranowski
facility or the number of weapons confiscated there this year. She told the Globe to file a public records request for statistics.
Wiffin defended the double-bunking plan, calling it "industry standard'' in prisons nationwide.
"Prisons are dangerous places, there are dangerous inmates in them," Wiffin said. She said that a "mission change," which
includes double-bunking at Souza-Baranowski, "has and will continue to result in a decrease in violence department-wide."
The
housing unit where the alleged assault occurred was placed in lockdown Wednesday, Wiffin said. The unit houses 84 inmates,
she said.
Kenneway blasted the department, saying officials should have ordered a prison-wide lockdown to send a message
that violence against officers and staff will not be tolerated.
Obama's pending EO is not only evidence of
LR climate change
By Herb Levine, cyber FEDSŪ Correspondent
HR OBSERVER: The
administration's draft executive order on federal labor
relations has attracted a lot of attention. I thought I'd wait until the EO was actually issued before adding my comments,
but a recent Federal Labor Relations Authority decision changed
my mind.
This seems like a good time to consider what has already changed in the LR climate under the Obama administration,
before we get caught up in the EO.
A new FLRA
Under President
Bush, our reports of FLRA decisions routinely contained the statement: "Member Carol Waller Pope dissented,"
especially when the majority seemed to limit union rights. But Pope is now FLRA chair and new member Ernest DuBester,
who served under President Clinton
as chair of the National Mediation Board,
has a background as union counsel.
In the decision that prompted this column, 355th MSG/CC, Davis Monthan Air Force
Base and AFGE Local 2924, 109 LRP 61687 , 64 FLRA No. 14 (FLRA 09/28/09), the FLRA appeared to reject its previous distinction
between changes in conditions of employment, as defined under 5 USC 7103 (a)(14), and the working conditions of individual
employees. The result, according to legal editor Jim Carroll, "may be a significant expansion of the duty to bargain."
This
decision was supported by all three members of the FLRA, including Bush appointee Thomas Beck.
Now that the FLRA is fully staffed at the top, with
a new chair and member, an all-new FSIP and a new general counsel, we can expect our trends picture to be filled out soon.
On the revamped FLRA Web site, Pope points to a flood of new decisions, and emphasizes a reenergized Office of the General
Counsel and Collaboration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Office. She promises practitioners, "We
can train you, help facilitate your disputes and offer you alternative means to litigation to work out your problems. And
in those cases where you are unable to resolve your dispute, we are prepared to provide you a timely, quality decision."
The
message to agencies
If we combine the FLRA's decision in 355th MSG/CC and Pope's mission statement with
the labor-management forums, nonadversarial approaches, and permissive bargaining pilots envisioned by the draft EO, the
message to agencies is clear: Engage your unions and try to settle any disputes. If you can't or won't, don't expect the backup
you got under Bush.
The White House has listened to management fears. There
is no blanket mandatory bargaining of permissive subjects in the draft EO, and the EO cannot be enforced through litigation.
The emphasis is on cooperation and ADR rather than expanded bargaining. The Labor-Management Council would be co-chaired by
the OPM director and the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Unions haven't yet gotten all they wanted.
Living with 'climate change'
This is the new Labor climate. Will
it really be worse for agencies, when compared with the Bush years?
Unions do not have to rely on a friendly FLRA
or administration. Thanks to the courts and Congress, most Bush-era initiatives designed to make government more responsive
to agency management and reduce union influence were crippled or reversed well before Obama took office.
Efforts at
public sector labor-management cooperation have been successful , even under Clinton. Former Governor Tommy Thompson tried to duplicate his partnership
success in Wisconsin when
he took over the Department of Health
and Human Services in 2001, only to be reined in by the Bush White House and told to get on message.
It
may be time for agency managers to get on message with the Obama White House, with the help of their LR practitioners. It won't be easy, but this climate change
could work out for the best.
Penitentiary inmates are 'worst of worst'
LEWISBURG — The Lewisburg Penitentiary guard stabbed twice in a melee Sunday is out of danger,
but the staffing situation at the institution is critical.
