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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
LATE LAST YEAR the Justice Department's inspector general issued a report on abuses of inmates at the federal Bureau of Prisons' Metropolitan Detention Center in New York in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. The report detailed not only the abuses -- slamming inmates against walls, bending their hands and wrists into painful positions, taping their conversations with lawyers, verbal attacks, punitive strip searches and other misbehavior -- but also apparent obstruction of the inspector general's efforts to expose them. At the time, we said that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft should respond quickly and decisively to the report and make sure that those responsible for abuses, if not prosecuted, were at least not working with inmates anymore. To date, disciplinary actions have not been announced, but Inspector General Glenn A. Fine recently released his analysis of the department's policy response so far and gave it a cautious thumbs up.
In general, he writes, "the [Bureau of Prisons] has taken reasonable and responsible steps to implement the recommendations" he issued. Mr. Fine is cautious because most of the changes involve the department's tightening policies and adding additional training for guards. The test for such changes is "how the new policies and practices are actually implemented, particularly if an emergency such as a terrorist attack occurs again." Moreover, in a few areas, the department's responses "do not sufficiently address the recommendations and the core concerns underlying them."
Some of these areas of remaining concern seem to us substantial. Because emotions run so high in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, for example, Mr. Fine had recommended that officers handling detainees suspected of terrorism be specially trained for that job. The 84 inmates at the New York facility were all high-security inmates, though only one was eventually charged with a terrorist crime. The Bureau of Prisons, however, responds that having a specialized cadre would be counterproductive and stands by its policy that "all staff are trained and qualified to work any correctional post." The inspector general also recommended that the movements of high-security inmates be routinely videotaped from the time they arrive at a detention facility -- the abuses having substantially diminished once videotaping began. The bureau, however, regards routine videotaping as impractical; the policy that it has adopted instead leaves Mr. Fine worried that videotaping might not begin until after abuses have already taken place.
The Justice Department's apparently serious attention to Mr. Fine's recommendations is encouraging. These particular decisions, however, ought to be reconsidered. The policies adopted now will go a long way to determining how many detainees swept up after a future terrorist attack -- most of whom will prove innocent of any involvement -- have their loss of liberty compounded by abuse.
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