Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice – Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing the Department of Justice – 2013, December 13, 2013.

“This year’s list identifies six challenges that we believe represent the most pressing concerns for the Department.  They are Addressing the Growing Crisis in the Federal Prison System; Safeguarding National Security Consistent with Civil Rights and Liberties; Protecting Taxpayer Funds from Mismanagement and Misuse; Enhancing Cybersecurity; Ensuring Effective and Efficient Law Enforcement; and Restoring Confidence in the Integrity, Fairness, and Accountability of the Department.  While we do not prioritize the challenges we identify in our annual top management challenges report, we believe that one of the challenges highlighted this year, which we also identified in last year’s report, represents an increasingly critical threat to the Department’s ability to fulfill its mission.  That challenge isAddressing the Growing Crisis in the Federal Prison System.

The crisis in the federal prison system is two-fold.  First, the costs of the federal prison system continue to escalate, consuming an ever-larger share of the Department’s budget with no relief in sight.  In the current era of flat or declining budgets, the continued growth of the prison system budget poses a threat to the Department’s other critical programs – including those designed to protect national security, enforce criminal laws, and defend civil rights.  As I have stated in testimony to Congress during the past year, the path the Department is on is unsustainable in the current budget environment.  Second, federal prisons are facing a number of important safety and security issues, including, most significantly, that they have been overcrowded for years and the problem is only getting worse.  Since 2006, Department officials have acknowledged the threat overcrowding poses to the safety and security of its prisons, yet the Department has not put in place a plan that can reasonably be expected to alleviate the problem.”