During a House Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Brad Knott (R-NC) questioned Patrick Purtill, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Unify. US, about criminal activity inside the prison system.
00:43at the taxpayer's expense and, as we now know, the Bureau of Prisons expense.
00:48It's a disgrace. You all are due more funding, sure. Illegal immigrants are due far less funding.
00:55But, you know, one of the points that I'm hearing over and over and over today is the point about the need to rehabilitate.
01:03And while that is certainly one consideration that we should all be focused on,
01:07perhaps the main point of consideration that the Bureau of Prisons is there for is to protect the American citizens from dangerous criminals.
01:17Yes, rehabilitation of the criminal is key, but protection of the public is first and foremost.
01:23And to that end, one of the unfortunate realities that we have in this country is that we have a tremendous crime problem.
01:30Just as one example, in the year 1990, just 4,500 people died because of drug overdoses.
01:38And depending on which statistics you look at, averaging it out, sometimes it's up to 125 to 130,000 people have died from drug overdoses from the years 2020 to 2024.
01:50And whether it's gangs, cartels or other organized criminal organizations, they have in large part arrived here and embedded themselves in the country
02:00because of the open border welcomed approach to illegal immigrants that the Democratic Party has championed.
02:05And as a federal prosecutor, I saw that the crime not only was exacerbated outside of jails, I saw the crime reach far inside of jails as well.
02:16I know that you all need no education when discussing the dangers that criminal gangs and organizations pose inside and outside of jails.
02:26So my question is, Mr. Pirtle, to you first, how can we assist the BOP in combating the ongoing criminal activity inside the Bureau of Prisons,
02:37specifically as it relates to an ongoing connection to outside organizations?
02:42When I was sentencing people, there was often no interruption in criminal activity, whether it's cell phones, bribing prison officers, whatever it may be.
02:50What can we do to assist you or the BOP in stopping criminal activity once someone is sentenced?
02:57Well, I think that Mr. Potter might be even better equipped to answer this question.
03:01He's getting it next.
03:02But we could.
03:03But I will definitely take a crack at it.
03:04I don't mean to dodge.
03:05I do think that controlling, the key thing there, I think, is controlling the communications process.
03:12I mean, I think that that's how ongoing criminal enterprises are still able to operate, even though we've got people incarcerated in our facilities.
03:20And I do think that the porousness of some of our facilities to communications devices coming in, as well as contraband, many other forms of contraband coming in.
03:31But the other forms of contraband don't really get to the issue that you're talking about in the same way as the continuing activity.
03:38So I think it's really the communications piece.
03:40And I think that that's a combination of better security within the facilities.
03:45It's probably technological fixes, as well, in terms of what you can do in terms of signal damping and things like that.
03:52Mr. Potter, same question.
03:54Yeah, I would agree with everything that's been said.
03:57There's a lot of mechanisms you can use to prevent something from coming in and detect it once it's in.
04:03I think the staffing level makes a huge difference, the way you monitor, the way you track, the way you...
04:09Does the danger that facility officers face deter people from staying a long time?
04:15Does that make sense?
04:16So does the threat inside the facility weaken the environment that people are working in?
04:21Yeah.
04:22If it's more dangerous inside, of course, it makes it, you know, much more dangerous.
04:26Much more dangerous.
04:27And the risk versus reward.
04:28Yeah.
04:29You have to reward people in the right way if you want them to come into that and...
04:32Sure.
04:33Yeah.
04:34And if I could just get very quick answers, what's the total amount of dollars that you
04:38think is needed to fix the Bureau of Prisons?
04:41Not just the facilities, but total repair.
04:43I would not have a guess.
04:46Billions.
04:4710 billion?
04:4815 billion?
04:49I wouldn't, I wouldn't have a guess.
04:52How about you?
04:53It would be, it would be a genuine guess.
04:56Just give me a guess.
04:57We know that we know we've got $3 billion in deferred facilities costs.
05:00So that's, I mean, that's baked into the cake.
05:03We know that we've got four to 6,000 full-time employment positions that aren't filled.
05:09$10 billion?
05:10In all honesty, I would have to, I couldn't even hazard a guess.
05:14Yeah.
05:15But I do think that there's, even realigning what we currently do in spending, I think
05:19there's a lot of, there's a lot of good things that can be accomplished.
05:22Sure.
05:23Mr. Weil, I don't mean to jump over you, but I'm assuming you don't have an answer for that.
05:25Mr. Milton, if I can get one answer, what's the number that you would put?
05:29I fall in the same category.
05:31I don't know that I'm in position to give a number.
05:35Um, but I do know that it's, it takes significant investment.
