Tag Archives: BOP

SHFTy Business at the BOP – Update for September 11, 2026

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

CBS REPORTS ON ‘SHFTY’ DEAL ON BOP NICOTINE POUCHES

Nice deal if you can get it. CBS News reported last Friday that a Florida company that was established only three months ago won what CBS called “an unusual and potentially lucrative deal to be the only business permitted to stock the commissaries of the Bureau of Prisons’ 118 institutions with flavored nicotine pouches.”

The brand of 6-mg pouches, called “mindSHFT,” is not authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the US, according to a review of FDA data.

The BOP never formally issued a request for bids on a provider for nicotine pouches (which would have been a public document).  In fact, CBS reported, the agency does not even have a signed contract with mindSHFT. Despite this, BOP trust fund chief, Adam Morrow, informed all federal prison commissaries on July 21 that the sale of nicotine pouches “has been authorized,” and the sole approved vendor would be SHFT Holdings Enterprise LLC, the company providing the pouches.

After an anonymous federal employee emailed the DOJ IG and AG Blanche last week to raise concerns, a senior BOP official last Thursday ordered all prisons to stop buying and stocking mindSHFT, according to a Sept 3 internal memo reviewed by CBS News. Federal law prohibits the sale and marketing of nicotine and tobacco-related products that are not authorized by the FDA.

SHFT Holdings Enterprise LLC was incorporated in Florida one week after the BOP published a nationwide “request for information” on May 15 that asked about vendors who could produce “FDA-authorized nicotine pouch products” to sell to federal prisoners. A company spokesman said the company was formed in response to the BOP public notice, but it registered its domain name – https://shftholdings.com — on May 7, the same day the BOP amended its Trust Fund manual to permit the sale of nicotine pouches in commissaries. 

The BOP recommended that commissaries buy three tins of mindSHFT for every inmate, which would have amounted to 459,000 units, or about $3.24 million. The BOP was buying tins at $6.99 per tin and selling them to inmates for $9.10.  One source told CBS News the tins had been “selling like hotcakes.”

BOP accused SHFT Holdings of telling it the pouches were FDA-approved. SHFT denies having said that.  No one has yet determined how SHFT got the contract to the exclusion of other vendors.

A ZYN 10-pack of 6 mg nicotine pouches (150 pouches) is advertised online for $44.90, or about 30 cents a pouch. The SHFT pouches cost inmates about 45 cents a unit.

CBS News, Bureau of Prisons faces scrutiny over startup’s exclusive deal to sell non-FDA-authorized nicotine pouches to prisoners (September 4, 2026)

BOP, PS 4500.12, Trust Fund Manual (May 7, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

They Pardoned Him, But Only After A Little Medical Neglect – Update for September 1, 2026

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

J6 BOP PRISONER GETS PARDON, THEN SUES FCI ELKTON FOR LOUSY MEDICAL CARE

A retired Pennsylvania firefighter who threw a fire extinguisher that hit two police officers during the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has sued FCI Elkton for failing to treat his numerous medical ailments. The BOP’s medical nonfeasance, according to the plaintiff, eventually led to surgery and chronic pain.

Robert Sanford was one of more than 1,500 people President Trump pardoned for crimes committed during the Jan 6 attack.

Sanford was sentenced in 2023 to four years and four months in prison for throwing the fire extinguisher at officers defending the Capitol while calling them “traitors.” He was released in October 2024 after the BOP filed a compassionate release motion asking his sentencing judge to release him about 19 months early on a 52-month sentence because of Sanford’s undisclosed “terminal medical condition.” The court filing redacted the medical condition.

After his release, Trump pardoned him and 1,499 of his closest friends, all fellow rioters.

Sanford’s lawsuit says Sanford was physically fine when he arrived at the prison. In early 2024, he developed worsening back pain that went untreated despite multiple requests for medical care, the lawsuit says. He filed the suit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, but it was transferred to Cleveland.

A doctor prescribed a steroid in May 2024, but it did not help, according to the lawsuit. In July, Sanford reported that the pain was so severe that he struggled to walk. Later that month, he returned to the doctor in a wheelchair and was again prescribed steroids. The wheelchair was replaced with a cane, the lawsuit says.

He returned to the doctor, who accused him of faking his illness. Sanford was then thrown into the SHU, according to the lawsuit.

After an X-ray on Aug 1, he was diagnosed with arthritis in his hip and hip impingement syndrome, the lawsuit says. He fell while using a walker the next day. Despite his pleas for help, he was not seen by prison doctors for four days.

Doctors then sent him to a nearby hospital, where they found that he had serious blood clots, a badly fractured hip and lung cancer, according to the lawsuit.

Seriously hurting but accused of faking it?  Who’s ever heard of such a thing happening at the BOP?

Sanford v, FCI Elkton, Case No 4:26-cv-02034-S (ND Ohio, filed May 18, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Smith Takes BOP Job and Shoves It – Update for August 31, 2026

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

SMITH PACKS IT IN AFTER A YEAR AT THE BOP

Bureau of Prisons Deputy Director Joshua Smith, pardoned for a drug offense that happened 30 years ago, abruptly announced last Monday he was leaving the agency without giving a reason.

After his release from prison a quarter century ago, Smith built a Knoxville-based service company into a multimillion business while using it and a foundation he started to give recently released inmates employment and support in staying out of trouble.

In a post from his personal X account, Smith thanked President Trump for the chance to serve as BOP’s second in command, an opportunity available because Trump pardoned him for in 2021:

Three decades ago, I walked through the gates of a federal prison as an inmate. Years later, after receiving a presidential pardon, I was given the opportunity to walk back through those gates as Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, serving the very President that gave me that pardon. For that, I will always be grateful to President Donald J. Trump.

By all accounts, Smith’s leadership at the BOP was unconventional. He became part of BOP Director William K. Marshall III’s leadership team that pushed an agency Walter Pavlo described last week as “known for incremental change” toward a different management philosophy. “During their time together,” Pavlo said of Marshall and Smith, “the Bureau changed how it selected leaders, challenged its longstanding relationship with the union representing BOP employees, began rewriting decades-old policies, secured significant funding to address deteriorating prisons, created teams to attack infrastructure and operational problems and announced the closure or restructuring of several institutions.”

Smith traveled across the country to dozens of prisons – some visits being unannounced – and hosted a BOP-centric podcast called “Transparency Talks.” Smith helped transfer or replace about 70 pct of BOP executive staff — including several top wardens — and focus on leadership development. “At the end of the day,” he said, “bureaucracy is bureaucracy. I hope what I was able to do was at least start a fire there.”

Smith had a tense relationship with some of BOP employees. A BOP employee union rep at FCI Hazelton said, “The deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, with a criminal history of his own, has stepped down from the post.” American Federation of Government Employees Local 420 Steward Jason Shaffer said Smith’s appointment was “a slap in our face. To have an inmate who was once housed in our prison who was running the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has devastated our country and greatly affected the staff who have worked hard for the BOP.”

Smith would not say why he resigned, but he said he didn’t need the job.

CBS News, Bureau of Prisons No. 2 official who was pardoned for drug crimes abruptly departs (August 25, 2026)

Forbes, Josh Smith Abruptly Leaves Bureau Of Prisons After Year Of Changes (August 25, 2026)

WV Metro News, FCI Hazelton workers applaud resignation of BOP deputy director, former inmate (August 25, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Wheels on the Bus – Update for August 28, 2026

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

ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Writing in Forbes last week, prison consultant Walter Pavlo argued that courts’ expanded use of ordering self-surrender after federal sentencing rather than remanding prisoners into custody for delivery to prison would benefit both prisoners and the government.

The federal government operates the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, which moves inmates from jail to prison and between prisons, among other duties, with annual operating costs of up to $80 million. “When a low-risk defendant who could have voluntarily surrendered is instead remanded at sentencing,” Pavlo wrote, “the government assumes responsibility for housing, healthcare, guarding and transporting that person through this system until he reaches his designated BOP institution.

Until the prisoner is actually moved, his or her detention cost is borne by the U.S. Marshals Service, which spent about $2.2 billion on housing prisoners in 2025, with an average daily detention cost of $121 per prisoner

Beyond that, Pavlo contends, a designated BOP institution is built around serving a sentence. There can be work assignments, education, vocational training, recreation, treatment and, depending upon eligibility and location, programs such as the Residential Drug Abuse Program and release preparation. A detention center or county jail usually lacks meaningful programming because prisoners come and go randomly.

