Enhanced Funding for Detention and the Bureau of Prisons

The 2007 Budget provides $5 billion for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and $1.3 billion for the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (OFDT). These DOJ components ensure that Federal criminals are safely detained and incarcerated to assure public safety. The costs of Federal incarceration and detention activities account for almost a third of DOJ’s annual budget. At present, there are over 188,000 inmates in Federal custody, of which approximately 11 percent represent immigration-related arrests and over 53 percent represent drug-related offenses. The number of Federal detainees has also experienced record growth, up over 300 percent over the past decade. The largest increases in the detainee population have occurred along the U.S. Southwest border because of increased Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement. While current system-wide crowding at Federal prisons is at the lowest level in several years, more prison and detention space is still needed.

In the recently released report, Contracting for Imprisonment in the Federal Prison System: Cost and Performance of the Privately Operated Taft Correctional Institution, the National Institute of Justice found that contractors can offer affordable and safe alternatives to building new low security prisons, in turn reducing crowding at existing facilities. The 2007 Budget provides $40 million to add new prisoner space located at a new contractor-managed low security prison in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania; to secure other new contractor-managed prison bed space; and to activate a new housing unit at an existing correctional institution in the northeast region, adding 1,962 beds.

OFDT has implemented management efficiencies and streamlining that have reduced the amount of time immigration offenders spend in detention awaiting incarceration. Innovative initiatives such as the “e-designate” pilot—a paperless, electronic offender transition process that allows the courts, the United States Parole Commission, the United States Marshals (USMS), BOP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security to move paperwork electronically between offices and agencies—has already reduced the amount of time offenders spend in detention in Arizona from 147 to 118 days, resulting in savings of $28 million. In addition, BOP continues to make progress in its streamlining and other efficiency measures. BOP has already abolished nearly 700 management positions, closed several outmoded and inefficient prison camps, and begun the transfer of inmates with the most critical medical needs to consolidated BOP medical centers, resulting in savings to the taxpayer.

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