High-profile attacks on Derek Chauvin and Larry Nassar put spotlight on violence in federal prisons
Derek Chauvin was stabbed nearly two dozen times in the law library at a federal prison in Arizona. Larry Nassar was knifed repeatedly in his cell at a federal penitentiary in Florida.
The assaults of two notorious, high-profile federal prisoners by fellow inmates in recent months have renewed concerns about whether the chronically understaffed, crisis-plagued federal Bureau of Prisons is capable of keeping people in its custody safe.
In the shadow of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s 2018 beating death at a West Virginia federal penitentiary and financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 suicide at a Manhattan federal jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, the Bureau of Prisons is again under scrutiny for failing to protect high-profile prisoners from harm.
Chauvin, 47, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020, was hospitalized for a week after he was assaulted Nov. 24 at a medium-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona — the same complex where an inmate tried to shoot a visitor last year with a contraband gun.
Chauvin's suspected attacker, an ex-gang leader, told correctional officers he would have killed him if they hadn't responded when they did, prosecutors said. He was charged last week with attempted murder and has been moved out of Chauvin's prison to a federal penitentiary next