Pavlo, as usual, makes good sense. Nevertheless, too many judges who remand do so even when the prisoner has been on presentence release without problem. Without any incentive to make a remand decision with efficiency and economy in mind, courts’ remand orders often seem to be capricious rather than reasoned.

Forbes, Federal Judges Waste Taxpayer Money By Remanding At Sentencing (August 18, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Prisons, Prisoners, and Money – Update for August 20, 2026

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

SPENDING MORE ON LESS

USA Facts last week issued a fact sheet on the BOP, reporting that the agency spent a net total of $9.13 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2025, a full 20% of the Dept of Justice’s budget. Only the FBI ($11.2 billion) spent more.

Since 1980, BOP spending has increased about 550% while overall Federal spending has increased 200%. Meanwhile, the number of federal employees working for the Bureau of Prisons has decreased 10.6% since 2012.

In a Substack article, former DOJ official Jonathan Wroblewski argued in favor of the BOP’s decision to close FCC Beaumont Low, FCI Big Spring, FCI La Tuna, the women’s satellite camp at FMC Lexington in Kentucky, FCC Petersburg Low in Virginia, and already-vacant FCI Taft in California (with camps at Morgantown and Duluth being converted into low-security prisons). The BOP has said the decision is borne of necessity due to “longstanding infrastructure and staffing challenges” and a deferred-maintenance backlog that now exceeds $4 billion.

Wroblewski argues that it’s more than that. The Government’s “Smart on Crime” policy adopted in 2013, aimed at reducing the number of BOP prisoners, has reduced the BOP population by about 30%. Yet,

[d]espite the success of the initiative, there is one thing I have found disturbing. Even with 65,000 fewer prisoners than back in 2013, the Bureau of Prisons operates more prisons today than it did when Smart on Crime was announced — roughly 126 institutions now, against about 120 then. Fewer prisoners, more prisons. The system shed nearly a third of its population and somehow expanded its physical footprint. Part of the explanation is timing; facilities authorized and financed during the long boom kept opening after the population had already begun to fall. But most of it is plain institutional inertia. A prison, once built and staffed, becomes a constituency unto itself — jobs, contracts, a fixture of the local economy, a web of interests that does not dissolve simply because the beds have emptied. So the BOP did what bureaucracies do: it spread a shrinking population thinner and thinner across a growing, aging inventory of buildings.

The $4 billion maintenance backlog is, in part, the bill for keeping all of them open. This is why closing prisons is not a betrayal of the reform. It is its completion. The argument we made in 2013 was that money sunk into unnecessary incarceration is money stolen from more effective public safety… Every dollar BOP spends heating, patching, and minimally staffing an institution it no longer needs is a dollar it cannot spend on the officers it is desperate to hire, on the treatment and reentry programming the First Step Act promised, or on the upkeep that keeps its remaining prisons safe and decent.

In Real Clear Politics, Mark Levin and Khalil Cumberbatch of the Council on Criminal Justice echoed the sentiment: “Closing these facilities is the fiscally conservative move, and the real prize is not just the savings. It is what those savings can buy: stronger staffing and better programming at the prisons that remain… Every dollar not spent maintaining an empty 90-year-old prison is a dollar available to recruit and retain officers, while thousands of correctional posts sit vacant, and to expand the programs that can’t accommodate all prisoners striving to earn credits toward release.”

Of course, the BOP is proceeding with plans for a new prison in Letcher County, Kentucky, and President Trump has not publicly abandoned his billion-dollar plan to reopen Alcatraz Island as federal maximum-security prison (although, mercifully, there have been no rumblings about it since last spring). How those plans square with the BOP’s need for less and to repair what it has is unclear. But then, clarity in spending is not something this government is known for.

USA Facts, What does the Bureau of Prisons do? (Aug 6, 2026)

Substack, The Prisons We No Longer Need (Aug 2, 2026)

Real Clear Politics, Closing Federal Prisons: A Winning Hand (Aug 15, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

DOJ Continues To Circle the Drain – Update for July 23, 2026

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

TOUGH TIMES FOR PROSECUTORS

The Dept of Justice is now requiring all Criminal Division Assistant U.S. Attorneys to maintain at least 25 open cases, “tightening the Trump administration’s grip on operational decisions previously left to US attorneys,” according to Bloomberg Law.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office communicated the informal “25 open matters” threshold to all 93 U.S. attorneys in recent weeks, with an emphasis on driving up public safety and fraud statistics, four people familiar with the new policy told Bloomberg Law. A formal policy change is still under development, they said.

