Ossoff leads hearing on troubled Georgia federal prison

WASHINGTON - Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., convened a hearing Tuesday investigating the U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta, with several witnesses telling of abuses and corruption they said they witnessed.

A 10-month bipartisan probe of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons was conducted by the Ossoff-led Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the same that investigated problems with family housing at Fort Gordon.

The subcommittee secured and reviewed thousands of pages of internal documents and interviewed nearly two dozen whistleblowers and other witnesses, according to Ossoff.

“The totality of this evidence uncovered thus far paints a harrowing picture of a federal prison in crisis for many years,” Ossoff said.

He said bureau records reveal that, for years, some staff at the Atlanta prison “acted with impunity and even lacked regard for human life.”

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He said the facility was “extremely dangerous and insecure.”

“Vast quantities of contraband, including weapons and narcotics, flowed through the prison, enabled by corrupt staff,” he said.

Former jail Terri Whitehead testified about “many abuses and gross mismanagement I personally witnessed” while serving at the prison.

“The Atlanta way is far from norm and certainly not the Bureau of Prisons way,” Whitehead, who spent 30 years with the federal Bureau of Prisons. “The ‘Atlanta way’ is where staff are not held able for misconduct. Inmates are not challenged for negative behavior, and regular maintenance and routine repairs are nonexistent.

Whitehead cited numerous policy violations which, she said, “put the staff inmates and the local community in danger. For example, there were so many rats inside the facility, dining hall and food preparation areas that staff intentionally left doors open so the many stray cats that hung around the prison could catch the rats.

“Six months into the pandemic, staff were not provided appropriate (personal protective equipment) to perform their duties within the pandemic,” she said. “Also, there were no designated COVID-19 isolation or quarantine areas in a detention center unit. In August 2020, it was reported half of the 300 security cameras did not operate appropriately and the other half were off by three hours. There were missing security controls and equipment to include keys, handcuffs and pepper spray.”

Dr. Erika Ramirez served as the jail’s chief psychologist from 2018 to 2021, and told the she “repeatedly reported ongoing, uncorrected, gross mismanagement of suicide prevention practices, staff misconduct, and general operational deficiencies.

“Unfortunately, the only response I received was unlawful retaliation,” Ramirez said. “I was involuntarily transferred.”

Ramirez said the Atlanta federal pen was “falling apart” when she arrived. “Elevators were inoperable for months at a time; the walls were infested with mold; whenever it rained, the sewer would back up and overflow onto the recreation yard, sometimes leaving a foot of human waste behind,” she said. “Security wise, there was little to speak of. Given the volume and flagrante of the contraband, it was obvious that cell searches were not being properly conducted, if at all.”

Ramirez also cited a high rate of inmate suicide.

“In roughly four years, eight inmates at USP Atlanta died by suicide; two prior to my arrival and six during my tenure,” she said. “To put this into perspective, federal prisons typically see between one and three suicides over a five-year period.”

Rebecca Shepard, a staff attorney for the Federal Defender Program Inc., said the prison “subjects people to inhumane and substandard conditions and limits their access to attorneys, which in turn interferes with their Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

“During my eight years as a defender, I have seen clients routinely locked down and allowed out of their cells for extremely limited periods of time, such as only 15 to 30 minutes, three to four times a week, or only an hour each day,” Shepard said. “And these lockdowns persist for months. Clients are treated as though they are in solitary confinement, not because of their behavior, but because of their misfortune and being placed at USP Atlanta.”

The problems were “stunning failures of federal prison istration,” Ossoff said.

But despite “unequivocal internal reports of abuse and misconduct, the situation continued to deteriorate,” Ossoff said.