“They’re going to have somebody killed, either staff or an inmate, if they don’t fix the problem,” said Jose Rojas, the union president at the Coleman prison complex. Just two weeks before Nassar’s stabbing, workers at the Florida prison complex where he was attacked organized a protest outside a nearby supermarket to highlight what they said were dangerous staffing levels. Correctional workers say they’ve seen no meaningful reforms to fix longtime staffing problems that put inmates’ and their own lives at risk. The agency, however, has been slow to make progress.įacing increased scrutiny in the wake of Epstein’s suicide and an ongoing AP investigation that has uncovered myriad scandals, Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters has pledged to overhaul recruiting and hiring practices and end systemic abuse and corruption.īut changing the culture of the massive agency - the Justice Department’s largest with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion - has proved exceedingly difficult. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., sought to address last December with a law requiring the Bureau of Prisons to overhaul failing and outdated security systems. Surveillance cameras aren’t positioned to see inside cells, though other cameras may have captured Nassar’s assailant walking in and out of the cell.Īt some federal prison facilities, including the Manhattan jail where Epstein died, surveillance cameras been found to malfunction or not record at all - an issue Sen. Nassar’s lawyers did not specify the nature or severity of that attack.Ĭell doors on most federal prison units are typically open during the day, letting prisoners move around freely within the facility.
Nassar was previously assaulted in May 2018 at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, within hours of being placed in general population - an attack his lawyers blamed on the notoriety of his case and a seven-day televised sentencing where scores of victims made impassioned statements. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and did so on condition anonymity.
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