OAN’s James Meyers
10:16 AM – Thursday, February 15, 2024
According to a Justice Department watchdog insider, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) failed to prevent the deaths of 187 inmates who died by suicide over an eight-year span, according to a released report.
On Thursday, Inspector General Michael Horowitz blamed the deaths on BOP’s “operational and managerial deficiencies” which included staffing problems that left inmates without proper care and supervision.
“It is critical that the BOP address these challenges so it can operate safe and humane facilities and protect inmates in its custody and care,” Horowitz said, announcing the report.
The report revealed by Horowitz is based on a review of 344 inmates’ deaths from the 2014 to 2021 fiscal years, which showed 187 of them were death by suicide.
Additionally, the report’s main focus was on deaths that were likely preventable, instead of deaths that were related to medical care.
The data showed “numerous instances of potentially inappropriate” mental health assessments for inmates who later died by suicide. Furthermore, more than half of the inmates that died by suicide were in “single-cell confinement,” which is known as solitary confinement, when they eventually died by suicide.
“Any unexpected death of an adult in custody is tragic … we have already taken many steps to mitigate these deaths,” Colette Peters, BOP director, wrote in a response to the report.
The review began in 2020 after Congress requested to investigate inmate homicides and suicides. It was prompted by the media-reported deaths of Jeffrey Epstein and Whitey Bulger.
Prisons run by the BOP are required to run mock suicide drills three times a year. However, 67 of the BOP’s 194 facilities “were unable to provide evidence that they conducted a single mock suicide drill from 2018 through 2020.”
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