{"id":17827,"date":"2023-09-15T05:47:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T10:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17827"},"modified":"2023-09-15T05:47:45","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T10:47:45","slug":"senators-clash-with-us-prisons-chief-over-transparency-seek-fixes-for-problem-plagued-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17827","title":{"rendered":"Senators clash with US prisons chief over transparency, seek fixes for problem-plagued agency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The director of the federal Bureau of Prisons was scolded Wednesday by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who say her lack of transparency is hampering their ability to help fix the agency, which has long been plagued by staffing shortages, chronic violence and other problems.
Senators complained that\u00a0Colette Peters\u00a0appears to have reneged on\u00a0promises she made when she took the job last year\u00a0that she\u2019d be candid and open with lawmakers, and that \u201cthe buck stops\u201d with her for turning the troubled agency around.
Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. and Mike Lee, R-Utah, said Peters has forced them to wait more than a year for answers to written follow-up questions they sent her after she first appeared before the committee in September 2022, leaving them without information critical to fully understanding how the agency runs.
The clock is still ticking, Cotton and Lee said, trying to get Peters to commit to a firm deadline for responding. She declined, blaming the delay and uncertainty as to when answers would be ready on an ongoing Justice Department review process.
Peters also irked senators by claiming she couldn\u2019t answer even the most basic questions about agency operations \u2014 like how many correctional officers are on staff \u2014 and by referring to notes and talking points on a tablet computer in front of her.
\u201cSenators really take it personally when you don\u2019t answer their questions,\u201d Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the committee\u2019s chairman, told Peters as he wrapped up the two-hour session. \u201cMore than almost any other thing that I would recommend I\u2019d make that a high priority.\u201d
The Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department\u2019s largest law enforcement agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion, has been under\u00a0increasing scrutiny\u00a0from Congress amid myriad crises, many of them\u00a0exposed by AP reporting.
They include\u00a0rampant sexual abuse of prisoners\u00a0by staff and other\u00a0staff criminal conduct,\u00a0escapes,\u00a0high-profile violence\u00a0and\u00a0inmate deaths,\u00a0chronic understaffing\u00a0that has hampered\u00a0emergency responses.
Despite the transparency tussles, Durbin said committee Democrats and Republicans alike came away from Peters\u2019 testimony largely in agreement that the Bureau of Prisons \u201cneeds significantly more funding\u201d for staffing and infrastructure needs, including a $2 billion maintenance backlog.
\u201cLet\u2019s see if that translates into a bipartisan request for appropriations to match with that,\u201d Durbin said.
Peters, a reformer who previously ran Oregon\u2019s state prison system, took charge of the federal Bureau of Prisons in August 2022. She replaced Michael Carvajal, a Trump administration holdover who clashed with Congress and upset staff with claims that dwindling staffing levels weren\u2019t a concern.
Peters began Wednesday\u2019s testimony by highlighting steps she\u2019s taken to fix the agency, including overhauling problematic prisons, beefing up the internal affairs office that investigates employee misconduct and changing the agency\u2019s mission to emphasize \u201cprinciples of normalcy and humanity and core values that emphasize accountability, integrity, respect and compassion.\u201d
Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who led a subcommittee investigation into the sexual abuse of female prisoners and spearheaded prison reform legislation, acknowledged Peters\u2019 reputation as a reformer and commitment to change. But, he said: \u201cYou\u2019ve now been in the post for about a year and Congress expects results.\u201d
And answers. Asked by Cotton how many correctional officers positions are filled amid a staffing crisis that\u2019s led to mandatory double shifts and cooks, teachers and nurses guarding inmates, Peters said: \u201cI don\u2019t have that number in front of me.\u201d
Cotton, citing statistics he obtained, told Peters the answer was 12,731, meaning at least 7,700 budgeted correctional officer positions are not filled. That\u2019s more vacancies\u00a0than when AP reported on the issue in 2021.
At another point, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., became irritated when Peters failed to provide specifics about steps the agency is taking to thwart prisoners from using contraband phones to orchestrate drug deals.
\u201cNo, no, no, no, no,\u201d Graham said, interrupting her.
And then there were the questions asked long ago that still haven\u2019t been addressed.
Lee told Peters he submitted a \u201cshort list of questions\u201d to her after she first testified before the committee, on Sept. 29, 2022, and has yet to get a response.
\u201cThese are not difficult questions,\u201d Lee said.
Lee noted that witnesses testifying before the committee usually respond to written follow-ups within a week or so. He reminded Peters that, at that first hearing, she\u2019d acknowledged it was important to answer the committee\u2019s questions in a timely fashion.
Lee suggested giving her until the end of the month to respond. Cotton offered an Oct. 13 deadline, but Peters said she wasn\u2019t sure she could meet that, either.
\u201cI\u2019m disappointed that those questions have not yet been answered,\u201d Peters said. \u201cWe have been working on them diligently over the last year. It has been a lot of back and forth with the (Justice Department). I was hoping that they would be cleared this week, they\u2019re not yet.\u201d
apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The director of the federal Bureau of Prisons was scolded Wednesday by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who say her lack of transparency is hampering their ability to help fix the agency, which has long been plagued by staffing shortages, chronic violence and other problems.Senators complained that\u00a0Colette Peters\u00a0appears to have reneged on\u00a0promises she made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[22398,2131,3506,5948],"class_list":["post-17827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-american-prison-warden","tag-conflict","tag-senator","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17829,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827\/revisions\/17829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}