The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/corrections/prisons/)
Herman Quay, former warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, has been promoted to oversee three federal prisons. An aide to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler calls the move “certainly not acceptable.”
The mishaps occurred against the backdrop of a highly stressed prison health care system, a crisis that has left the Department of Correction vulnerable to taxpayer-funded settlements of inmate lawsuits.
A 2016 “justice reinvestment” law has helped reduce Maryland’s inmate population by three percent in two years. A state board may call for increasing “geriatric parole.”
According to a study of the Michigan Department of Corrections, prison workers are more likely to show symptoms of depression and anxiety or suicidal ideation than even first responders or members of the military.
The federal prison system paid $1.6 million in bonuses to its top executives and wardens during the past two years despite chronic staffing shortages and sharp Congressional critiques of prison management, reports USA Today.
“The people in Oklahoma are not more criminogenic than the people in other states, and yet we have the highest incarceration rates,” said Kris Steele of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform. The state legislature largely failed to act on the issue this year.
Attorney General William Barr visited a federal prison in Edgefield, S.C., last week to view training for inmates, from computer skills to cooking, auto mechanic training and factory work. Barr’s visit signaled a major policy shift since his first stint as attorney general in the 1990s, when he promoted a tough-on-crime approach.
Texas spent $7 million resisting a lawsuit by inmates demanding air conditioning in a state prison. Now the state must pay the $4 million cost of providing it, on top of the legal fees.
Individuals who have successfully rehabilitated themselves in prison deserve to be recognized by authorities—and rewarded accordingly, argues a Georgetown law professor. “Character is not static, and the law must recognize this reality,” he writes.
New Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who toured the federal prison in Englewood, Co., last week, said that the Justice Department is “pushing hard” to abide by the requirements of the First Step Act. DOJ will deliver a critical tool to assess the needs and risks of future recidivism for federal prisoners by the July 19 deadline.