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(Reuters) - A report by a Congressional watchdog agency has found widespread security deficiencies in federal courthouses nationwide, with 44% of facilities ranking poorly based on the judiciary's assessment of building conditions in 2020.
The Government Accountability Office detailed those concerns as part of a broader report on Wednesday examining the judiciary's assessment of construction needs in its courthouses and critiquing how it ranks their urgency.
The statistics come amid ongoing concerns about judicial security in the wake of a deadly attack in 2020 at the New Jersey home of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas by a gunman who killed her son and wounded her husband.
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The GAO examined data collected by the judiciary on 385 federal courthouses in 2020 for its annual process of creating ratings and rankings that allow officials to prioritize courthouse construction projects and funding.
The GAO said 267 courthouses, or 69%, lacked fully separate circulation paths for the public, prisoners and judges in all hallways, elevators and stairways.
One judge described how the U.S. Marshals Service sometimes escorted prisoners and judges through the same door at the same time from the same parking lot.
The GAO said security deficiencies were more common in older and historic courthouses and said officials believed the only fix for some would be to build new ones.
In a letter responding to the report, the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, U.S. District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, said it highlighted how "many courthouses continue to have serious security issues and challenges."
David Sellers, a spokesman for the office, said in a statement that the Judicial Conference, the judiciary's policymaking body, asked Congress to fund security and other projects when it considered President Joe Biden's now-passed $1 trillion infrastructure bill, but it did not receive funding.
The GAO in its report faulted some of the judiciary's methodologies for assessing construction priorities, particularly for relying on outdated data, and recommended it improve its process.
Over one-third of courthouse assessments used for the 2020 rankings were at least seven years old, potentially hiding problems, the GAO said.
It cited a courthouse in Panama City, Florida, that was destroyed in October 2020 by a hurricane, which due to reliance on a 2016 assessment dropped in the 2020 construction needs ranking.
Mauskopf in her letter said the ranking did not impact how the judiciary approached that emergency.
Read more:
U.S. Senate panel advances judicial security bill after N.J. attack
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