The nation’s federal prison system is supposed to keep America safe by, among other things, monitoring all social communications of high-risk inmates, especially those with terrorist ties. This is a crucial part of the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) duties considering that in the last decade the number of inmates with known links to terrorism increased by an astounding 250%. But surprise, surprise, the agency with a $7.1 billion annual budget doesn’t adequately check the communications of terrorist prisoners. Furthermore, the BOP, which operates under the Department of Justice (DOJ), hasn’t even bothered identifying all terrorists in its custody, according to a report issued this month by the DOJ Inspector General.
Portions of the 67-page document are redacted because the government claims that the original “contains information that the Department considered to be law enforcement sensitive and therefore could not be publicly released.” The adjusted public version, with a multitude of thick black lines substituting print, is enough to illustrate a big problem in the federal prison system. The BOP claims to be “an agency like no other” that protects public safety by ensuring that offenders serve sentences in appropriately secure facilities. The agency also provides costly reentry programming to ensure the offenders’ “successful return to the community.” In all, the BOP has 34,486 employees and 175,376 prisoners. The agency brags that is provides criminals with a myriad of programs that model “mainstream values” and “address criminogenic needs.”
Perhaps the nation’s federal prison system is a bit too accommodating to convicts. Even when the BOP monitors the communications of high-risk inmates, it doesn’t do it consistently and the inspector general found that “thousands of terrorist inmate communications” are only partially checked. Investigators offer the consequences of this negligence, writing that the disbursement of sensitive information—including videos, pictures and other documents—helps “radicalize other inmates.” In fact, investigators found that the “BOP has allowed at least one terrorist to view radical material provided to him through the discovery process in front of other inmates.” It is highly likely that there have been other similar cases not considered in this probe.-- More...
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