OAN’s James Myers
10:16am – Thursday, February 15, 2024
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) failed to prevent 187 inmate suicides over an eight-year period, according to a report published by an insider at the Justice Department’s watchdog agency.
advertisement
On Thursday, Inspector General Michael Horowitz blamed the deaths on BOP’s “operational and management deficiencies,” including staffing issues that left inmates without proper care and supervision. It was also accused of including
“It is critical that these challenges are addressed so that the BOP can operate safe and humane facilities and protect inmates in its custody,” Horowitz said in the report.
Horowitz’s report examined 344 inmate deaths from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2021, and found that 187 of them were suicides.
Additionally, the report’s primary focus was on deaths that were potentially preventable, rather than health care-related deaths.
The data showed “numerous instances where mental health assessments of prisoners who later committed suicide may have been inappropriate.” Additionally, more than half of inmates who die by suicide ultimately die by suicide while in “single-cell confinement,” also known as solitary confinement.
“The unexpected death of an adult in custody is tragic…We have already taken many steps to mitigate these deaths,” BOP Director Colette Peters wrote in a response to the report. Ta.
The review began in 2020 after Parliament called for an investigation into prisoner murders and suicides. This was triggered by media coverage of the deaths of Jeffrey Epstein and Whitey Bulger.
BOP-run prisons are required to conduct mock suicide drills three times a year. However, 67 of the BOP’s 194 facilities “failed to provide evidence that they conducted a single mock suicide drill from 2018 to 2020.”
Stay informed. Receive breaking news directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
Please share this post!
