Greyhound Transports Unsupervised Federal Criminals

If you didn’t already have a list of reasons as long as your arm NOT to take a Greyhound bus, here’s another one - the bus line routinely ferries unsupervised dangerous convicts from one Federal prison to another.

Dallas TV station WFAA broke this story yesterday by reporting that it had one of its reporters track a criminal on the bus from Rochester, Minnesota, to Houston, Texas.  The criminal traveled by himself, unguarded, and unsupervised for the entire trip.

Greyhound officials say that they are not alerted when a felon is traveling on one of their coaches, and they have repeatedly asked the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to stop the practice, but the Bureau refuses to.

According to statistics compiled by the Bureau, more than 5,300 federal inmates have transferred themselves to a different prison, and over 54,000 inmates have taken a bus unescorted to halfway houses since April of 2006.

During a two-year period from 2003 - 2005, a total of 77 prisoners escaped during these transfers, and only 19 of the escapees were apprehended.

The bottom line for all of this, of course, is the almighty dollar. A Prison Bureau spokesperson was quoted as saying that “to transfer these types of inmates using BOP staff, or U.S. Marshals services or contract services would result in a large, unnecessary cost to the government and ultimately the taxpayer.”

Hmm, how unnecessary is that cost if one of your loved ones is sitting on a motor coach next to one of these convicts?

Let Greyhound and the Bureau of Prisons know how you feel about this practice:

Greyhound Lines Customer Assistance: (214) 849-8966
Greyhound: E-Mail form

Bureau of Prisons: (202) 307-3198