Bad performance of guards allowed Epstein’s suicide, says inspectorate

Jeffrey Epstein was alone in his cell with an excess of bedding the night he killed himself. Most of the security cameras in his sector were not working. A single employee was on duty for 24 hours. And despite his prominent presence and a suicide attempt two weeks earlier, he was not being watched as regularly as the regulations demanded.

The Justice Department’s inspectorate said Tuesday that a “combination of negligence, mismanagement and failure to perform their duties by staff” at the federal Bureau of Corrections and the prison in New York allowed the wealthy financier to take his own life in August 2019, there being no evidence of crime.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz attributed Epstein’s death to several factors, including the jail’s failure to assign him a cellmate and overworked guards lying in their logbooks by failing to conduct regular inspections. Otherwise, Horowitz said, they would have found the excess bedding that Epstein used to commit suicide.

These failures are seriously problematic, not only because they enabled Epstein’s suicide, but also because they “brought into question the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death and deprived Epstein’s many victims of the opportunity to seek justice,” he said. Horowitz in a video statement.

Horowitz’s investigation, the latest in a series of inquiries into the financier’s death, confirmed earlier findings that some of the prison staff tasked with surveillance were overworked. He identified 13 underperforming employees and recommended charging four of them. Only two assigned to watch Epstein the night of his death were charged, but a plea deal to falsifying the log saved them from jail.

Horowitz’s report also revealed new details about Epstein’s conduct in the final days before his death, such as signing a new will in a meeting with his lawyers two days before he was found unresponsive in his cell on August 10. of 2019 in the morning. Jail authorities were unaware of the New Testament before Epstein’s death, Horowitz said.

Few cameras in the sector where Epstein was located recorded the images they filmed due to a mechanical failure they suffered on July 29. The prison had contracted for a camera system upgrade three years earlier, but it had not been completed due in part to severe staffing shortages.

Separately, Epstein was alone the night of his death despite the fact that the prison’s psychological department had informed 70 staff that it was necessary to assign him a cellmate since his suicide attempt in July. But his cellmate was transferred on Aug. 9 and there was no plan to assign him a replacement.

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