Warden B.A. Bledsoe won’t come to the phone and federal Bureau of Prisons officials in Washington,
D.C., send numbers meant to be comforting, but those inside the penitentiary talk frankly.
Since January, Lewisburg has received “the worst of the worst” criminals, while dropping
the security procedures that held them at bay elsewhere, said Daniel Bensinger, a veteran corrections officer and president
of Local 148 of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Whenever one of these vicious inmates was moved from a cell to showers or elsewhere inside previous
institutions, it was with three guards.
“One officer on the left, one of his right and one behind with some sort of night stick,”
Bensinger said. “Today, at Lewisburg, we have one staff escorting one inmate.” And some of those guards, he said,
have little or no relevant training.
Some of them are “augmentation” personnel, drawn from the ranks of secretaries, social
workers and other civilians.
In Sunday’s incident, Bensinger said, two brand new officers were opening the door to a cell
that housed two inmates. The prisoners rushed the door and flung it out, and the officers jumped back. Then one prisoner,
with his hands cuffed behind his back, body slammed one of the guards, Bensinger said.
Being willing to tear up his wrists, the other prisoner had gotten his cuffs off. He pulled a handmade
weapon and stabbed the other guard. The weapon, Bensinger said, was crafted from the button that turned on the hot water in
the sink and its inner shaft. It was about the size of a pen, and Bensinger said another officer estimated one and a half
to two inches of it could have punctured the officer’s skin.
The guard was treated at a hospital and released, Bensinger said. Four other officers who tried
to come to the rescue also were injured, but less severely. One officer, with a baton, knocked the weapon out of the prisoner’s
hand and got him to the ground.
The cuffed inmate ran down the hallway, where he fought with other officers.
It was the second violent incident at the Kelly Township institution in less than a week.
Bensinger, who has been a corrections officer for 24 years, said staffing levels at the penitentiary
are dangerously low.
Traci Billingsley, spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons in Washington, and her counterpart at Lewisburg,
Scott Finley, sent e-mails with the same wording Monday: “... Staffing levels have increased at Lewisburg ... and currently
the Correctional Services Department has 95.6 percent of their positions filled.”
“That’s because management sets the number they feel is 100 percent,” Bensinger
said. “They set it at 294. But that’s not what the union would call 100 percent. We need 350 to do the job.”
On Monday, 264 were employed, he said.
Billingsley and Finley also said: “Overall, the inmate to staff ratio is 3-to-1, which compares
favorably with the bureau’s overall inmate to staff ratio at penitentiaries, which is 4-to-1.”
Bensinger said: “There are about 1,200 staff and 400 inmates, but among ‘staff,’
they are counting food service personnel, educators and workers in recreation, maintenance and medical care. When we open
the door to a cell, that doesn’t give us three officers to each prisoner. The dentist is in the dentist’s office.”
He said management just designated six troublesome inmates out of the entire population for “three-man
hold.”
The union is saying, he said, that all of the inmates need the designation. “We need three
officers to one inmate to face this caliber of violent prisoner.”
Bensinger has seen the conditions at Lewisburg change.
“It’s making the other prisoners safer,” said Keith Hill, national vice president
of the AFGE for District 3, which includes Pennsylvania. About six weeks ago, Bensinger gave Hill a tour.
During a shakedown in the cafeteria, they found two dozen weapons. They were hidden behind the end
caps of tables, in kitchenware and in appliances. They also were found in the drain, on top of the oven and behind the sink.
Most prisoners, he said, make some kind of weapon to protect themselves from other inmates. “The
group we are now housing use them on the staff,” he said.
They are fashioned from just about anything, too, including bed parts and the tips of batteries.
At the prisoners’ former institutions, he said, procedures included X-rays for metal hidden
in the body. At Lewisburg, there’s a metal detector in the hallway, Bensinger said, but no one to monitor it.
There also is no one to gather intelligence on who’s making weapons.
Hill said 150 inmates being watched by one corrections officer is ludicrous. He said they carry
“no mace, nothing for self-protection but a walkie-talkie.”
