Before word spread of BOP Director Colette Peters’ resignation, the various Facebook groups for agency employees were abuzz with comments welcoming her departure. In combination with some of President Trump’s first executive orders, her resignation may be telling about the direction of prison reform under the new administration.
First, consider that the acting director named to step into Peters’ shoes until a permanent replacement is chosen has a correctional services (“custody”) background, similar to former Director Michael Carvajal, who was forced out in 2022 due to rampant corruption and abuse. Interim Director William Lothrop began his BOP career in various non-professional, corrections officer positions, which are more focused on the incapacitation of incarcerated individuals at the expense of rehabilitation. And he worked his way up from those ranks as a lieutenant, captain, etc.
This choice for interim director is somewhat concerning, given the steady stream of recent disclosures of troubling behavior in the federal prison system, including rapes at FCI Dublin and physical abuse at USP Lee. An interesting subliminal message is found in Lothrop’s introductory statement on the BOP website, which returns to the term “inmates.” Director Peters had replaced it with the term “adults in custody” (AICs). Semantics, however – while important – should take a back seat to the myriad needed reforms.
It’s unfortunate that during her tenure, Director Peters focused more on public appearances and the image of reform than on attainable and relatively easy improvements that would have given her credibility with advocates for change, the federal justice community, and the rank and file. It’s not rocket science to operate a functioning appointment-and-telephone system for legal calls, a notification system to protect family visits from the frequent last-minute and/or lengthy visiting closures, and stop wardens from operating carte blanche outside the scope and intent of policy, with little accountability and transparency.
Likewise, how hard is it to keep policy directives current and post updated and accurate information on facility websites? Why must AICs still complete archaic, carbon copy forms to file a complaint (which often must be submitted by hand to the very people who are the subject of the grievance), when they could be initiated electronically? These types of “low-hanging fruit” of easily correctable issues would have given her some serious street credibility. Instead, she was surrounded with an entrenched clique from yesteryears who ran the agency into the dirt.
If President Trump and his Attorney General-in-waiting Pamela Bondi want to leave a different legacy and appoint a BOP outsider (albeit someone with serious technical experience in carceral systems), they must avoid the mistakes that crippled both Director Peters and Mark Inch, the only other previous director who came from outside the agency. Directors who are not BOP insiders must be allowed to bring their top deputies with them, rather than be limited to the entrenched biases of the “old guard.”
As Director Peters left, Trump also announced a 90-day hiring freeze, ordering the directors of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to develop a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce. The only exempted positions are military personnel, and employees focused on immigration enforcement, national security or public safety. The BOP is not included in those exemptions, and the Office of Personnel Management has already instructed its management to identify employees currently on probationary status or administrative leave. Probationary employees are typically new hires brought on after extensive recruitment efforts. In addition, Lothrop has issued a memorandum prohibiting the filling of vacant positions and revoking all current offers.
This will be disastrous for the BOP. There is without a doubt many cuts that could be made within the BOP. For example, the six regional offices (each with 100 or more employees) are wasteful, as is the ill-deserved executive bonuses. And that new prison in Letcher County, Kentucky? Not needed. But what is needed in federal prisons are more correctional officers and medical/mental health treatment professionals. Shortages in those positions are causing lengthy lockdowns that prevent rehabilitative programming and unnecessary, harmful delays in medical testing and treatment.
Meanwhile, several other executive orders signed by President Trump on the first day of his second term promise to make the needed culture change within the BOP much more difficult. Several of the orders signal a return to a harsh regime that will both feed mass incarceration and condone mistreatment behind the walls and fences:
Trump ordered the attorney general to pursue the death penalty for “all crimes of a severity demanding its use” – specifically calling out crimes involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer and any capital crime committed by individuals who did not legally enter America. (Keep in mind that besides murder, capital crimes also include robbery and burglary!)
Reinforcing this call for the harshest of sentences is a new charging and sentencing policy issued this week by the interim attorney general. The memo effectively reverses the policy set under President Obama, which for the first time encouraged federal prosecutors to use their discretion to seek what seems proportionate and just, rather than push for the highest charges and longest sentences.
One of Trump’s executive orders that didn’t get much public attention calls for the individuals whose death sentences were commuted to life without parole by President Biden to be imprisoned in “conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes.” Specifically, he instructed the attorney general to “evaluate the places of imprisonment and conditions of confinement” for each of these 37 people, with the intent of assuring that they are sufficiently horrible. Sure, the order also carefully states that the actions taken should be “lawful and appropriate,” but the BOP is often given wide leeway in court. Plus, the abuses at Dublin and Lee illustrate that there are corrupt staff members who could see that order as tacit permission for abuse.
Trump rescinded Biden’s order that barred contracts between the Department of Justice and private detention centers. That should be regarded with caution, since the opportunity for corruption is rife with privately run detention centers. Consider the case in 2018, when the bureau’s assistant director for correctional programs sent a memorandum tasking prison leaders with identifying people who could be transferred to private facilities. A few months later, he announced his retirement and began working at the GEO Group as its director of operations. The company is one of the largest contractors for privately operated prisons. And a 2015 analysis of private prison contracts found that two-thirds included requirements that governments keep the facilities filled or pay for unused, empty beds.
Trump’s executive order states that “sex” refers to an “individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” The order goes on to bar the federal government from funding gender-affirming care, mandate that trans women be housed in men’s prisons, and remove protections for transgender people from the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Current BOP policy (in place since 2016) allows individuals who identify as the opposite sex to not only receive gender-change treatment, but also be housed in a prison that matches their chosen gender. (Despite this policy, the agency already had started to back off on the directive. Criticism had been harsh from some members of Congress, and the policy was targeted in some Trump campaign ads. Likewise, some female prisoners have charged that they were being sexually harassed by transgender individuals who had not yet completed the sex-change process.)
According to the BOP website, there are currently 1,538 transgender females in its custody and 750 transgender males. If Trump’s executive order prevails, what will happen to these individuals? A February report from the Vera Institute of Justice and Black and Pink National reported that out of nearly 300 incarcerated trans people surveyed, 31% said violence from fellow prisoners is the principal reason they feel unsafe. Likewise, more than half have reported being sexually assaulted during their current prison sentences.
This is a battle that will be fought in the courts.
Many of Trump’s executive orders are a boon for lawyers and will require all hands on deck across the BOP (and among stakeholders such as PERA) due to the potential for abuse. Stay tuned.
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