The U.S. Bureau of Prisons recently announced a mission change for the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, a low-security women's prison. Beginning this month, the Bureau plans to begin transferring the FCI's roughly 1000 female prisoners to a new facility in Aliceville, Alabama, 988 miles away, and convert the Danbury site into an all-male facility.
Eleven U.S. Senators from the Northeast wrote a letter to Charles Samuels, the Bureau of Prisons director, requesting that he put the transfer on hold. According to the Senators, the “transfer would dramatically disrupt the lives of these female inmates, many of whom are from the Northeast, and place them out of reach of their families and loved ones.”
Human Rights Watch has explored the harm caused by long-distance transfers in the context of immigration detention. We spoke to a detainee who was transferred from New York to New Mexico, making regular visits with her children impossible. She told us: “Every time I manage to call, my two little girls are crying by the time we get off the phone. I can’t take it.” After release of our report, ICE agreed to update its transfer policy and to start the use of a transfer checklist, which would limit transfers when detainees had their lawyer or their family nearby.
The Bureau has explained the transfer as a way to tackle overcrowding in womens' facilities, currently operating at 55 percent over capacity. But as the senators point out in their letter, converting the Danbury prison into a male-only facility suggests that the rationale has at least as much to do with creating more capacity for male inmates.
The BOP needs to explain how it justifies the harm the transfer will do to inmates and their families. According to the National Women’s Law Center, more than half of female inmates have children under the age of 18, and studies show that close family bonds during imprisonment can help reduce recidivism and help inmates reintegrate into society after release.
Clearly, BOP understands the importance of family bonds: just two months ago, Director Samuels issued a memo that “reaffirmed the importance of parenting to the federal inmate population.”
There’s still time for Director Samuels to listen to his own words -- and reconsider this move.
