Bureau of Prisons to ‘suspend operations’ at California penitentiary

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons said Tuesday that it will suspend operations at a California prison, following the news that “chunks” of concrete have begun falling from the decaying ceilings of underground tunnels that house its steam system.

Bureau of Prisons Director William K. Marshall announced the news in an email to employees Tuesday, warning that if the prison remains open, falling debris could hurt workers or even create a prison-wide emergency.

“There is a very real risk that falling concrete could strike the steam lines,” he wrote. “If that happens, heat to the institution could be lost instantly, creating an emergency that could require the evacuation of nearly 1,000 inmates in a matter of hours. We are not going to wait for a crisis. We are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.”

Federal Correctional Institution Terminal Island, located in southern California near Long Beach, currently faces $110 million in critical repair needs over the next two decades. Instances of deferred maintenance at the facility have been the subject of multiple inspector’s general reports, though the prison holds a number of high-profile inmates, including crypto fraudster Sam Bankman Fried, disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti and Theranos COO Ramesh Balwani.

In a statement to Government Executive, BOP Spokeswoman Randilee Giamusso said efforts to protect staff and inmates at the facility will begin “immediately.”

“A strategic and targeted approach will be used to relocate inmates currently housed at FCI Terminal Island to other locations across the agency,” she said. “Several placement options are being evaluated, with a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations.”

BOP said decisions regarding what to do about the facility, including whether and how to repair it, will wait until a “further assessment” of the situation there. News of the planned evacuation came just days after the agency touted $2 billion in funding to address deferred maintenance priorities across the federal prison system from this year’s budget reconciliation law.