Study Hits Prison-Run Electronics Recycling

A Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released last week slammed the use of U.S. prisoners to recycle computers and electronics equipment. A Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) electronics recycling program has long been criticized for dangerous and unsafe working conditions but was defended by Department of Justice officials who oversee the program (C&EN, May 26, 2008, page 32). However, the OIG study finds that the program’s practices violate health, safety, and environmental laws and regulations, particularly those involving removal of a host of toxic substances at the 10 prisons that recycle electronics. It also finds that officials who ran the program had concealed warnings they received about hazardous working conditions. The report looks at conditions since the program was created in 1997 and finds a slow improvement beginning in 2003 and better conditions by 2009. It warns, however, that even today BOP provides no oversight of health, safety, and environmental compliance at the prisons.