FEDERAL PRISON OFFICIALS KNEW OF MISCONDUCT, CORRUPTION, AND ABUSE, SENATE INVESTIGATION FINDS – By Akela Lacy (The Intercept) / June 26, 2022
Sen. Jon Ossoff is the first Democrat to subpoena a member of the Biden administration, BOP Director Michael Carvajal, over reports of neglected and frequent suicides.
WHEN A DETAINEE at a federal prison facility in Atlanta, Georgia, was found hanging from a ligature in his cell in November 2018, prison staff had to borrow a razor blade from another detainee in order to cut them down.
The scene was one of several alarming accounts of conditions at U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta detailed Tuesday during a Senate subcommittee hearing. Public reporting has described several years’ worth of security and health issues at the facility, including deaths, escapes, corruption, and a smuggling ring. According to congressional investigators who spoke at the hearing, senior officials at the federal prison complex and at the federal Bureau of Prisons were aware of the issues for years and failed to adequately address them, amounting to gross misconduct.
The findings are part of an ongoing 10-month bipartisan congressional investigation into allegations of corruption and abuse at the Atlanta facility. Started last September by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the investigation has focused on the Atlanta complex to highlight broader issues in the federal prison system — in part because of its location in Georgia, the home state of the subcommittee chair, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who was previously an investigative journalist. The facility has the highest number of suicides by detainees at any federal prison over the last five years, according to internal documents and security assessments obtained as part of the investigation. Previous reporting has documented at least 13 suicides at the facility between 2012 and 2021, including five between October 2019 and June 2021.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2022/07/26/atlanta-prison-suicide-senate-investigation/
