Fast Facts (Full BOP stats can be found here)
Confirmed active cases at 94 BOP facilities and 13 RRCs
Currently positive-testing inmates: 292 (down from 303) Currently positive-testing staff: 476 (down from 482) Recovered inmates currently in the BOP: 48,965 (down from 48,984) Recovered staff: 14,056 (up from 14,022)
Institutions with the largest number of currently positive-testing inmates:
Yazoo City Low FCI: 59 (up from 58)
Berlin FCI: 44 (unchanged)
Brooklyn MDC: 32 (down from 42)
Institutions with the largest number of currently positive-testing staff:
Central Office HQ: 58 (up from 57)
Brooklyn MDC: 33 (unchanged)
Rochester FMC: 26 (up from 25)
System-wide testing results: Presently, BOP has 142,889 federal inmates in BOP-managed institutions and 14,025 in community-based facilities. Today's stats: Completed tests: 128,705 (down from 128,708) Positive tests: 55,353 (down from 55,356)
Total vaccine doses administered: 329,974 (up from 329,902)
Prison News:
The LISA Foundation, in its September 25 newsletter, discusses Thursday's scheduled Judiciary Committee oversight hearing with new BOP Director Colette Peters, in an entry titled, "DURBIN TO GRILL BOP DIRECTOR AT THURSDAY JUDICIARY HEARING," explaining:
When Colette Peters was sworn in last month as BOP director, her honeymoon with Sen Richard Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, lasted all of three days.
Durbin’s dislike of prior Director Michael Carvajal was well known, and he was publicly pleased with Peters’ appointment. But when Durbin learned the BOP had given Carvajal a 30-day consulting contract to assist the new director with the transition, he said he would hold another oversight hearing on the BOP. He is about to make good on that threat.
The Judiciary Committee will conduct a BOP oversight hearing this Thursday. Peters is the primary witness, but other witnesses include Shane Fausey, President of the Council of Prison Locals national union; John Wetzel, a prison consultant and former head of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections; and Cecilia Cardenas of Davenport, Iowa.
It is not clear who Ms. Cardenas is, but the BOP released a person of that name and from the Davenport area last January.
Fausey is probably on the witness list because of his outspoken criticism of BOP staffing levels. He told a reporter last week that much of the staffing decline is due to ‘declining morale as general environmental conditions are deteriorating.’ He said staff is “exhausted” as mandatory overtime has “skyrocketed” at high-security institutions across the country.
Last week, BOP employees at FCI Raybrook in upstate New York posted a sign along a highway saying the federal prison is “dangerously understaffed” and asked the community if it feels safe.
No doubt Peters will be asked pointed questions about the sexual assault of female prisoners. Last week, she issued a statement saying she was “firm in my commitment to work with the BOP team, Department of Justice (DOJ) leadership, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Congress, and others as I begin to assess and address issues and concerns pertaining to the BOP and the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin.”
The former warden and four other FCI Dublin employees face criminal charges for sexually assaulting female inmates....
Death Watch (Note: The BOP press website announces BOP COVID-related deaths here.) Today the BOP identified no additional inmate fatalities and so the total number COVID-related inmate deaths remains at 308. Eleven of the inmates died while on home confinement. Staff deaths remain at 7.