The Day After the Breakout: The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Response to the Two Breakouts at MCC Chicago

Today, at the federal prison where I live, a couple dozen guards and other staff (teachers, mostly) stormed my housing unit and seemed intent on doing a vigorous “looting” of our cells and areas. common. There were no weapons or drug-sniffing dogs, but they did drag a large wheeled toolbox, menacing and mysterious. serious business.

Not long ago, the media reported that two men serving long sentences escaped from a federal detention facility in Chicago: the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center. By all accounts, it was a clever and daring escape, the kind that Hollywood loves; they cut through the bars of his cell, recalling fifteen stories down the side of the high-rise building in a sheet rope. (That took a few stones: you have to realize they had in mind that if they fell to their death, they would at least die a free man, right?) They even managed to get out through a five-inch window and used fake bars as a decoy. They apparently had outside help, because surveillance video showed them taking off their bright orange jumpsuits and putting on light-colored civilian clothes. In a humorous twist, it was reported that they got into a taxi and were taken to freedom. The FBI was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

Here at the Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg, Virginia, the grand extortion quickly degenerated into a fifteen-minute session in the common area of ​​the housing unit. A handful of guards dedicated themselves to superficially searching some cells. Most of the time, the unit’s guards argued over where to put the inmates whose cells were being searched. They were unable to determine if inmates were to remain in the common room area or be placed in a television room. After a lieutenant got involved, the common room was selected. The search stumbled. As expected it looked like they could have taken an extra sheet or two. And that was it.

This is not to say that guards don’t know how to vandalize a housing unit, they do. In fact, guards at federal prisons have been known to destroy inmate property and leave rooms in total disarray. Give them a real reason to do it, say to get rid of a weapons compound, and they’ll do a thorough job. But such enthusiasm never applies in a situation like this, which likely stemmed from an order at the Bureau of Prisons Headquarters in Washington, DC. “Shake ’em all!” A nationwide search of over 100 BOP prisons in “response” to the leak, so everyone knows they are doing {something} about it.

While it may seem cynical, the superficial response to the break is typical of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the American prison system in general. At least in the last two decades, the model seems to be “just make it look like we’re doing something important.” In reality, this is rarely the case.

By all measures our correctional system is a disaster, a dismal failure. As the prison population rises to unprecedented levels (the Institute for Higher Education Policy puts the number at 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, making the United States the leading incarcerator of citizens in the world), Each year more and more, the recidivism rates do not improve. According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 51.8% of released inmates will reoffend within 3 years of release. The best estimates say that up to 94% of ex-prisoners will be re-arrested, and between 67.8% and 81% will find themselves re-incarcerated within five years of their release. All of this would not be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that approximately 95 percent of prisoners will eventually be released, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As reported by the US Department of Education, about 700,000 inmates are released from jail each year. These numbers are simply staggering.

The New York Times puts the number of state and federal prisoners at 1.5 million and the number in US prisons at 748,000. According to the Times, there are 840,000 adults on probation and 4 million adults on supervised probation.

The numbers become even more alarming when the proportions are taken into account. The Pew Center on the States boldly proclaims that 1 in 100 American adults is currently in prison or jail and 1 in 31 American adults is under some form of court supervision (prison, probation, probation, etc.). The United States, with only 5% of the world’s population, imprisons 25% of the world’s prisoners.

The cost of the United States being the Chief Jailer is staggering. The Pew Center on the States reports: “Between 1973 and 2009, the nation’s prison population grew 705 percent” and “state spending on corrections has quadrupled” in the past two decades alone. the publicationBlack issues in higher education boldly advises that $30.1 billion be spent each year building and operating new prisons. Even the National Association of State Budget Officials is jumping in, claiming that total state (non-federal) spending on corrections is about $52 billion annually.

Absurdly, the response to these staggering numbers has been the periodic implementation of new and creative means to monitor recently released that simply provide more reason to revoke parole and parole terms: intensive supervision; supervisory teams; ankle bracelets with GPS; curfews, banishments from the neighborhoods; the list goes on.

None of it works. This has been tested. In fact, according to the Pew Center on the States, most inmates who reoffend do so through the vehicle of technical supervision violations, not the commission of new crimes. These include failing a drug test, missing a curfew, or even missing a meeting with a probation or probation officer. No one is suggesting that rules should simply be thrown out in an effort to reduce recidivism rates, but appropriate sanctions for rule violations should be the benchmark.

What has been shown to work, universally, is educating prisoners while they are still {in} prison, not necessarily after their release from incarceration. Virtually every study done on the subject of correctional education demonstrates, without a doubt, that recidivism rates decline in direct correlation to the amount of education a given prisoner has under his belt when he is released. According to the Correctional Education Magazinethe numbers are compelling:

~For inmates earning an AA grade: 13.7% recidivism;

~For prisoners earning a bachelor’s degree: 5.6% recidivism;

~For inmates who earn a master’s degree: 0% recidivism!

However, like the post-breakout racketeering, it seems our political leaders are only talking about a national issue from time to time, making occasional comments about low-cost, low-political-risk programs. For example, the Second Chance Act of 2007, which, among other things, increased the allowable time federal prisoners can stay in pre-release housing from 6 months to a possible year, to allow for job training and further education community and rehabilitation, has essentially died for lack of funding. Oh, in theory, inmates can still get a year of halfway house placement, but there is no funding for additional programming. This is the tax equivalent of a post-blank extortion. (Note that FCI Petersburg is surrounded by several fences topped with barbed wire on all sides. So even if an inmate managed to get out of the window (an almost impossible effort considering a steel beam dividing the window into two), you would still have to deal with multiple reinforced security fences, motion alarms, and two patrol vehicles with armed guards in them).

Educating prisoners is simple: It costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars a year to educate an inmate ($2,000 to $3,782 for a college-level education according to the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research). In previous years, Pell Grants paid for such programs, but those days are long gone because of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1993 and the Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 1994, which restricted inmates from receive federal student aid. Tough-on-crime advocates thought it was wrong to pay for prisoners’ education. So now, with more prisoners than military personnel, our country is bowing under the weight of the cost of our criminal justice system, with no consolation for the foreseeable future.

Maybe now is the time for our leaders to step up and actually do something. real about our recidivism problem. The current model of pretending to do so has failed. Much like an extortion for sheets in a prison 1,000 miles from where two men escaped the day before.