A new report broadly criticizing the management and practices of the United States Bureau of Prisons found that the federal prison in Atlanta saw more inmate deaths than any prison in the country over the report’s eight-year analysis period.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general report chronicled 17 inmate deaths in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary between 2014 and 2021 and pins the loss of life on a lack of adequate medical equipment and function cameras, among other problems. The review does not reveal the causes of death for the Atlanta inmates but notes that suicides made up 187 of 344 total deaths across the federal prison system during that period.
The report places blame squarely on the troubled federal prison agency and points to a laundry list of failures including understaffing, inadequate access to medical equipment, poor training and the prevalence of contraband drugs and weapons, which the report found contributed to nearly one-third of the inmate deaths.
The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, in particular, did not have adequate access to heart defibrillators and lacked functional security cameras which created blind spots throughout the facility, the report notes.