Federal Watchdog Calls Out BOP for Spiking Suicide Risk at Pennsylvania Lockup
by Matt Clarke
On September 26, 2024, United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz released findings from an unannounced inspection of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Numerous violations of federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy were found at the 1,128-bed medium-security prison, which left prisoners at increased risk of suicide. The visit took place in February 2024, the same month that Horowitz released a longer report on the problem throughout the federal prison system, which lost 187 prisoners to suicide in eight years, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Sep. 2024, p.39.]
At FCI-Lewisburg, there were 16 suicide attempts between January 2022 and March 2024—seven of which were made by prisoners held in single-man cells. Five of the suicides were also in a Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU), where prisoners are locked down 23 hours a day. At the time of the inspection, 13 of the 71 RHU prisoners were single-celled. As Horowitz noted, “single-celling creates the risk of suicide,” and “inmate health issues beyond the mental health issues” can result from “being sometimes in lockdown 23 hours a day.” This presents “a cascading series of issues” for both prisoners and guards, “because inmates who are in those conditions are more likely, on occasion, to act out in ways.”
The inspection also revealed that the prison’s clinical director abruptly cut off at least one prescribed medication for 24 prisoners without even seeing them. Fifteen of those prisoners had their antidepressant medication stopped. The justification for this dangerous practice? The clinical director was concerned about overprescribing.
Yet FCI-Lewisburg is a transitory prison, housing prisoners a few days or weeks before they move on to permanent assignments at other prisons. The clinical director did not really know much about the prisoners whose medications were cancelled. The report concluded that abruptly ending antidepressant medication instead of tapering it off was much riskier than the overprescribing that the director was concerned about. Horowitz noted that this practice “can obviously create risks, not only at Lewisburg, but at the next facility where the sentenced defendant is going.”
The report also noted that guards at FCI-Lewisburg were not carrying tools to cut down ligatures that suicidal prisoners used to hang themselves. That failure was a clear violation of BOP policy. Further, BOP had outsourced staffing projections to a private contractor who pegged the prison’s needs significantly lower than current levels for support staff and health care staff—and especially for guards. Since the prison was already understaffed, Horowitz said these low-ball projections could prevent it from being safely operated at all.
The heightened concern over prisoner suicides in the BOP traces back to August 2019, when billionaire Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in a single-man cell at a now-shuttered lockup in Manhattan while awaiting his second trial for sex trafficking underage girls. Conspiracy theories persist about his death, though Horowitz conducted an investigation that confirmed an “absence of criminality,” as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, May 2024, p.16.]
At FCI-Lewisburg, it was particularly troubling that inspectors noted Nazi iconography and prison gang graffiti in areas of the prison used exclusively by staff. A subset of staffers who were interviewed also offered complaints about verbal harassment from co-workers, triggering concerns about a possible hostile work environment. See: Inspection of the Fed. Bur. of Prisons’ Fed. Corr. Inst. Lewisburg, DOJ Off. of Insp. Gen. (Sep. 2024).
Additional source: NPR News
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