FCI Sheridan’s main entrance in Oregon.
Office of Inspector General/Department of Justice
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Office of Inspector General/Department of Justice
FCI Sheridan’s main entrance in Oregon.
Office of Inspector General/Department of Justice
Delays in medical treatment at a federal prison in Oregon have become so severe that one inmate faked a suicide attempt to get treatment for a severely infected ingrown hair. The prisoner was then hospitalized for five days to be treated for an infection.
According to a new report from the Department of Justice, the medical delays that caused this individual to take drastic actions to be seen by a doctor were related to severe staffing shortages at the Correctional Institution Union of Sheridan, Ore. Inspector General’s Office.
Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, said in an interview with NPR in Sheridan, correctional officers are required to work overtime, leading to exhaustion, and medical staff and educators being assigned to do work they were not hired to do.
According to the report, staffing shortages, with correctional officers and medical staff, are among the biggest obstacles facing the federal prison system, and contribute to the challenges faced by the federal prison system. Other formalities at Sheridan and there are more than 120 establishments like it.
“It’s a problem that’s been around for at least 20 years,” Horowitz said. It won’t be fixed overnight. But what these inspections show us is how serious the problem has become.” “It’s very disturbing when you go to a facility like Sheridan and hear from staff, correctional officers, health care workers, educators that they can’t do the jobs that they’re there to do and they want to do. “
The visit to Sheridan by the IG’s office was the agency’s third in a series of unannounced inspections of facilities run by the federal Bureau of Prisons. The trip to Sheridan was the agency’s first stop at a facility that houses male inmates.
A series of investigations by the BOP watchdog agency in recent years have documented major challenges in the federal prison system, which is responsible for housing and caring for inmates. nearly 160,000 prisoners nationwide.
Horowitz said the problems revealed at Sheridan once again highlighted “the cascading impact that understaffing has on all services”. That includes the jail’s inability to provide mental health treatment, anger management classes, job training and other services to hundreds of inmates, leaving them ill-prepared to left prison to be fully rehabilitated, Horowitz said.
“What we have seen over and over again, in our unannounced inspections of the Bureau of Prisons is the challenges they face in meeting their mission of making prisons more accessible,” Horowitz said. should be safe and secure as well as prepare prisoners to reintegrate into society.” “And this is another case where we see the serious challenges they face in completing those tasks.”
Lack of both human resources and medical equipment
FCI Sheridan is made up of a medium security prison, a minimum security prison camp and a detention center for a total of 1,523 male inmates. At the time of the inspection, Sheridan had 81% of correctional services positions filled and 67% of positions filled in the Department of Health Services (with 18 of 27 positions filled).
Staffing troubles in both departments have contributed to major problems in meeting prisoners’ medical needs.
At the time of the inspection, there were not enough prison officers to escort prisoners for medical examination outside the prison, leading to
101 appointments canceled from January to November 2023.
And because there weren’t enough nurses and doctors at Sheridan, inmates weren’t given tests or X-rays, the report found. Inspectors found a backlog of 725 requests for blood or urine tests and 274 pending X-ray requests – leading to conditions that could go undiagnosed.
Horowitz said the example of the prisoner whose ingrown hair developed a serious infection shows the impact, both in time and cost, of not addressing medical needs early.
There are also problems with the supply of medical equipment, such as oxygen tanks – a problem not uncommon at other facilities under BOP control.
This early year, The IG released a report on prisoner deaths in custody found that BOP staff did not always respond promptly to medical emergencies or use appropriate medical equipment, such as automated external defibrillators.
Since being informed of the findings at Sheridan, the BOP has made changes.
The office was able to complete 89 of 101 outside medical appointments and worked to cut back on X-ray and lab orders.
“The problem is, they’ve done it, for example with Sheridan, by pulling staff from other prisons to fill this role,” Horowitz said. “So that’s a temporary fix at Sheridan. The question is, how do you ensure that continues and that the fix at Sheridan doesn’t create problems at another organization where every people come?”
Responding to the report, the BOP said it “is taking a multistep approach to fill all funded vacancies across the agency” through increased marketing, recruiting and increased incentives.”
