The rise in offenders housed within federal prisons is creating an increasingly dangerous atmosphere for staff and prisoners alike, according to federal prison officials.
Overcrowding contributes to prisoner misconduct and a decline in prison safety and security, according to findings by the U.S. Government Accounting Office.
The GAO blames the “increased use of double and triple bunking, waiting lists for education and drug treatment programs, limited meaningful work opportunities, and increased inmate-to-staff ratios.”
The number of prisoners that each federally run institution can house safely and securely is known as its rated capacity. From 2006 to 2011, the federal prison system saw a 9.5 percent population increase. This exceeded the system’s rated capacity of less than seven percent during those years, reports Growing Inmate Crowding Negatively Affects Inmates, Staff and Infrastructure http://www.gao.gov.gov/products/GAO-12-743.
During the same period, the federal prison system added about 8,300 beds by opening five new facilities and closing four minimum-security camps.
The population increase has boosted the percentage of prisoner’s housed in facilities rated above capacity from 36 to 39 percent, with a continuing upward trend. Facility overcrowding is expected to reach 45 percent by 2018, according to prison officials. In 2011, the federal prison’s highest security facilities were most crowded at 55 percent above rated capacity.
Prison officials and union representatives have expressed concerns about the number of serious incidents. They acted to diminish some of the consequences of overcrowding by staggering meal times and separating offenders involved in disciplinary infractions from the general prison population.
In 2012, the operating cost for the federal prison system’s 117 facilities was about $6.6 billion to house about 178,000 offenders. An additional 40,000 offenders were incarcerated through contracts with private companies and state governments.
The report reviewed five states and found because of greater legislative authority, more action was taken to reduce prison populations. Some states modified criminal statutes and sentencing, relocated offenders to local facilities and provided offenders with additional opportunities for early release.
The GAO said federal prison officials cannot shorten an offenders’ sentence or transfer prisoners to local prisons. However, the GAO recommends that federal prison populations could decline if sentencing laws were reformed, or if more prisons were built, or a combination of both.
