A scathing report from the Justice Department (DOJ) watchdog has detailed a catalogue of errors by Bureau of Prisons officers leading up to the suicide of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General Michael Horowitz found negligence, misconduct and poor job performance by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and workers at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center enabled Epstein to take his own life in August 2019.
These included failing to check on the disgraced financier despite him being on suicide watch, a violation of Bureau of Prison (BOP) policy which requires staff to check on all inmates in solitary confinement at least twice an hour.
Staff at the Manhattan jail also failed to assign Epstein a cellmate and left him with access to additional bed linen which he used to kill himself, the report finds.
Mr Horowitz also cited problems with surveillance cameras as a factor in Epstein’s 2019 death at the age of 66 while awaiting trial for underage sex trafficking.
The DOJ report concluded that while there was extensive failures, no-one else was involved in his death, confirming a previous ruling of suicide by a medical examiner.