Tag Archives: Federal Prison

Watchdog chastises federal prison in California for its handling of COVID-19

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A shortage of medical supplies and flaws in health screening processes contributed to a COVID-19 outbreak at a federal prison in California that sickened more than 1,000 inmates and 23 prison staff, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog has found.

In a report released on Thursday, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said staff at the Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc in Santa Barbara who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus still went to work, and the prison was slow to release inmates into home confinement.

“Lompoc’s initial COVID-19 screening process was not fully effective. We identified two staff members who came to work in late March after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and whose symptoms were not detected in the screening process,” the report says.

“Lompoc staff did not seek to test or isolate an inmate who reported on March 22 that he began having COVID-19 like symptoms 2 days earlier.”

A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The BOP has faced criticism for its slow response to the global pandemic, both from the union that represents its staff and from families of prisoners.

Union officials have repeatedly accused the BOP of not having enough protective gear, not providing adequate testing and failing to limit the movement of inmates between facilities to prevent the virus from spreading.

The BOP has also faced scrutiny for changing its rules for determining which non-violent federal inmates could qualify for release into home confinement.

Horowitz contrasted Lompoc’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic with another federal prison – the Federal Correctional Complex in Tucson, Arizona – which his office found has had far fewer cases of COVID-19.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

‘American Taliban’ Lindh released from U.S. prison -Washington Post

FILE PHOTO: U.S.-born John Walker Lindh (L) is led away by a Northern Alliance soldier after he was captured among al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners following an uprising at the Fort Qali-i-Janghi prison near Mazar-i-Sharif December 1, 2001 REUTERS/STR/File Photo

(Reuters) – John Walker Lindh, the American captured in Afghanistan in 2001 fighting for the Taliban, was released early from federal prison on Thursday, the Washington Post reported, citing Lindh’s lawyer.

Lindh, who was 20 years old when he was captured, left prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on probation after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence, the newspaper said.

Now 38, Lindh is among dozens of prisoners to be released over the next few years after being captured in Iraq and Afghanistan and convicted of terrorism-related crimes following the attacks on the United States by al Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001.

FILE PHOTO: A picture of John Walker Lindh is shown on the attendance register of the madrassa (Islamic school) Arabia Hassani Kalan Surani Bannu, in Bannu in Pakistan, January 26, 2002. REUTERS/Haider Shah/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: A picture of John Walker Lindh is shown on the attendance register of the madrassa (Islamic school) Arabia Hassani Kalan Surani Bannu, in Bannu in Pakistan, January 26, 2002. REUTERS/Haider Shah/File Photo

His release brought objections from elected officials who asked why Lindh was being freed early and what training parole officers had to spot radicalization and recidivism among former jihadists.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Lindh’s release “unexplainable and unconscionable.”

“There’s something deeply troubling and wrong about it,” he said on Fox News on Thursday morning.

Leaked U.S. government documents published by Foreign Policy magazine show the federal government as recently as 2016 described Lindh as holding “extremist views.”

“What is the current interagency policy, strategy, and process for ensuring that terrorist/extremist offenders successfully reintegrate into society?” asked U.S. Senators Richard Shelby and Margaret Hassan in a letter to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Lindh’s parents, Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh, did not respond to requests for comment and Lindh’s lawyer, Bill Cummings, declined to comment.

Melissa Kimberley, a spokeswoman for the prison in Terre Haute, could not immediately be reached for confirmation of the Post’s report.

U.S.-born Lindh converted from Catholicism to Islam as a teenager. At his 2002 sentencing, he said he traveled to Yemen to learn Arabic and then to Pakistan to study Islam.

FILE PHOTO: Undated handout image of American Taliban John Walker Lindh, distributed February 5, 2002. American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, described by a prosecutor as a "committed terrorist" who abandoned his country, is to be released early from a federal prison while some U.S. lawmakers worry he still poses a security risk.. REUTERS/Handout/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Undated handout image of American Taliban John Walker Lindh, distributed February 5, 2002. American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, described by a prosecutor as a “committed terrorist” who abandoned his country, is to be released early from a federal prison while some U.S. lawmakers worry he still poses a security risk.. REUTERS/Handout/File Photo

He said he volunteered as a soldier with the Taliban, the radical Sunni Muslim group that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, to help fellow Muslims in their struggle or “jihad.” He said he had no intention “to fight against America” and never understood jihad to mean anti-Americanism.

Lindh told the court he condemned “terrorism on every level” and attacks by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were “completely against Islam.”

But a January 2017 report by the U.S. government’s National Counterterrorism Center, published by Foreign Policy, said that, as of May 2016, Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”

NBC News reported that Lindh wrote a letter to its Los Angeles station KNBC in 2015 expressing support for Islamic State, saying the Islamic militant group was fulfilling “a religious obligation to establish a caliphate through armed struggle.”

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Bill Trott)

6,000 Federal Prisoners to be Released; Drug-Related Sentences Reduced

6,000 prisoners will begin to be released on October 30th and that is only the beginning in an attempt to relieve the massive overcrowding in Federal prisons.  This is the largest release of prisoners at one time in an effort to provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, according to U.S. officials.

The early release was prompted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s decision in July 2014 that reduced the punishment for drug offenders and made that decision retroactive.  

Close to 50,000 federal inmates locked up on drug charges will be eligible for reduced sentences. The new sentencing guidelines took effect on Nov. 1, 2014.

Most of the soon to be released prisoners are already in halfway houses and home confinement.  

“The Department of Justice strongly supports sentencing reform for low-level, non-violent drug offenders,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates said in a statement. “The Sentencing Commission’s actions — which create modest reductions for drug offenders — is a step toward these necessary reforms.”

Each case will reviewed by a federal judge in the district in which the inmate’s case was tried in order to determine whether it would be beneficial to public safety to grant the prisoner early release.

According to The Sentencing Commission an additional estimated 8,550 inmates would be eligible for release between this Nov. 1 and Nov. 1, 2016.