The new policy comes as DOJ brass try to dispel criticism over personnel departures by purporting to show that the Department is doing more with less.

DOJ has hemorrhaged thousands of veteran attorneys since Trump returned to office due to the President’s revenge campaigns, immigration crackdown, and increasingly overwhelming workloads, Daily Beast reported last week.

The government has lowered hiring standards and offered signing bonuses, despite historically being deluged with applications from lawyers who were happy to take a pay cut in exchange for the prestige of DOJ service.

“A one-size-fits-all policy is unworkable,” said Mark Yancey, a former senior official in the DOJ’s Executive Office for US Attorneys. “These things need to be worked at the district level by the US attorney.”

The quota runs the risk of prosecutors feeling pressured to bring cases with insufficient evidence just to hit their targets, Yancey told Bloomberg Law.

Last week, Blanche appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on his nomination to be the next Attorney General.  In the runup to the hearing, a letter signed by 2,649 lawyers and legal professionals was delivered to the Senate urging rejection of Blanche as AG.

“No one in the history of the Justice Department has moved directly from representing a president in criminal proceedings to running the institution that prosecuted those cases,” said Traci Feit Love, Executive Director of Lawyers for Good Government. “Todd Blanche isn’t America’s Attorney General. He is Donald Trump’s personal fixer with a federal badge. The Senate has a constitutional obligation to say no.”

During his confirmation hearing, Blanche was braced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) over BOP’s decision to place Ghislaine Maxwell (convicted of helping Jeffrey Epstrein commit sex and trafficking offenses) in a camp, a move some have alleged was in exchange for her testifying that President Trump committed no sex offenses with Epstein. Blanche told Booker that Maxwell was “receiving threats,” which merited the transfer.

Booker argued that under BOP policies, an inmate who receives threats is moved to solitary confinement, not to a minimum-security prison camp.

Blanche countered: “That’s not always true,” but Booker rejected that claim. “What is true is that someone who is accused of child sex trafficking under the Bureau of Prisons’ own policies is not put in a facility like this that seems clearly like a reward,” he said.

What the exchange failed to note that a May 2026 change in BOP designation policy I reported on last month grants the Attorney General the right to make any designation decision he or she pleases regardless of BOP policy. The unheralded change in designation policy that has been in place for 135 years provides ex post facto authority for the  Maxwell placement in a camp, as well as a tool that can be abused in years to come to benefit the Administration’s friends and punish its foes.

Questions over Blanche’s role in the DOJ “anti-weaponization” fund and in handling the Epstein files have left at least two Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee undecided. If just one votes ‘no,’ that could block the acting attorney general’s nomination from moving forward. A vote is likely later this month.

US Law Week, DOJ Sets Case Quotas for Line Prosecutors in Push to Boost Stats (July 13, 2026)

Daily Beast, Trump Justice Department Scrambles as Lawyers Flee in Droves (July 14, 2026)

Letter to Senators Grassley and Durbin, Senate Judiciary Committee (July 10, 2026)

The Hill, Booker: ‘Absurdity’ for Blanche to be concerned about Maxwell safety (July 16, 2026)

Christian Science Monitor, Blanche’s nomination for attorney general uncertain after hearing (July 17, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

A Complaint? I’ll Give You Something To Complain About… – Update for July 22, 2026

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

RETALIATION? NOT US…

The Marshall Project and NPR published the second report in their investigation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons grievance procedures last week, this one focused on alleged BOP retaliation against prisoners filing grievances complaining of BOP staff violence and sexual abuse.

A previous report found that only 1.75% of grievances filed in 2023 were granted. A majority were rejected for procedural errors or “administratively closed” for other reasons. The findings were based on a massive federal database, published by the Data Liberation Project, containing nearly 1 million federal prison grievance cases dating back to 2000.

Last week’s report observed that the dataset “only includes instances where incarcerated people were able to file a complaint at all. An unknown number of cases, especially those involving physical and sexual violence, go unreported, as the same officers accused of abuse can silence those trying to seek help, according to court records, lawsuits, and interviews with attorneys, incarcerated people, advocates and former bureau officials.”

