We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

DESPITE FEWER INMATES, BOP IN ‘FRENZY’ TO STAFF UP

What other business responds to a loss of customers by hiring more staff?

Despite the fact that the inmate population has decreased by 29% since 2013, the Federal Bureau of Prisons hired 4,000 new employees last year, and “is poised to add thousands more this year through a network of activities including advertising campaigns, virtual interviews and new job incentives,” according to a press release announcing a “hiring frenzy” issued last week.

The BOP has even “paused internal selections in order to devote 100% of the agency’s resources toward finding qualified candidates from outside the bureau,” for the next four months, a spokesman told Government Executive last week.

According to a Dept. of Justice Inspector General report last November, the BOP had a 16% vacancy rate for COs as of last June. Employees’ union officials have said staffing levels make “efforts to respond to COVID-19, national social unrest and basic operations within our prisons…a daily struggle.”

In the short term, there will still be “severe shortages in staffing in all departments, excessive backlog of duties, continued augmentation even further putting the non-custody staff further behind in their duties,” Aaron McGlothin, a CO and local union president at FCI Mendota told Government Executive. There could also be less programming for inmates and staff will be at greater “risk of assault by failing to provide the inmates with their rights under the ‘First Step Act’ and other needs.”

Last November’s IG report noted that from 2000 to 2016, the BOP’s per capita cost of incarceration increased from about $22,000 to nearly $35,000 per inmate. “Consequently,” the IG said, “even though the BOP inmate population has declined by 29% from 2013 to 2020 to a current total of approximately 155,000 total inmates, the BOP continues to account for fully 24% of the Department’s total budget request in 2020.”

The good news in all of this is that BOP budget pressures and staff shortages may make a criminal justice reform bill palatable to otherwise hostile legislators.

Government Executive, Federal Bureau of Prisons Launches New Hiring Effort (February 11, 2021)

Bureau of Prisons, BOP’s Hiring Frenzy (February 10, 2021)

DOJ Inspector General, Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing the Department of Justice–2020 (Oct 16, 2020)

– Thomas L. Root