BAFFLING

For the ten years following my son Eric’s murder at USP Canaan by an inmate, I have been working with my organization to improve the safety of corrections officers. We have placed particular emphasis on staffing, which after those ten years of lobbying for proper staffing levels things are worse, not better. This, despite all the money allocated to the BOP to hire officers.

As an ordinary tax-paying citizen, not someone who works for the BOP, here is what I see:

There are 122 Federal Prisons in the US. These are not private, for-profit organizations. They were established by the government and funded by the government. The government established a Bureau to manage and oversee these prisons. The government established an administrative hierarchy to administer these programs. So WHY does it appear to me that these administrators throw every kind of possible roadblock in the way of efficient management of these prisons. Why do they not want safe and effective staffing? Why do we constantly have to beg them to do something about contaminated mail? Why did they not fund again the mail pilot program that was working so well? Why do outsiders have to explain to them the importance of management tools like the SHU? Why do we have to keep calling their attention to the fact that people are leaving their employment prematurely and that their recruitment efforts are nowhere because of the salary they offer?

The fact that the employees of the BOP have to constantly battle with their own administration to help them do the job that the administration demands is beyond my comprehension. With all the funding that has been made available over the past ten years, why are we in this kind of shape? It makes no sense. Unless…….