Department of Justice October 31, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announces the availability of the Criminal Alien Requirement 15, Requirement B Environmental Assessment (EA) for the proposal to award one contract to house up to 2,000 federal, low-security, adult males, non-U.S. citizen, criminal aliens within one existing contractor-owned, contractor-operated facility. Background Information: Pursuant to Section 102, 42 U.S.C. 4332, of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, as amended, the Council on Environmental Quality Regulations for Implementing NEPA (40 CFR parts 1500-1508), and the BOP Procedures for Implementing NEPA (28 CFR part 61, Appendix A), the BOP prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) to analyze the impacts of awarding one contract to house up to 2,000 low-security, adult male, non-U.S. citizen, criminal aliens within one existing contractor-owned and contractor-operated correctional facility. It is anticipated that the number of inmates will continue to rise for several reasons. Federal court sentencing guidelines are resulting in longer terms of confinement for serious crimes. Moreover, there is an increase in immigration and offenders, along with a greater effort to combat organized crime and trafficking. As a result, existing BOP facilities are at capacity. In response, the BOP has focused on ways to reduce prison overcrowding by requesting additional contract beds for low security, adult male criminal aliens, expansion of current facilities, and building and operating new medium and high security facilities. The purpose of the project is to acquire additional bed space to address the need to reduce overcrowding in existing BOP facilities as a result of increases in convictions and sentence terms. The BOP requires flexibility in managing existing low-security bed space as well as the anticipated future needs for low-security bed space. Use of an existing contractor-owned and operated correctional facility provides the BOP the flexibility needed to meet population capacity needs in a timely manner, conform to federal law, and maintain fiscal responsibility while successfully meeting the mission of the BOP. The process to identify contracting opportunities for securing additional inmate bed space in support of the increasing needs of the BOP involved the BOP advertising for interested vendors to respond to the request for proposal (RFP) with options for meeting the requirements. Based on the responses to the solicitation the BOP had four potential alternatives. The solicitation RFP-PCC-0022 (CAR 15 Requirement B) identified the evaluation criteria under which each offeror's proposal would be considered and evaluated. The non-price based evaluation criteria that consist of the following in descending order of importance: