Violence plagued West Virginia prison before Bulger killing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Long before notorious Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger was killed at a federal prison in West Virginia, lawmakers, advocates and even prison guards had been sounding the alarm about dangerous conditions there.

But there has been no public indication that federal prison officials have taken action to address the safety concerns, even as Bulger's killing marks the third at the facility in the last six months.

An independent government commission found that United States Penitentiary Hazelton has been overcrowded for years. Inmates have repeatedly expressed concerns about their safety at the high-security prison, which houses 1,270 male inmates.

A 2016 report from the District of Columbia's Corrections Information Council said that prisoners warned officials, "Inmates can lose their lives quickly here."

In April, 48-year-old Ian Thorne was killed during an altercation with a fellow prisoner, and in September, Demario Porter was also killed in another fight with a fellow inmate.

Court records, oversight reports and news articles detail numerous violent incidents in recent years. In 2016, an inmate was charged with murder after prosecutors said he strangled another prisoner to death during a fight.

In February 2015, an inmate stabbed a fellow prisoner with a hand-crafted weapon during a fight, according to court documents. Another inmate received an extended sentence in May for assaulting a fellow prisoner and possessing a deadly weapon.

"There are a multitude of federal prisons that don't have a homicide rate like that," said Cameron Lindsay, a former federal prison warden who now works as a jail security consultant.

The federal Bureau of Prisons declined to make Acting Director Hugh Hurwitz available for an interview, but said in a statement that a team of "subject-matter experts" has been sent to the prison to "to assess operational activities and correctional security practices and measures to determine any relevant facts that may have contributed to the incident."

Last week, five members of Congress wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions about what they called "dangerous continual understaffing" at federal prisons in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and stated their alarm about the deaths at USP Hazelton.

Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said DOJ was "aware of the concerns raised in the letter" and would respond to the members of Congress.