He said Pennsylvania’s senators and congressmen know of the problem and are working to get
the funds for adequate staffing, but politics is a slow business.
Warden Bledsoe and Harley Lappin, Bureau of Prisons director, are not making waves, Bensinger said,
because they are “good soldiers.”
You’ll never hear them say they’re understaffed, he said. “They fear for their
jobs too,” he added.
Secretaries and clerks put up with being asked to do dangerous inmate supervision because they have
seniority to protect and families to support, he said.
Recently, Bensinger said, he witnessed one of the “augmentation” staff trying to find
a key to open a door. “She must have had 30 keys on a key ring, and it took her five to seven minutes to find the right
one. There were two corrections officers behind that door. If something had broken out, they’d be dead.”
Last year, corrections officer Jose Rivera was stabbed to death at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atwater,
Calif. On Saturday, an improvised explosive device went off inside the Victorville Federal Penitentiary in California. No
one was injured in that incident, Billingsley said, but it detonated upon discovery during a routine search.
Hill and Bensinger said the AFGE had high hopes that the Obama administration would replace Lappin,
a Bush administration appointee. So far, it hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, 7,600 new prisoners are expected in the system
next year, Hill said. A new prison will house up to 1,500 of those, but there will be 6,000 more to be absorbed elsewhere.
Sen. Arlen Specter wrote to Lappin early in October, backing AFGE suggestions, including equipping
officers with nonlethal weapons to defend themselves, like pepper spray, and supplying stab-proof vests.
Specter is on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which would be involved in securing funding for
hiring more prison staff. U.S. Rep. Chris Carney has petitioned the House Appropriations Committee to earmark more than $1
billion in extra federal corrections funds.
According to union figures, 9,000 new corrections officers need to be hired across the nation to
bring staffing to 100 percent, or the level it considers safe.
Bensinger said: “Ask the public to say a prayer to protect their officers and to give lawmakers
the wisdom they need.”
2 inmates injure 5 guards
By Marcia Moore
LEWISBURG — A U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg staff member was assaulted by two inmates and
four officers were injured responding to the attack Sunday morning, the second violent incident at the prison in less than
a week.
An unidentified staff member suffered two puncture wounds to the lower back and superficial
wounds across the chest and lower abdomen in the 7:50 a.m. assault by two inmates, according to a statement released by prison
spokesman Scott Finley.
Four officers who responded to the attack were also hurt and required medical treatment,
one for a knee injury, one for a rib injury, another for an elbow injury and the fourth for a cut on the elbow, the statement
said. The two inmates were treated at the prison for abrasions.
The statement did not say what type of weapon was used by the inmates, and no other
details were released.
Finley said the prison remains secure and is operating under a lock-down status.
It was the 45th violent incident at the prison this year and is being investigated by
the FBI. The most recent attack occurred on Tuesday, when an inmate stabbed a guard in the thigh with a spear made of rolled-up
newspaper and magazines and a metal tip held on with dental floss .
“It’s unfortunate to say, but I wasn’t surprised,” said Tony
Liesenfeld, secretary/treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 148.
The union has complained for months that inadequate staffing is putting officers at
risk.
Liesenfeld, who met the guards at the hospital where they were treated early Sunday,
said each of them “acted appropriately” and attributed the assault to the lack of adequate staffing.
“Hopefully we can get this situation addressed before someone is killed,”
he said, adding that local management has echoed the union’s request for more staff.
There are presently 264 guards at the penitentiary, overseeing 1,089 inmates, many of
whom are among the country’s most violent prisoners. Inmates are held up to 23 hours a day in a cell.
Due to the low number of staff, Liesenfeld said, each prisoner is escorted to and from
the cell by a single guard, even though similar prisons across the country employ up to three guards per inmate for the same
task.
It also limits the frequency of cell searches, he said.
Fed Prison understaffed, Union charges
Wayne County -
Is USP Canaan understaffed? It depends on who you ask.
