Staffing shortages at the Federal Bureau of Prisons are so severe that its employees worked nearly 7 million hours of overtime last year, costing taxpayers more than $300 million in excess pay, according to a report Wednesday from the Justice Department Inspector General.
At least 31 employees last year earned more than $100,000 in overtime in addition to their regular salary. A cook supervisor at one facility earned more than $139,000 in overtime payments, adding an extra $5,149 to his biweekly paycheck, the report found.
During one pay period, an administrator added more than $11,000 in overtime, according to the report.
The inspector general did not conclude whether the overtime was justified, but cited “insufficient staffing” as a reason for certain overtime costs.
A Justice Department spokesman told The Washington Times that it agreed with the inspector general’s conclusions and has taken steps to reduce employees’ overtime hours by hiring more staff.
“The [Bureau of Prisons] continues to focus on hiring and retaining staff nationally, including offering hiring incentives where appropriate,” the spokesman said. “The BOP is taking a multiplatform approach to attract qualified job applicants including using social media for awareness and recruitment, hosting and participating in recruitment/hiring fairs, and collaborating with other federal agencies to identify prospective candidates.”
The findings come more than a year after billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a Manhattan federal facility cast a spotlight on understaffing in the prisons.
Last year, the union for the two guards tasked with monitoring Epstein said they were regularly forced to work 70-to-80 weeks and one of the guards was on his fifth straight day of overtime shifts.
The guards had allegedly fallen asleep on the job, creating a window for Epstein, who was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, to take his own life.
Wednesday’s inspector general report signaled that such conditions are a routine problem at federal facilities.
“While correctional officers made up almost half of all BOP staff positions, they accounted for approximately 70% of overtime hours and costs, meaning that correctional officers worked more overtime on average than any other position,” the report said.
Overtime costs accounted for more than 7% of the BOP’s payroll last year.
The decline in personnel has hit the Bureau of Prisons hard. Its overall workforce has dropped by roughly 10% since 2017, with the agency simply not hiring enough workers to meet demand.
President Trump in 2017 imposed a hiring freeze at the Bureau of Prisons, holding its staffing levels at roughly 33,000, down from about 38,000 just a few years earlier.
As a result, the BOP was forced to invoke a rule allowing people who work in other jobs, such as teachers and cooks, to be trained to fill posts typically operated by correctional officers.
The hiring freeze was lifted in April 2019 and some of the jobs have come back, but the BOP has been slow to fill all the positions.
Attorney General William Barr last year said the BOP had been working to hire employees, but blamed “a snafu” in the federal hiring system for the slow pace.
Mr. Barr had ordered the BOP to speed up hiring by filing two positions concurrently, but it still takes months to hire a federal employee.
“The shortages out in the prison facilities themselves was not the freeze,” Mr. Barr said in Senate testimony last year. “I think what it is is, frankly, bureaucracy and I don’t say this in a bad sense, just the way these organizations go out bringing in people they leave much too much of a lead time.”
The BOP has picked up its hiring pace this year, adding more than 3,500 new employees, its largest pool of new employees in 14 years.
Still, the hiring pace has not caught up to the large number of vacancies. Its workforce has dropped by roughly 10% since 2017 because some workers have chosen to retire.
The agency had roughly 3,000 open positions last year, the inspector general said.
At least 26 correctional officers worked as many hours in a single year last year as two full-time employees, according to the inspector general.
Correctional officers accounted for 71% of the bureau’s overtime costs, or roughly $207 million.
Despite the concerns, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz did not issue any recommendations. Instead, he suggested the BOP use the report to address staffing challenges and improve safety.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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