It seems to us at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that the question then becomes: Given such exorbitant costs and such a long-term commitment, how many of these persons could be dealt with in some less expensive fashion? How many of these persons could be dealt with in a way that would allow greater flexibility should more attractive alternatives come to light, should new policies be adopted? What are the alternatives? Are all 29,600 of these persons violent offenders, guilty of heinous offenses? Is it necessary to punish all 29,600 of these persons in such a harsh manner? I think there is some data available from what Mr. Carlson has said that both crowding and inadequate facilities could be eliminated without additional construction. Last year before the House Appropriations Subcommittee in a question from one of the members, Mr. Carlson was asked how many of the population could be housed in the Holiday Inn. Offhand, it is not a firm estimate but he estimated about one-third. With a 30,000 population, roughly, we are talking about 10,000 people. As of December 31, 1977, about 28 percent of the Federal population was in on violent offenses. The commitment rate for violent offenses is lower but since they stay longer, it totals up to about 29 percent of the population. It is also interesting that the Attorney General just announced before this committee that the Department of Justice is pursuing new criminal law enforcement priorities. They are going to concentrate on organized crime, white collar crime, official corruption, and narcotics trafficking. At the same time. he said, since we have limited resources, we are going to deemphasize some things that have consumed a considerable amount of Federal resources in the recent past, including things such as small scale bank frauds and embezzlement, bank robberies in urban areas, and stolen motor vehicle cases. I am not sure how they define small scale bank frauds or how many of the bank robberies we know about are in urban areas but those general offense categories, such as bank robbery, bank embezzlement, and the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, make up almost 25 percent of the Federal prison population. The Attorney General has announced in the past several weeks that the Department of Justice is going to defer to State and local authorities where possible in these kinds of offenses. So there is a big impact, although there will be some countervailing impact perhaps from the new priorities. This is really an unexamined question about where we are going. The other thing we need to look at is that there are alternatives. The criminal code bill, as you say, is pending in the House. It includes as conditions of probation the possibility of sentences to community service, sentences to restitution, and a variety of other penalties and restrictions. We are certainly hopeful that a Sentencing Commission, if it is created, would utilize full and complete alternatives from incarceration. We at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, for example, have been cooperating with the American Bar Association in doing a study of the use of community service as a sentencing alternative. 26-369-78- -12 In Great Britain, as you may know, when they were faced with a prison overcrowding problem of the same kind of proportions that we are, established a special commission to look into alternatives. They came up with a community service order as an alternative for felony offenders and as an alternative to incarceration. It started on a pilot basis. They are now using it United Kingdom-wide. They are using it for serious offenders. A great many of them have prior convictions. Many of them have prior incarcerations. Senator BIDEN. Has it affected the rate of recidivism at all? Ms. HARRIS. They are measuring that. They have not yet determined that. That is a good question. Senator BIDEN. It is "the question," isn't it? Mr. HARRIS. We know that prisons have such a high recidivism rate. None of the things that we seem to do seem to have an appreciable effect on the crime rate. I think the question is this. If people can be maintained in such programs without drastically or noticeably increasing the crime rate and if it is less expensive and if it results in providing services to the community, are not those preferable options? They are certainly more flexible, too. They do not require a capital investment. They do not lock you in for 40 years. Senator BIDEN. Hardly anybody is locked in for 40 years. Let's get that straight. There are very, very, very few people who are locked in for 40 years. I will bet it is less than 2 percent of the prison. population. Ms. HARRIS. I am sorry. I really meant locking us as Americans into the use of a prison that we would build and use for at least 40 years. We are finding that many jurisdictions in this country are now using community service. I just made a trip to the west coast. California has an association of community service programs. There are more than 50 programs operating in California. Many of these programs are not operating in the Federal courts. A few of the Federal courts have pretrial diversion. A few of the Federal probation officers are using community service. We believe there are many options. At the sentencing point, there are, of course, many options for assignment and placement of persons who are committed to the custody of the Attorney General. You explored a little bit the military facilities. There are a lot of existing facilities that can be utilized, again without new capital investment. Just to sum up, we believe that new construction does represent a long-term commitment to the most expensive alternative and that there are more immediate, less expensive, and more flexible alternatives. If this committee is convinced of that, then the burden should shift back to the Department of Justice to justify in a very different kind of way why they are pursuing this most expensive alternative to the extent that they are. Until they have justified and shown that no alternative is possible, no funds for new construction should be authorized. Thank you. Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. TESTIMONY OF MATTHEW L. MYERS, CHIEF STAFF COUNSEL, THE NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION Mr. MYERS. Mr. Chairman, we have submitted for the record lengthy comments on the Bureau of Prisons statement. If that is not in the record, I would like to make sure that it is. Senator BIDEN. It will be put in the record in its entirety. [The material follows:] Statement of Matthew L. Myers, Chief Staff Counsel, The National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation My name is Matthew L. Myers and I am the Chief Staff Counsel of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. For those of you not familiar with our work, the National Prison Project seeks to protect and strengthen prisoners' rights, to improve overall conditions in the nation's prisons and to develop rational, less costly and more humane alternatives to traditional incarceration. We have submitted for the record lengthy comments on the Bureau of Prisons' proposed budget. This morning I would like to briefly summarize and highlight the most important aspects of our comments. Two themes flow through all of our comments. First, the Bureau's budget seriously ignores the human needs of those confined to its institutions in favor of a blind bricks and mortar approach to the solution of its problems. Second, unless Congress overseas the Bureau's budget very carefully, a lot of money is going to be spent, but prisoners are going to continue to be subjected to needless suffering and society's interest in not making non-violent prisoners violent and prisoners with some social and work skills less able to adapt is going to be ill served. Buried in the Bureau's budget is the Bureau's program for the placement and treatment of young people, especially juveniles and young people committed under the Youth Corrections Act. 18 U.S.C. §§ 5005-5026. Congress has singled out both of these groups of young people for special treatment because they are the most likely to benefit from access to constructive rehabilitation programs and most likely to be scarred for life by exposure to older, more sophisticated hardened offenders in prison. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 requires that wherever possible the Bureau shall place federally adjudicated juveniles in foster homes or community based facilities near his or her home. What is the Bureau's record and what are their future plans according to the proposed budget? In his March testimony before House of Representatives, Director Carlson indicated the Bureau was in compliance but gave no details. The facts tell a different story. Only last year did the Bureau transfer the majority of these juveniles out of its prisons. Were these transfers carried out in accordance with the intent of the Act? The simple answer is no. By and large the Bureau has simply shipped these juveniles to traditional correctional institutions in the states and often these institutions are far from the juvenile's home. The Bureau's budget admits that of 56 contract facilities being used for juveniles only 9 are community based facilities. Even those nine community based facilities raise serious doubts about the Bureau's review and monitoring of contractual facility operations and treatment of juveniles. In late 1977 a series of investigations were conducted into the Bureau contractual facility at Denver, Colorado, called Emerson House. Included in the investigation were allegations of abuse and one juvenile support group has reported intervening when two young Native American boys were shackled to their beds for two days. The plight of young offenders committed under the Youth Corrections Act is even more serious. In his March testimony, Mr. Carlson indicated that as high as 25% of the Bureau's population are young people committed pursuant to this Act for treatment. By statute, these youthful offenders are to undergo an exhaustive classification study to determine their needs, be given access to meaningful treatment programs and "insofar as possible" be housed separately according to their treatment needs. 18 U.S.C. §§ 5011, 5014. In fact these young people receive no special attention from the Bureau and not a single Bureau institution is used solely for the housing and treatment of young people committed under the Y.C.A. In addition, Youth Corrections Act offenders do not undergo the required classification study prior to their placement and are mixed in with other offenders as a routine matter. Brown v. Carlson, 431 F. Supp. 755 (W.D. Wis. 1977). The consequence of the Bureau's disregard of the special needs of and the special dangers to these young offenders can best be seen by two cases which I have encountered within the last several months. Boy A was committed to the Bureau as a Youth Corrections Act offender at age 18 and sent to one of the Bureau's institutions. Within weeks he was subjected to a number of homosexual threats of assault. Out of fear, he escaped but turned himself in within a few days. He was tried for escape, given an additional one year's sentence and transferred to Petersburg where within a matter of months he was assaulted, his jaw broken and while in protective custody segregation, he was brutally raped twice. Boy B is a Viet Nam veteran who returned home with a serious drug problem. At age 24 he was committed under the Youth Corrections Act and had just one prior conviction for a minor offense related to his drug problem. During his 31⁄2 years in the Bureau's custody, he has not been held in one of the 12 institutions the Bureau considers appropriate for Youth Corrections Act placement. He was first sent to the adult penitentiary at McNeil Island where he was immediately the subject of homosexual pressures. Later he was transferred to Leavenworth where he again encountered the same threats of homosexual assault by older prisoners. At Leavenworth he was assaulted and received a disciplinary report for defending himself against his attackers. After being held in protective custody isolation for several months, he was later transferred to the adult penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, considered the most maximum security prison in the country, where it was believed he could adjust to life in the general population. Again, he experienced the same homosexual pressures from older prisoners and within weeks he had been raped by 3 prisoners. Fearing for his safety and well being and not wanting to spend the duration of his sentence in protective custody isolation, he attempted an escape a few days later. During the escape attempt, he was shot from the fence at Marion and suffered bullet wounds to his head. Later he received an additional sentence of 5 years for his attempted escape. Since that time he has been held in protective custody at Terre Haute and presently at the adult penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. To date, he has spent over 2 years in solitary confinement for his own protection and is unable to take advantage of even the few programs and opportunities the Bureau does have available for prisoners. Last month, Judge Herman in the Middle District of Pennsylvania ordered the Bureau to transfer Boy B to an institution providing the programs recommended by the Youth Corrections