WASHINGTON (PNN) - January 10, 2025 - James O’Keefe has revealed documents, which he received from a “high-level” Bureau of Prisons whistleblower, showing the Bureau’s new proposed policies downgrade security classifications for inmates convicted of child pornography offenses and terrorists.
The internal labor relations draft, sent by Chief Labor Relations Officer Christopher Wade, outlines several proposed changes to security designation, custody classification and offense severity scores.
“A classification system is necessary to place each inmate in the most appropriate security level institution to manage (his or her) risk of misconduct, to meet (his or her) program needs, and to be consistent with the Bureau’s mission to ensure public safety,” one of the documents reads.
The new policy changes the classification of Child Pornography offenses from a “High Severity Offense to a Low Severity Offense.”
The same “low severity” level is assigned to Animal Cruelty offenses.
“The Offense Severity category assigns points based on the severity of the inmate’s current offense,” according to Zoukis Consulting Group.
Additionally, the “Public Safety Factor” score for Terrorist Activity has been updated to reflect “medium-security for men and low-security for women.”
According to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Public Safety Factors “include ‘relevant, factual information about the individual’s current offense, sentence, criminal history or institutional behavior,’ outside of the general security scoring ‘that requires additional security measures.'”
The document also states, “Public Safety Factors (PSF) are removed for Prison Disturbance and Violent Behavior.”
O’Keefe’s source provided a statement, saying, “I can say with absolute certainty that the BOP is an agency in an existential crisis. If I looked at this agency through the lens of a CEO, I would probably think that complete privatization would be the most sensible route.”
“We need at least $5B in infrastructure repairs agency-wide, our health care (especially at my institution) is in absolute shambles, fentanyl and other hard drugs are being used by inmates and can be found anywhere without much effort, contraband cell phones are abundant, and we have a very serious drone problem (especially at my institution) that’s uncontrollable and extremely dangerous. The BOP is a failed agency where corruption and incompetence at the management level run rampant.”
O’Keefe Media Group published the documents received from its whistleblower.