An award-winning whistleblower at U.S. Penitentiary Atwater helped expose pervasive safety problems that endangered prison inmates nationwide, a federal investigation reveals.
Prompted by the complaints of Leroy Smith Jr., former safety manager at the Atwater prison, investigators say they uncovered "serious misconduct" that included "carelessness or indifference" to the safety of inmates recycling electronics in multiple federal prisons.
In a sweeping report that was four years in the making, the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General pinpointed "numerous violations of health, safety and environmental laws, regulations and (Bureau of Prisons) policies."
The past problems spelled out in a 1,433-page report and accompanying appendix went well beyond those already well documented at Atwater, located between Modesto and Fresno in California's San Joaquin Valley.
"We also found numerous instances of staff misconduct and performance failures," investigators noted. "These included actions that endangered staff and inmates: dishonesty, dereliction of duty, and theft, among others."