Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced today the release of a Management Advisory Memorandum to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) regarding the BOP’s use of temporary secure enclosures with limited space for lengthy time periods.
The DOJ Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) identified these concerns during an investigation in which an inmate, during an Immediate Use of Force, was placed in such a secure enclosure measuring three feet wide by three feet deep and seven feet tall for approximately 21 hours. During this investigation and other investigations, we learned that it is a common practice for BOP employees to utilize secure enclosures of these or similar dimensions to temporarily hold inmates for various reasons, such as when there is a need to leave the inmate temporarily unattended while moving the inmate between standard cells or to other locations within a facility. However, the BOP does not have any written guidance regarding the use of temporary secure enclosures, such as the appropriate size, the length of time an inmate may remain in such an enclosure, or how an inmate should be monitored while in the secure enclosure.
The DOJ OIG made two recommendations to the BOP to address the concerns we identified. The BOP agreed with both recommendations.