Act. The Bureau has filed its motion to stay that order. Meanwhile, Boy B has been given a parole set-off because of his inability to adjust to population and participate in rehabilitative programs, including educational improvements. In passing the Youth Corrections Act you and your colleagues in Congress sought to "promote the rehabilitation of those who in the opinion of the sentencing judge show promise of becoming useful citizens" and "to avoid the degenerative and needless transformation of many of those persons into habitual criminals." H.R. Rep. No. 2979, 1950 U.S. Code Cong. Service, pp. 3983, 3985. At an enormous human cost the Bureau has ignored your requirements. The Bureau's budget should not be permitted to go forward until the problems of these young people are adequately met. Drug abuse is one of the major and most destructive causes of crime plaguing our country today. By the Bureau's own admission one out of every three prisoners in its custody has a serious drug abuse problem. In every year since 1973 there have been more people in the Bureau of Prisons for drug related offenses than any other type of offense. At the end of fiscal year 1977 alone, 7,931 out of 30,262 offenders in the custody of the Bureau were there because of a drug related offense. Yet, the Bureau has failed to cope with this problem and the budget before you today for authorization actually seeks to decrease by 25 percent the number of Bureau employees designated to work with prisoners with serious drug related problems. Thus, although the Bureau admits that approximately 10,000 prisoners in its custody require drug treatment, its proposed budget will provide assistance to fewer than 40 percent of those in need. In fact the number receiving any intensive drug therapy is far smaller. The N.A.R.A. program is the Bureau's only intensive drug treatment program and in 1976 these programs could accommodate fewer than 900 prisoners. The only other drug program available to prisoners is entitled D.A.P.S., but our investigation of these programs indicate that they meet irregularly and are often conducted by individuals with no expertise or training. As it does frequently in its proposed budget, the Bureau points to the move to the unit management system as the panacea to the drug problem. By itself, the switch to the unit management system has little or nothing to do with the quality of drug abuse treatment. Unit management means only that prisoners will be living in smaller units. It does not mean that prisoners will be housed according to drug needs or that adequately trained staff will be made available. Once again, the Bureau's budget ignores one of the most serious problems facing corrections today. A third area of special concern is the Federal Prison Industries program. Federal Prison Industries was created to provide meaningful employment to large numbers of prisoners so that they can earn money for themselves and their families and to provide prisoners with vocational training and on-the-job training. It has accomplished none of these functions and nothing in the proposed budget will substantially alter the situation. Instead most prisoners remain idle and those that do work work at useless skills for demeaning wages. During the last fiscal year, fewer than 6,000 prisoners were employed by F.P.I. at any one time. By 1979 the Bureau's proposed budget would increase that number by only 200 to 6,200, a figure far below the estimate given to the House Judiciary Committee by Mr. Carlson when he testified several weeks ago. A 1974 General Accounting Office report found that most of the Prison Industries were wasteful and used antiquated machinery. The same report found that at the Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg, Virginia, young men put wires into holes in little boxes. They are told that their little boxes are then shipped someplace else where the little boxes are put into bigger boxes but nobody knows what the boxes are used for. In Atlanta, prisoners work in an outmoded mattress factory, a sign factory, a brush factory and a factory that makes mail bags. In Lewisburg, prisoners in F.P.I. work in either a clothing factory or a plant that makes metal wastebaskets. The situation is the same elsewhere. The few modern industrial programs which teach skills which may be useful upon release can employ only a minute fraction of those who would like to work. The top salary a prisoner can receive for his or her efforts is $.80 per hour, most start at $.30 per hour. The irony of it all, of course, is that the only lesson to be learned by a prisoner is that work does not pay. The prisoners are acutely aware of the exploitation of their labor and they know that none of the jobs available offer any hope of a decent paying job on the outside. Thus, a program designed to assist prisoners has been turned into just one more factor likely to increase their bitterness towards society in general. The Bureau's budgetary authorization request also includes a request for some additional funds to provide medical services at two new facilities and mentions that it is the Bureau's long term goal to provide 25 hour medical coverage to each major institution and to attain compliance with the standards promulgated by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals, the American Public Health Association and the American Correctional Association. In our opinion, minimally adequate medical care is not a "long range goal" it is an immediate need which should and must be addressed immediately. Despite the fact that at least three federal courts have required state penal institutions to provide 24 hour medical coverage as a matter of law, only 7 of the Bureau's 35 institutions provide around the clock medical coverage by physicians and those same 7 are the only institutions accredited by the Joint Commission. Not all of the Bureau's medical problems are traceable to a lack of funds or under staffing of physicians. Several result from poor management. For example, the medical records of prisoners who are transferred from one institution to another do not accompany the prisoner. Delays of 6 months are not uncommon. While we have received numerous complaints about this problem, two recent letters stand out. In the first, a prisoner with a severe back problem who was unable to walk and needed a wheel chair to get around was transferred from one Bureau institution to a local jail to stand trial on an additional indictment. Because his medical records did not accompany him the prisoner was refused medication and access to a wheel chair in the receiving institution. Compounding the problem, the same thing happened to the prisoner when he was returned. In another case, |