Unemployment tops 8%, the defense budget is shrinking, and government agencies across the country are reducing their employment, but the BOP and the Justice Department apparently inhabit a parallel universe where none of this matters. The 2013 Federal Budget provides for a 4.5 % increase over last year, which includes funding to activate two prisons, one in Aliceville, AL, and one in Berlin, NH. Total funding for the BOP will top $8.6 billion for this year.
Additionally, the BOP is planning to build two new prisons, one in Yazoo City, MS, and one in Hazelton, WV, which will provide additional employment for an increasing staff population. Funding is also provided for new contract beds in non-BOP facilities.
A total of $13 million was set aside to attempt to fully fund the Residential Drug Treatment Plan, RDAP, "to support...Second Chance Act objectives" and reduce sentences for eligible prisoners for the full twelve months that Congress intended.
Despite this increased funding, complaints continue to rise about BOP overcrowding facilities by double and triple bunking, a clear violation of their own rules and policies, explained by their categorization of this practice as "temporary". Temporary in this case is whatever the BOP says it is.
Clearly, it is time for Congress to more closely examine the whole system of prosecution, sentencing, and incarceration to find alternatives to the rapidly expanding federal prison population. The U.S. continues to lock people up at a rate far exceeding that of other countries which the U.S. government has labeled repressive, including Iran, China, and Russia.
