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Prison Staffing Hazard: Take Action Today |
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Every day in the nation’s woefully understaffed and severely overcrowded federal prisons, correctional officers face hazardous and sometimes deadly conditions. In 2008, a correctional officer was murdered by inmates in a California federal prison. A look at AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals website shows that assaults against officers and inmate violence are almost a daily occurrence.
Yet, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is refusing to use tens of millions of dollars appropriated by Congress to hire more officers to help bring the prisons under more secure control and reduce the violence for both correctional officers and inmates.
AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals is circulating an online petition urging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to order BOP management to use the appropriated funds to hire more officers, fire Bush-era BOP Director Harley Lappin and hire 9,000 additional correctional officers.
The additional officers would return federal prison staffing to 1997 levels.
Click here to sign the petition and send Holder the message.
Violence in federal prisons is rising at “an alarming rate,” says Council President Bryan Lowery.
It has to stop. Lives depend on immediate action.
Years of underfunding has created a serious understaffing situation in which correctional officers are outnumbered by inmates by 150-1. Last year, correctional officer Jose Rivera was stabbed to death in a federal prison in Atwater, Calif., while locking inmates into their cells. He was working alone because, the union says, that prison like others is severely understaffed.
Earlier this year, AFGE successfully fought for a $545 million increase in Bureau of Prisons funding. Lowery explains what happened next:
Management at the Bureau of Prisons, however, has repeatedly refused to follow the direction of Congress and is unilaterally saying that none of the funds provided for increased staffing will be used for that purpose. The blatant disregard for the safety of our federal correctional officers by the Bureau of Prisons management is inexcusable. The safety of correctional officers, inmates and our communities is at risk.
More than 200,000 inmates are confined in federal lockups today, up from 25,000 in 1980, from 58,000 in 1990 and from 145,000 in 2000. By 2010, it is expected there will be 215,000 inmates in Bureau of Prisons institutions.
The number of officers who staff federal prisons is failing to keep pace with the tremendous growth in the inmate population. Today, federal prison staffing is at an 86.6 percent level, compared with the 95 percent staffing levels of the mid-1990s.
Click here to sign the petition and send Holder the message.
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