GAO Report Faults BOP’s Lack of Budget Transparency

by Derek Gilna

A December 2013 General Accounting Office (GAO) report, faulting the lack of transparency in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) budget, shows that the agency spent $6.9 billion in the past year, and that over 95% of that budget was for “salaries and expenses” and less than 5% was for site planning, acquisition, repair of existing facilities, and construction of new facilities. Salaries and expenses have steadily increased since 2008, a result of the burgeoning prison population at the federal level.

Like other federal agencies, the BOP must prepare an annual congressional budget justification for its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ), who then bundles the BOP requests into the larger agency budget. According to the GAO, which responds to requests from Congress, the agency “was asked to review BOP’s budget justifications.”

As part of that review, the GAO “assesses the extent to which opportunities exist to enhance the transparency of information in BOP’s budget justifications for congressional stakeholders and decision makers.” In short, the investigative agency is critical of BOP’s accounting practices for its failure to detail each specific program it administers, preventing intelligent oversight of the agency by Congress.

In an era when federal agencies have broad powers granted to them by Congress to administer programs and to promulgate rules governing those programs, the area of budget oversight is one of the few opportunities available to Congress to examine what these BOP programs actually accomplish and what can be done to improve them. Examples given in the report include inmate care, medical services, food service, education and vocational training, psychology services, and religious services.

According to the study, the BOP currently collects detailed figures on “project and activity elements” in the salaries and expenses account, the details of which, until now, had not been shared with Congress. The GAO strongly suggested that these detailed figures be provided in future budget requests to permit Congress to properly exercise its duty to supervise the DOJ and the BOP.

Interestingly, the study notes that the BOP anticipates a continuing increase in the federal prisoner population, a contradiction to the recently articulated goal of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-121