FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 25, 2005 SCHUMER: DOJ EXPORTED PRISON CONTRACTORS WITH CHECKERED PASTS TO REBUILD IRAQI PRISONS Senator’s Letter to DOJ Sparks Inspector General Investigation Revealing that Dozens of Subcontractors Were Hired Without Proper Clearances in Iraq Schumer Inquiry Prods DOJ to Implement New Controls on Selection of Guards, and IG Makes Other Recommendations In June of 2004, Senator Charles E. Schumer asked the Department of Justice to investigate and report on how the Department hired at least three individuals to oversee the reconstitution of Iraq’s prison system, despite credible allegations of serious misconduct when those individuals previously served as prison officials in the United States. The Justice Department referred the matter to its Inspector General and today Schumer received the Inspector General’s report on this matter. During the Inspector General’s review, the IG learned that “dozens of subcontractors without the proper clearances had been hired for the Iraq program.” These included people who were placed in charge of the prisons and up and down the line. As a result of that discovery, Justice began to design and implement procedures intended to address those “weaknesses.” Justice has also hired three former high level Bureau of Prisons officials to provide corrections expertise that Justice lacked at the inception of the Iraq program. Schumer said, “It is very disturbing that the Justice Department would select subcontractors with checkered pasts to bring ‘order’ back to Iraq’s prison system. The one silver lining in this awful incident is that the Justice Department is finally taking real steps to insure that the guards and administrators we give to Iraq’s prison system will help them, not make things worse.” “It was bad enough that we already knew three of these guards previously engaged in serious misconduct, but this IG report today shows that many others were similarly hired. The bottom line is that we should not be exporting our dirty laundry as we are trying so hard to clean up Iraq’s problems. If prison guards are not qualified to work U.S. prisons because of previously poor behavior or lack of proper clearances, they should not be considered good enough by our Justice Department for jobs in Iraq’s prisons,” Schumer stated. The Justice Department said it did not know about the allegations regarding the three officials before they were hired for the Iraq program, but said that those allegations would not have dissuaded them from hiring the officials. Based on the request made by Sen. Schumer, the Justice Department has already made several improvements to the clearance and hiring process. Here are some of the highlights: · As part of the background check on candidates, Justice uses
a standardized memo to determine whether the candidate should receive
clearance. As part of this review, Justice discovered that the memo is
not in line with the Department’s own policy regarding risk assessment
established in 2002. Justice has since created a new memo that complies
with that policy. The full text of the DOJ I.G. Report can be found at www.schumer.senate.gov <http://www.schumer.senate.gov> # # # |