unit he was supervising this tragic event rocked our community to its core sparked outrage and shedding additional light on significant funding shortfalls plaguing our federal prison system in response to this tragedy a grassroots led community organization was formed in my home community about water to advocate on behalf of correctional officers at the united states penitentiary out water and around the country i am proud to report that the friends and family of correctional officers now has over one thousand members last night during a telephone town hall meeting i had with my constituents somerset county the issue was raised and it demonstrates tragedy still remains high in the minds of my constituents unclear whether officer rivera would be alive today where the institution fully staffed i think we can all agree that congress has a responsibility to ensure a tragic event like this never takes place again in our nation's prisons congress simply can and must do more to provide the bureau of prisons with greater resources and to ensure our correctional officers have the tools and the training they need to safely and efficiently do their job across the nation staffing levels are decreasing well and make populations are steadily on the rise leaving correctional officers vulnerable over the last twenty years the  operating at eighty percent eighty six percent of the necessary staffing levels to watch over an inmate population twenty five percent over pasti nationwide the inmate to staff ratio is four point nine one as contrasted with the one thousand nine hundred seven number three point seven to one i understand our correctional officers will always be subject to a certain level of risk i strongly believe that increases in staffing levels will significant  reduce this threat during my tenure in congress i have advocated for adequate funding for the bureau of prisons and sufficient resources for a nation's correctional officers for the difficult and dangerous work they do finally i believe we are on becoming enable to your prisons to hire over one thousand additional correctional officers and activate newly constructed prison i have regularly communicated my concerns regarding the status of these facilities to director lap and in particular i have highlighted my concerns about and made assault levels overcrowding and understaffing and in our prison facilities last july introduced legislation to provide all federal correctional officers  to help our correctional officers from future and made assault without delay and i thank him for it director lapin responded by an acting policy changes to provide all correctional officers stab penitentiaries greater control over and made and to supply penitentiaries with additional staff during evening and we can watch while not perfect this is certainly a step in the right direction last month i wrote director lapin highlighting my concerns with the findings of the recently insufficient staffing levels inadequate training of staff a lack of accountability for and made offenses and other issues which had they been properly addressed by the previous warden may have been prevented the death of officer rivera i'd like to  why continue to be concerned with the insufficient staffing levels and overall safety levels at u s water director lapin has assured me that operations have substantially improved under the leadership of the warden i just spoke of legislation that directs the bureau prisons to conduct a pilot program to determine effectiveness of issuing pepper sprayed in rest correctional staff the bill also directs the g a o to report to congress on a pilot program and to report on tools to improve officer safety in federal prison while this bill is not a silver bullet solution for the problems affecting press officers in our federal prisons i believe it takes important steps determine whether our congressional correctional officers have the tools they need to affectively do their job once again mr chairman i want to thank you for inviting me to testify today i look forward to working with you to explore practical solutions to ensure that our nation's when i wrote to him and then i called him he didn't respond as well and i've not always gotten my way as a congressperson but i have never had a situation where the person that i was trying to make an inquiry with wouldn't return my phone