Union urges Congress to address staff shortages at prisons

Congress must work to ensure that the Bureau of Prisons is adequately staffed to handle a serious increase in the inmate population, labor union officials said Monday.

The security of federal prisons has been put at risk from budget setbacks and a staffing plan implemented three years ago by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that eliminated 2,300 positions within the Bureau of Prisons, said Bryan Lowry, president of the American Federation of Government Employees' National Council of Prison Locals.

"We have almost 200,000 inmates in the Bureau of Prisons system . . . and we have not seen a comparable rise in staff," Lowry said. "On any given day, there are anywhere from three to 10 institutions that are completely locked down because of gang-related activity against staff and inmates."

Federal prisons receive about 7,500 new inmates each year, but despite these dramatic increases, the agency's budget has only increased at the rate of inflation, Lowry said. Last year, the Bureau of Prisons' budget stood at $5.1 billion.

As a result, Lowry said, assaults on staff rose 5.5 percent from 2005 to 2006, with inmate-to-inmate assaults rising 15.5 percent within that period. It is estimated that from 2006 to 2007, assaults on staff rose 12 percent, and those on inmates increased by 25 percent, he added.

Colorado State Rep. Buffie McFayden, D-Pueblo West, expressed concern over the staffing levels at the 12 correctional facilities in her district, specifically the Supermax facility in Florence, Colo., which houses prisoners who are deemed the most dangerous and in need of the tightest control.

McFayden said 551 correctional officer posts have been vacated at the Supermax facility since July, with overall staffing levels at the facility running almost 25 percent below the agency's standards for mission critical staffing.

Adequate staffing at the Supermax facility also is critical to the nation's fight against terrorism, largely because the facility houses many of the nation's terrorism conspirators, including the six terrorists responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, McFayden said.

"We keep hearing presidential candidates talk about terrorism," McFayden said. "But very rarely is anyone talking about the fact that we've moved all of these individuals who have terrorized this country to one facility in Colorado that still does not have enough staff to [fill] the housing units and [does] not [have] enough security around the facility to protect the community."

McFayden added that while the bureau has hired new officers, there is a gap in coverage because of the four to six months of training new officers must complete before they begin work at a facility. She called on Congress to pass legislation that would allow federal retirees to return to work without being penalized. "We could then rehire retired correctional officers until that gap is filled," she said.

Lowry said AFGE is backing the House version of the fiscal 2008 Commerce, Justice and State appropriations bill, which would provide $5.17 billion for Bureau of Prisons staff. But the union also supports a portion of the Senate appropriations bill that would provide $495 million for facilities and maintenance costs, he said.

Lowry recommended that Congress request a report from the Government Accountability Office that would assess how the staffing levels over the last three years have correlated with the increases in assaults.

"It's not for a lack of inmates trying that a staff member has not been murdered," Lowry said.

An agency spokesman said that the safety of staff and inmates in federal prisons continues to be the bureau's top priority. "The BOP allocates resources to ensure the highest possible level of staffing for positions that have the most contact with inmates," he said.