At Tuesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) slammed President Trump's federal prison policies.
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00:00Hank Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, my daddy rose to the number three spot in the
00:08Bureau of Prisons back in the early 1960s. He was head of, his responsibility was pardons,
00:19classifications, and paroles. He became a corrections officer, one of the first black
00:26corrections officers in the country back in 1950, when he was actually 1949, when he was
00:34recruited out of Morris Brown College in Atlanta to go to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary
00:41and become one of the first blacks to be a corrections officer. He became the first parole
00:49officer out at Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was transferred to back around 1952-53.
00:59And so BOP, Bureau of Prisons, kind of runs in my blood. He used to work at the Federal Home Loan
01:06Bank Building is what it is now, but that used to be the Bureau of Prisons, just a stone's
01:13throw away from here. And I'm alarmed that we would be having this hearing today and we
01:20don't even have the current BOP director to testify. Republicans actually, if Republicans
01:28actually cared about oversight, they would have the director here or rescheduled for a date
01:35that he was available. President Trump fired the former Bureau of Prisons director on inauguration
01:43day, and a third of the BOP's senior leadership quit. In its misguided efforts to chase efficiency,
01:51the Trump administration ended a long-running incentive pay plan, cutting officers and other
01:58employees pay by 25 percent, which will only worsen the existing staff shortages. But it's not just
02:06human infrastructure that's in disrepair, it's also the physical infrastructure, which has been a problem
02:13for years. Mr. Pertil, you are aware that in May of 2023, the Office of the Inspector General published
02:21an audit of BOP's efforts to maintain and construct institutions. And that audit described hazardous
02:29and crumbling infrastructure, including infrastructure problems that have led to the closure of BOP facilities.
02:37Correct? Correct. And you are also aware that BOP leadership has expressed concern about underfunding for
02:46maintenance and repair efforts and a resulting backlog of projects, right? I know that they have a significant
02:54backlog in deferred maintenance. And Mr. Milton, how does the failure to maintain BOP facilities affect the health
03:01safety, health and safety of BOP staff and inmates? Thank you for the question. And in fact, I may take some
03:11liberties and also express gratitude for your grandfather's legacy. Certainly, the facilities have put the health...
03:26When you say granddaddy, that makes me feel good. That must mean I'm looking young up in here.
03:32You look so young that it had to be your grandfather. Look, I do want an answer to that question, but I'll contact you later.
03:41I want to proceed on. Okay. Sorry. Sorry, sir.
03:45No. Instead of putting money into our existing prisons to fix them, this week, Trump ordered federal agencies to rebuild and open Alcatraz,
03:57which closed in 1963 and is now a tourist site. Alcatraz was shut down because it was too expensive to run,
04:08and all the supplies. And all the supplies had to be bought by a boat to the facility. I mean, just total...
04:16The place doesn't need to be reopened, but it's a vanity project for the president. He would waste money there, Mr. Pertil,
04:25and he would also waste... He also wasted money that could have gone to enhance facilities at existing BOP facilities, but he poured money into a failed effort to make Guantanamo Bay a place where it could accept a bunch of...
04:47Some being American citizens who were later deported to El Salvador. We don't need a BOP that manages facilities that are the same as what we have in El Salvador.
05:06And I'm out of time now, so I will yield back, but we have dysfunction in the BOP at this point.
05:13The gentleman yields back. With that, I'll ask the gentleman from the great state of...
05:19The gentleman wrote...