Russell G. Reuthe, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Employee Services Manager, says, “Presently, staffing
at U.S.P. Canaan is adequate. The inmate to staff ratio at U.S.P. Canaan is 4:1, which compares favorably to the BOP overall
which is 4.9:1. U.S.P. Canaan staff are highly trained and professional and will continue to provide a safe and secure environment
for the inmates and the community.”
However, a representative of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union that represents
federal correctional officers throughout the BOP, disagrees. “I know they’re understaffed. All federal penitentiaries
are understaffed,” says Keith Hill, National Vice President for AFGE, District 3.
Bill Gillette, North East Regional Vice President, Council of Prison Locals, says, “Based on the
hour of the day, staffing ratios vary greatly. There could be times when the ratio could be as high as one staff for every
125-150 inmates.”
Two anonymous letters, as well as two emails were recently received by The Wayne Independent, stating a
concern over under-staffing and safety. “We are all nervous, scared and greatly concerned for our safety as well as
the safety of the public,” one letter states. It refers to six outside guard towers (perimeter control), how only three
are ever staffed, and of those: only two are staffed 24-hours a day. The writer refers to the 18 officers that would need
to be hired to man the towers around the clock, figuring it would cost about $500,000 as opposed to the electric fence being
put up at a cost of “approximately $20 million.”
Asked about the fencing, Reuthe said, “In an effort to continue and maintain a safe environment for
the staff, inmates and the community, at times it is necessary to enhance security measures. Placement of additional fences
will provide greater levels of security, these fences are visible and are intended to serve as barriers (both non-lethal and
lethal) and are placed between the existing perimeter and interior fences. It is anticipated that this new technology will
serve as additional security, help deter potential escapes, and allow the institution to operate more cost effectively, as
well as greatly enhance the safety of the community at large.”
No batons, pepper spray “Unlike state prisons, we do not have any protective equipment to help
us. No batons, pepper spray, nothing but a radio,” the anonymous letter says.
Hill says, “AFGE and AFGE BOP Council have been pushing to get pepper spray authorized for use as
minimal personal protection for corrections officers, but so far we've met nothing but management resistance. I don't know
why there is so much resistance to protecting the lives of the officers. The pepper spray wasn't suggested to be used as a
weapon by the officers it was suggested to give the officers time to escape a situation in which they could be injured or
killed. They aren't equipped to defend themselves at all. They have a ‘PANIC BUTTON’ on their radio that can be
pressed in an emergency, or in case they're attacked. After that they pray someone gets there in time to help.”
Asked if the request for batons and pepper spray is unreasonable, Gillette said, “This has been a
hotly debated issue since the murder of one of our Officers at a California prison last year. Well, I'm not going to go into
great detail with what we have or don't have regarding safety equipment or protective gear, it would not be appropriate or
wise to speak of internal security practices, but I can say that we are not opposed to working with the agency in ensuring
that staff are given the tools necessary to protect themselves and the community they are sworn to serve, the above mentioned
items would be something we'd support.” Gillette said they have seen some “protective equipment upgrades recently.”
Officer Jose Rivera, USP Atwater, California, was killed June 20, 2008, after being assaulted by two inmates
with homemade weapons.
Not enough funding Gillette says it comes down to a lack of funding. “Currently the Bureau of Prisons
(BOP) are operating at 37 percent over it's rated capacity, some institutions as much as 89 percent. For the past several
years, the BOP has not received sufficient funds to be able to keep up with infrastructure needs or staffing. The BOP currently
has 39,399 authorized positions for Fiscal Year 2009, currently there are 34,333 employees on board resulting in a fill rate
of 87.1 percent.
“Being born and raised in Wayne County, I'm well aware of the importance of good paying jobs
and job security, whatever one’s views are regarding the prison or the system, I'd only ask that they keep in mind,
that as federal employees, we are tasked not only as protectors of the communities, but as stewards of the tax payers’
money, so as with any government agency, it's necessary to strike a balance between mission responsibilities and the granted
funding levels. But at times, it's not appropriate or wise to do more with less. It cost 140 million dollars to build USP
Canaan; all the towers, fencing, walls and protective devices available makes little difference if you don't have th
