It's National Sunshine Week at Your Local Prison

March 14-20 marks National Sunshine Week, a time when groups around the country celebrate the importance of open government, transparency and access to public information. But don't look for the Bureau of Prisons to bring much to the festivities.

The Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) record on open government is sadly lacking. In fact, in recent years, the number of its staff committed to handling requests under the Freedom of Information Act -- the cornerstone of the government's open records system -- has dropped to just 20 full-time staffers. While those numbers have fluctuated over the years, current staffing levels remain significantly lower than the number of full-time FOIA officials who were employed at the start of the Bush presidency.

Chalk it up to an across-the-board decline in FOIA support that agencies suffered under the Bush administration -- particularly the BOP's official home, the Justice Department. While in 2000, the Justice Department employed 1,069 full-time FOIA staffers, by 2008, that figure had plummeted to 389 -- a precipitous drop of almost two-thirds.

The Obama administration raised hopes last year when it issued a fresh-faced directive ordering agencies to stop keeping so many records a secret. But how much has really changed? In a damning report today, the Associated Press finds that Obama's directive has been "widely ignored," and in certain cases, the number of withheld federal records has gone substantially up.

Fortunately, though, prison reform advocates have been on the offensive to combat lackadaisical efforts behind FOIA compliance. The ACLU, for example, has pushed BOP officials to fully respond to a FOIA request on the censorig of religious materials in prisons. Prison Legal News has likewise kept up the fight, and last year obtained a successful ruling from the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, ordering the Bureau of Prisons to conduct a new and more thorough records search for the magazine.

More recently this January, federal inmate Anthony Ray -- who's long complained that the BOP systematically delays processing of prisoners' FOIA requests -- won a procedural decision from a U.S. district judge, who ordered the BOP to stop ignoring his complaint. (Ray has been demanding documents related to a urine sample test relevant to his case; the BOP acknowledges it mishandled Ray's FOIA request.)

Small victories and steps, but still meaningful ones. This Sunshine Week, what are the successes -- or frustrations -- that you've encountered in your local state or federal prison's open records system?

Photo Credit: Matt McGee