MORGANTOWN — Cameron Lindsay – a former prison and jail warden and owner of Morgantown-based Cameron Lindsay Consulting Services – believes that Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide inside a federal jail reflects failure at the top leadership levels of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“I’m concerned about the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the current time,” he said.
Referencing the death of Epstein and the killing of gangster Whitey Bulger in the Hazelton prison in 2018, Lindsay said, “When you see so many incidents that shouldn’t occur, it makes you wonder what’s going on in terms of leadership and decision making.”
Lindsay emphasized that his concerns are not about the “fine agency” or the “thousands of dedicated staff put their lives on the line” daily, but about the leadership at FBOP. About the leaders’ lack of experience and poor decision making.
Lindsay worked 25 years in nine correctional institutions – public and private sector – and served as warden of three federal prisons and two federal jails. One of those jails was the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, across the river and six miles from the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan where Epstein died.
MDC Brooklyn holds about 1,700 inmates of all security levels, male and female, most of them pending federal adjudication. MCC New York holds about 760 of the same type of inmates.
Epstein was in jail on federal charges of paying girls as young as 14 to have sex with him. He was placed on suicide watch on July 23 but was taken off July 29. According to media reports, he was alone and unsupervised at the time of his death. His cellmate had been removed from the cell. He had not been checked every 30 minutes as procedure required.
Lindsay said, “To take a guy like that off suicide watch makes absolutely no sense.” He was a convicted sex offender and connected billionaire. “You would think leadership would have been on top of this issue more than anything else. … This is Corrections 101.” And running prisons is a very complex task.
Severe understaffing was cited as a problem in the Epstein and Bulger cases: forced daily overtime and 16-hour shifts among the issues.
“We have absolutely got to improve the staff-to-inmate ratio” in federal prisons and administrative facilities, Lyndsay said.”
Attorney General William Barr is quoted saying he’s learned of “serious irregularities” at MCC New York and said the FBI and Justice Department’s Inspector General will be investigating.
Lyndsay commented, “I can understand why the attorney general is livid. It never should have happened.” FBOP will also conduct an after-action review, he said.
Some people, Lyndsay said, will see Epstein’s death as well deserved and worth little more than a good riddance. But that’s the wrong way to look at things, for several reasons.
For one, his death provides no sense of justice for the victims.
For another, we have a responsibility to uphold the justice system and our Constitution by safeguarding inmates so they can undergo due process and have their cases heard.
Conspiracy theories – that someone well connected arranged for Epstein’s death – have arisen from the left and right. Lyndsay said anything is possible, but investigation will probably reflect what he believes, that leadership complacency and poor decision making allowed Epstein to take his own life.
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