Federal prisons held fewer inmates in 2014 than the year before, but the costs of keeping them open continued to climb as overcrowding threatened the safety of guards and prisoners alike.
The first dip in the prison population since 1980 did nothing to stem the flow of money into the Department of Justice Bureau of Prisons, which soaked up a quarter of the agency’s budget last year.
In a video discussing the problem released Thursday, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz said “unless the Justice Department’s overall budget grows in the years ahead, continuing increases in the BOP’s budget will require the department to reduce spending in other areas.”
In any case, the federal prison system is a “critical area” that will require the “sustained attention” of the IG “for the foreseeable future,” Horowitz said.
Between 2000 and 2014, the annual budget of the Bureau of Prisons jumped from $3.8 billion to $6.9 billion as it grew nearly twice as quickly as any other component of the DOJ.
The BOP workforce is the largest in DOJ, bigger even than the FBI.
The aging prison population has presented fresh problems for an agency already strapped for resources. From 2009 to 2013, the number of inmates older than 50 in the system grew 25 percent, while the number of inmates younger than 30 fell 16 percent.
Healthcare services for inmates consumed $1 billion in 2013, more than the entire budget of the U.S. Marshals Service or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The IG proposed several ways its agency could manage the spiraling system, including DOJ’s Smart on Crime initiative, which encourages alternatives to incarceration for low-level drug offenses.
Despite efforts to scale back the number of incarcerated offenders, the BOP projected a spike in overcapacity over the next several years, with prisons expected to go from 33 to 38 percent more inmates than they were designed to hold by 2018.
Two riots in federal prisons run by a private contractor were examples of the dangers correctional staff can face in overcrowded prisons.
“The causes of both incidents have been at least partially attributed to prisoners’ reactions to their perceptions of inadequate medical conditions and mistreatment at the facilities,” Horowitz said.
Among the conditions leading to “safety and security concerns” is the prison bureau’s continued reliance on segregated housing in its federal and privately managed facilities.
A pending independent review is expected to shed more light on how keeping separate inmates who have violated prison rules or are pending transfer to another prison can create security problems.
Sexual assault, contraband and unauthorized cell phone use have also grown in significance as prison populations ballooned.
Horowitz previously cited the prison problems as one of DOJ’s two biggest management challenges in a November 2014 report.
