Interviews with the families of people who die in federal prison show a remarkably consistent cruelty by BOP officials toward them during the worst moments of their lives, with families describing delays in being notified that their incarcerated loved one had been hospitalized, or even died; having their phone calls ignored; not being allowed to see their loved one in their final moments; delays in being sent the body and death certificate; being given inaccurate or incomplete information about the manner of death; or waiting months and years for the Bureau to fulfill their public records requests for more information about how their loved one died, Reason reports. "Generally when it comes to information about the wellbeing of people in the care and custody of the Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau of Prisons' first response is always to provide as little information as possible," says attorney Alison Guernsey, director of the Iowa College of Law's Federal Criminal Defense Clinic.
According to BOP policy, the warden or other designee should telephone the deceased inmate's next-of-kin "immediately to communicate the circumstances surrounding the death." The policy also states that the warden should draft a letter of condolence explaining the nature and causes of death. But families, lawyers, and criminal justice advocates say the BOP is shirking both its policy and its moral duty to give a bare minimum of courtesy to families. James Slater, an attorney based in Florida, has filed three FOIA lawsuits on behalf of six families whose loved ones died in the BOP system. He says it's an "unacceptable reality that the only way families are able to understand what happened to their loved ones within the time frame to right any wrong is through a FOIA lawsuit." The long delays in turning over FOIA records not only leaves families in the dark but hurts their chances of seeking justice. There's a two-year statute of limitations for lawsuits against the government, meaning that those months of FOIA delays eat into families' time to retain legal counsel and prepare a suit, because an attorney typically won't take a negligent death case without seeing those records first.
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