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THE OLD IS NEW AGAIN AS FORMER BOP DIRECTOR RE-ASSUMES HELM
The supremely pessimistic and apochryphal author of Ecclesiastes in the Christian bible (Kohelet in the Talmud), King Solomon, complained in Chapter 1, Verse 9, that “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
Welcome to the all-new BOP.
As everyone knows by now, last Monday Attorney General William Barr unceremoniously fired interim BOP Director Hugh J. Hurwitz, replacing him with former BOP Director Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer as interim director and former interim BOP Director Dr. Thomas R. Kane as interim assistant director.
Even before Epstein’s death, Justice Dept. officials reportedly expressed off-the-record frustration with senior BOP officials, but the management flaws found since high profile defendant Jeffrey Epstein killed himself at MCC New York Aug. 10 have angered DOJ leaders, including the attorney general, according to anonymous law enforcement officials quoted by the Washington Post.
Robert Hood, a retired former warden at ADX Florence and a critic of BOP leadership, called Hawk Sawyer an “outstanding” choice. “After a lot of recent instability, Kathleen Hawk Sawyer brings stability and direction,” Hood said. “She’s been a warden, she’s been a trainer, and she means business. It’s breathtaking to hear that she’s back. It’s exciting for the staff, many of whom have only heard about her. They know she’s a nuts-and-bolts person and a very direct person to work with.”
Hood predicted that Hawk Sawyer, a psychologist, will move quickly to fix a major problem at the bureau — the number of senior positions that have gone unfilled or had their responsibilities delegated temporarily.
Hawk Sawyer is no newbie. She ran the BOP from 1992 to 2003, capping a career that began back in 1976 as a psychologist at FCI Morgantown. But it’s been 16 years since she last led the agency, and some say a lot has changed in the interim. Jonathan Smith, a prison rights attorney, says the BOP is “much more complicated than when she was last director, partially because the growth in population, partially because you see a much harsher and more punitive system.”
Smith told NPR that today’s BOP uses solitary confinement more frequently than it did in the past. He says the use of private prisons has skyrocketed, as has the privatization of services across the system. And perhaps most importantly, the federal prison population has jumped from 65,000 in 1992 to more than 177,000 in 2019.
NPR reported that during her tenure as BOP Director, Hawk Sawyer was thought of as a champion of rehabilitation, someone who pushed for education opportunities inside federal prisons.
Additionally, Hawk Sawyer has “a long track record advocating for ‘good-time credits’ as a way to motivate inmates to participate in programs for personal development,” according to the Washington Examiner. “She correctly realized that increasing good-time allowances could go a long way toward reducing the federal prison population and help maintain order in prisons too.”
With last year’s passage of the First Step Act, some of the changes to sentencing laws and good-time credits that Hawk Sawyer supported are now law. The reforms included in the First Step Act are based largely on state-level successes, including former tough-on-crime states, that have now instead become smart on crime — and soft on taxpayers.
Not everyone is excited by Hawk Sawyer’s appointment. A former AUSA turned defense attorney and former BOP official observed that in 2017 then-Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III appointed Mark Inch, a retired Army major general, to run the system. After less than a year, General Inch – who tried to make changes within the BOP and to navigate a middle course, abruptly quit. Hawk Sawyer, a permanent replacement, was not named until this week, the authors complained,
when Barr appointed someone who previously served in the position for over a decade, and who contributed to the current problems plaguing the Bureau. This is not going to create systemic change. This reactive switch in leadership is pure optics. We need to ask this question: Why was General Inch, someone who tried to change the culture, ultimately replaced with a BOP veteran?
Regardless of one’s position on Hawk Sawyer’s appointment, there is general agreement that she faces an agency in disarray. “”Clusterfuck doesn’t begin to describe the current state of the BOP, and it dates far beyond the Trump administration,” David Safavian, deputy director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s criminal justice reform center, told The Marshall Project this week. “Anyone who thinks BOP is a high performing organization has never been inside a federal prison.”
Part of the problem, according to Reason.com, is “that the BOP is its own secretive fiefdom. It’s incredibly hard for reporters, family members, and civil liberties groups to find out what goes on behind prison walls, much less hold officials accountable.”
Washington Post, After Epstein’s death, attorney general replaces leader at Bureau of Prisons (Aug 19)
The Huffington Post, Jeffrey Epstein Death Shines Light On Understaffed, Unaccountable Federal Prison System (Aug 15)
National Review, The Epstein Fiasco and the Flaws with Our Criminal-Justice System (Aug 22)
The Marshall Project, Epstein’s Death Highlights A Staffing Crisis in Federal Prisons (Aug 14)
Reason.com, Jeffrey Epstein Is Dead Because His Jailers Neglected Him. He’s Not the Only One. (Aug 15)
Washington Examiner, New Bureau of Prisons leadership should focus on rehabilitation (Aug 21)
Washington Examiner, AG William Barr must do more to fix dismal prison conditions (Aug 22)
The Hill, A better way to run the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Aug 22)
NPR, What’s Changed Since Kathleen Hawk Sawyer Last Headed Prison Bureau? (Aug 22)
– Thomas L. Root