UNITED STATES−According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has failed to monitor the social communications of inmates who were known terrorists in the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) in Manhattan, New York.

A March 2020 press release by the DOJ states that the results of an audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ monitoring of inmates, revealed that communications to halt radicalization for over 500 terrorist inmates in March 2018, “with known nexus to international or domestic terrorism.

BOP policy requires that all high-risk terrorist inmates phone calls, visits, and social communications be monitored by the feds. The audit confirmed that the inmates had not been identified by authorities in order to be monitored. The 67-page report did indicate that the BOP did begin to give the Federal Bureau of Investigations a list of soon to be released inmates in 2005.

The report stated that the BOP did not take appropriate steps to ensure the information on formerly incarcerated terrorists was provided to the FBI. Those inmates were placed under a Special Administrative Measure (SAM) that requires 100 percent live communication monitoring by a sponsoring law enforcement agency, were not being properly monitored due to technical difficulties.

The BOP was advised to develop a better strategy to identify its population of incarcerated terrorists. During the audit, 28 incarcerated domestic and international inmates who had not been identified because law enforcement did not provide enough background information on the inmates.

Auditors made 19 recommendations to improve the BOP’s accounting for, monitoring of, and security of terrorist inmates. One of the recommendations is to improve the intake process of the prisoners to include criminal background checks and interviews of the inmates upon their arrival.

The reputation of MCC came under scrutiny during the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal. This is the same prison where MCC guards  failed to properly supervise and monitor Epstein who was previously on suicide watch, before he was reported dead on August 10, 20019, from an alleged suicide.There was  no surveillance footage that could be found to assist investigators in confirming the exact cause of Epstein’s death.