President Joe Biden has sought to limit the use of restrictive housing in prisons, but Bureau of Prisons data has shown otherwise, perplexing the agency's new director.
The new director of the federal Bureau of Prisons said Thursday that officials are reviewing why the number of inmates being held in so-called restrictive housing has climbed in recent months, contrary to the executive order that President Joe Biden issued in May calling for the practice to be "used rarely" and for prisoners to be kept "free from prolonged segregation."
The surge in restrictive housing — informally known as solitary confinement — has perplexed BOP Director Colette Peters, who told NBC News that she "asked the same question when we saw the numbers come forward, so I'm curious as well."
An NBC News analysis last month of BOP figures revealed that the number of inmates held in restrictive housing had gone up 7% since May 28, the same week Biden signed his executive order, and was up more than 11% from the first few months of his administration.
The number hasn't fallen: As of Thursday, 11,398 inmates were being held in restrictive housing, according to the BOP, up slightly from 11,368 at the end of September.
The vast majority of them are in special housing units, in which they are segregated from the general population due to safety concerns or as a form of discipline. The federal government houses more than 142,000 inmates in its custody across the United States.
While Peters is unsure of the reasons behind the upward trend, she said that anecdotally, Covid may be forcing some individuals to quarantine out of health concerns.
"Did that move increase those numbers? Or do we have some serious work to do?" she asked.
efore becoming director in August, Peters led Oregon's prison system for a decade, where she made the reduction in the use of solitary confinement a priority and believes it's in part why she was selected for her new role.
At a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in September, the committee's chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pressed Peters over how the BOP would address the "abuse" of solitary confinement, which the United Nations considers the isolation of a person in a cell for 22 hours or more "without meaningful human contact."
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