DOJ Inspects BOP Food Service Operations, Finds Troubling Issues at Multiple Facilities
In the first week of June 2024, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted surprise inspection at six Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Food Service Departments, finding deficiencies at the facilities which “impair[ed] the administration of food service.”
The inspections occurred nearly simultaneously at one prison in each of the BOP’s six regions by different OIG teams. They reviewed operations at USP McCreary, FCI Marianna, FCC Pollock, MCC Chicago, FCC Allenwood, and FCI Mendota. It noted that “food service operations at some institutions appeared to be well run, were generally clean, and had few if any serious issues identified; others had significant problems in multiple areas; the remaining institutions fell somewhere in between.”
To discuss the issues reviewed by the OIG, it will be helpful to note the outcome in each area as found at USP McCreary, as it and FCI Marianna were found to have the most deficiencies. As for access to contraband, reviewers found “a large unattended and untethered knife in the food preparation area.” One McCreary employee reported that “when the knife is not in use it is stored in an unlocked desk drawer, as opposed to a locked cabinet as required by BOP policy.”
Of the six institutions inspected, five of them, including McCreary, lacked security cameras inside food storage warehouses. The OIG noted that this provided ample opportunities for the introduction of contraband to the facility. The facilities in question countered that such cameras were not required by policy. Such areas “are generally outside facility perimeters” and “inmates permitted to work in food service warehouses are minimum-security inmates who routinely live and work with limited supervision, in accordance with security level guidelines and local procedures.”
The OIG did note that this issue was likely to be resolved within the next two years with the purchase and installation of 27,000 additional cameras BOP-wide as a result of the passage of the Prison Camera Reform Act of 2021.
The teams found multiple, problematic infrastructure issues at the reviewed facilities. At USP McCreary, “we saw water seeping through broken floor tiles and emitting a strong and unpleasant odor,” and the team was “unable to determine the source of the water.”
The temperatures in the kitchen area at Marianna and Pollock were measured to be 93 degrees and 86 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. One Pollock employee said the kitchen was “very hot” and that inmates are “working in brutal heat.”
Many freezers and refrigerators were not maintaining temperatures in compliance with BOP standards. At McCreary, the team “observed indicia of thawed and refrozen food in a freezer that employees told us regularly experienced temperature fluctuations and refrigerant leaks.” The team said this “may allow the growth of harmful bacteria and organisms, increasing the risk of foodborne illness.”
The one area noted by the OIG that was in significant compliance at McCreary was the mobile heating carts, which transport food from food service to the housing units. However, these were non-functional at Pollock and Mendota, creating “potential safety risks” if there were lengthy delays in food delivery.
Reviewers at McCreary “found that there was no hand soap in a bathroom used by inmates who prepare food.” The institution’s response was that “inmates could access soap if they requested it.” This raised serious concerns about whether inmates were employing proper handwashing techniques. Also found at McCreary and Marianna were workplace hazards such as “precariously stacked food pallets” and ice accumulation on floors inside freezers.
The team noted that staffing levels were low at all the institutions inspected, but were “well below authorized levels” at Marianna and Mendota. These shortages “made it difficult for employees to safely monitor inmates and caused FCI Mendota to modify the way food is served.”
Overall, MCC Chicago and FCC Allenwood were found to have the fewest areas of concern during the review, though a keen-eyed reader will notice the quality of the food was inspected only indirectly. The team at Allenwood did note that “inmates routinely diverted large volumes of food and hid it, for personal use, in drop ceilings.” And the team at Chicago was largely prevented from an extensive review due to the $700,000 major kitchen renovation that was underway during the inspection.
By the time the OIG published the results of the inspections in June 2025, “much of the malfunctioning major food storage equipment we identified during inspections ha[d] now been repaired.”
As to the many other issues noted, the team wrote that “many of the issues we observed are manifestations of longstanding BOP-wide issues the OIG has previously identified, including ineffective contraband mitigation, insufficient security camera coverage, staff shortages, and failing infrastructure.” In 2024, the BOP identified an approximately $3 billion infrastructure repair backlog, though it is unclear that simply throwing more money at the agency would solve its many organizational challenges.
Source: DOJ OIG
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