The Bureau of Prisons was struggling to fill up to 5,000 vacancies, a shortfall worsened by recent budget cuts and a government shutdown, and since last spring has been without permanent leadership.
Jeffrey Epstein suicide casts spotlight on federal prison system riven by staff shortages, violence, sexual harassmentWASHINGTON–The apparent suicide of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, found dead in a New York federal prison cell early Saturday, has cast a jarring spotlight on the nation’s largest prison system plagued for years by dangerous staffing shortages, violence and widespread sexual harassment of female officers.
Indeed, union officials and federal lawmakers were sounding the alarm years before Epstein's death, highlighting operations in which both staffers and inmates have been placed in the cross-hairs mostly due to deep staffing shortages. "We are writing to express our deep concerns about the Bureau of Prisons’ staffing practices, particularly the over-reliance on augmentation and the failure to follow clear congressional directives to hire more full-time correctional officers," the lawmakers wrote.
The conditions at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, union officials said, closely resemble those at Hazelton at the time of Bulger's killing. “You have people working who are extremely exhausted and others who are not trained to do the work,” Gregg said, adding that the staffers who discovered Epstein had not been regularly assigned to that part of the detention center.
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