00:00It builds back. With that, I'll ask the gentleman from the great state of Alabama, Mr. Moore.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Trump administration reversed several of the Biden-Harris
00:10BOP-related policies through executive order. Most notably, President Trump signed an executive
00:16order 14-168 requiring that all federal inmates be housed according to their biological sex
00:22and ending any provision of taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care for any federal inmates.
00:28Mr. Pertel, how did the previous administration of the Bureau of Prisons justify allocating
00:34limited taxpayer resources towards gender transition?
00:38In all honesty, sir, I couldn't answer that. I don't know what their justification was.
00:42What would be a better use of those funds?
00:44Well, what I will say is that I strongly support the current executive order that housing should
00:50be based upon biological sex. I think that there's a lot of agreement across multiple corrections
00:56systems, not just at the federal system, that that's the way to go. I believe that's the way
01:00California currently operates. And if you can get agreement between an executive order from
01:07the Trump administration and Governor Newsom's administration, it's probably, we can safely
01:12say there's some bipartisan consensus on that issue. And I do think that for facilities, both
01:18security and for the safety, especially of the inmates, that that's the correct policy.
01:22Yeah, I would agree 100%. And one thing you mentioned in your testimony, and we looked at
01:27this in the state of Alabama, is the in-home confinement as opposed to having them locked
01:32up in a prison, a federal prison in this case. Can you elaborate a little bit on the cost
01:37effectiveness of that? I think that was something Bill Barr and the CARES Act, they kind of came
01:40out with. And it seems like to me that makes a lot of sense for the taxpayers and for the inmates.
01:44Yeah, I agree. The cost savings there is enormous. It's just over $44,000 a year to house an inmate
01:54in a federal correction institution today. I don't have numbers handy, but I'll get them to you on
01:59exactly what the differential there would be on home confinement, but it is substantial.
02:04And as long as you approach that topic from a public safety standpoint, that you're very careful
02:10about who moves to home confinement. I think that the Barr requirements were very well thought
02:18through. I think that they also ensured that we maintained the rehabilitative piece of corrections
02:23is extremely important. The punitive piece is also important. And I think requiring a significant
02:28portion of their sentence to have been served was what Mr. Barr was trying to get at with that piece.
02:33So I think that that's I think that's a very viable option, given that 54% of the current federal prison
02:40population is deemed low, low risk to recidivate by BOP's own pattern tool.
02:45Yeah, I agree 100%. Like I said, if they're nonviolent, maybe there's an opportunity to revisit their
02:50their their their case and say, hey, you can be confined at home. And in the state, when we were doing
02:55the study, it seemed like we could house them for a month for the cost of one day in a prison. And so
02:59we were looking at as we were overcrowded as well. So I'm a real quick question, Mr. Potter,
03:04I want to ask you this. And the 119th Congress has already acted with the introduction of the HR
03:11141046. It's actually the Mark Fisher Memorial Act. Are you familiar with that? I'm not familiar
03:17with that. Okay, well, what happened? We actually had a Bureau of Prison employee that was just going
03:22through the mail. And I think it had so much fentanyl on it that it killed him. And so we're looking at
03:28ways that we can actually have this this mail screened off site. And so I think that probably
03:33is something we're trying to get I think we got 56 co sponsors right now. So we're working on moving
03:37that through. So hopefully we can make some any of you familiar with that at all? Okay, it's something
03:42they asked me to talk about. And I wanted to make it aware to the panel that we're talking about that.
03:48But Mr. Wild, what what is the number one thing that you see when you're what really changes when you
03:56start meeting with folks who are incarcerated and through your process? What do you think is the
04:01most impactful thing that we can do to help folks not recidivate? So prison fellowship utilize what
04:07we call an ecosystem model. It's recognizing that within a correctional environment, there are
04:11multiple stakeholders. And so through programming, like the prison fellowship academy and the warden
04:16exchange, correctional leaders as well as the incarcerated population can actually go on parallel journeys
04:21and not look at one another as the problem. But both become participants and partners and how do
04:28we create a more rehabilitative and constructive culture to both live and work in. And so we utilize
04:33all kinds of programs that bring multiple stakeholders together. Do you see recidivism rates
04:38drop dramatically? Our recidivism rate within the state of Texas is over it's a reduction in over 50%
04:47from a control group within that state. One of the things we've done in Alabama, and it's actually
04:51skills training in prisons so that as those individuals are incarcerated, they actually
04:57develop the skill, whether it be a mechanic certification, HVAC, honestly, all kinds of
05:02industry they can go into. We've seen that have a tremendous impact as well as faith, I think. So
05:07with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back. I'm out of time.
05:11Thank you. And Mr. Chair, I do have a unanimous consent.
05:15Without objection.
05:15Under Trump, U.S. prisons offer gender-affirming care. This is a New York Times article from
05:20October 6th, 2024.
05:21Without objection.
05:26Next, if I've got this right, ranking member, we have Mr. Raskin from the great state of Maryland.
05:32Thank you, Chairman Van Drew. Mr. Potter, is there evidence that private prisons are run better
05:39than Bureau of...
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