A report by the Government Accountability Office last May found that fear of retaliation was a major impediment to reporting sexual abuse in federal prisons. Can’t be, BOP spokeswoman Randilee Giamusso said in response: Bureau policy prohibits retaliation of any kind, and the BOP reviews and investigates all allegations of abuse. She told NPR that the administrative remedy system – despite its under 2 pct approval rate – is “a safeguard intended to foster resolution within the system, not a barrier to court access.” She noted that “remedies related to sexual abuse can be submitted in other ways, such as “third-party reporting and [Prison Rape Elimination Act]-specific channels,” NPR reported.

The report also quoted current and former BOP prisoners with a different view. “The grievance system is a joke,” said ex-inmate Jimmy Hodge. “If you’re grieving over abuse, they’re going to harass you, they’re going to assault you, but you’re never going to get relief.”

It’s the same dilemma presented to anyone who faces violence in federal prison, the Report found: Try to file an administrative grievance and risk opening yourself up to retaliation — or stay quiet, endure the abuse, and forgo your chance to someday bring your case to court.

The fact that inmates must exhaust the grievance process before they can attempt to sue, NPR reported, gives prison staff a “chokehold over access to the courts,” according to former federal defender Colin Prince, now a civil rights attorney. “The guards functionally have power over whether a prisoner can sue them for their own misconduct,” he said. “The entire system is layer upon layer of bureaucratic insulation against accountability. It simply prevents prisoners from getting access to the courts.”

NPR, A guard punched him on camera. It was still nearly impossible for him to sue (July 13, 2026)

Data Liberation Project, Federal Inmate Complaints (July 6, 2024)

GAO, Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (Report No 26-107343, May 5, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

BOP Boldly Foreys Into the 21st Century – Update for July 13, 2026

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

IPADS FOR EVERYONE!

Sixteen years after Apple introduced the iPad, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has signed a contract with Securus Technologies to provide all BOP inmates with “corrections-grade tablets.”

Yeah, we’ve been here before. The BOP promised a tablet computer rollout four years ago. But this time (and I know better than to say this), maybe the BOP has it right.

The Bureau has selected Securus, which last year won a contract to replace all of the inmate tablets in the California prison system, as the vendor. The company said in a press release that it already “equips over 1,800 corrections agencies with 80-plus high-grade technology solutions to enhance public safety and optimize facility operations. Their offerings include secure communication, advanced monitoring, and the only corrections-grade Wi-Fi-enabled tablets…”

The tablets are not iPads, of course, but instead custom-built devices with limited features (such as no Internet connectivity). Still, they will to give prisoners access to a range of tools and resources that support reentry and communications with family. The devices will provide secure messaging and video services, and educational and rehabilitative programming.

The platform will also modernize many administrative and operational processes, “such as commissary ordering, request forms, program registrations and other routine workflows,” according to the BOP.

The rollout of the new tablet services will occur in phases across BOP institutions, the BOP said, with no schedule announced. The agency provided a similar phased rollout for the introduction of email, the electronic law library, and individual mp3 music players. The use of a vendor already involved in prison tablet placement and management suggests the rollout is for real.

To be sure, the BOP will benefit from the tablets as much as inmates will, with educational programming that can expand to reach all the people who need it, programs not limited by staff shortages, and paperwork reduction. And that’s not a bad thing. Any new program is likelier to succeed when everyone stands to gain from it. Additionally, reductions in the BOP’s workload may lead to greater responsiveness to legitimate inmate needs.

Not everyone is happy. The Luddites on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses, and Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency announced in late May that they had opened a joint investigation into California’s prisoner digital table program, based on reporting by the conservative City Journal that purported to “expose” how some prisoners are exploiting state-issued tablets to sexually exploit women and minors from their jail cells. The City Journal based its revelations on “dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations.”

In a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Republican chairs of those committees demand documents and communications “to inform the Committee’s oversight of federal criminal rehabilitation funding and whether federal funds were used to fund the state’s prisoner digital tablet program.” Oh, and to embarrass a blue state and its high-profile governor…

The tablets lack Internet connectivity, making the likelihood that the allegations are true suspect.

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo suggested that the biggest beneficiary of the tablet rollout may be First Step Act programming. He said:

Rather than relying exclusively on classroom instruction, educational content can now be delivered directly to each inmate regardless of whether the institution is operating normally or under restricted movement. Academic courses, literacy instruction, vocational education and evidence-based programming can continue even when inmates are confined to their housing units.

This is particularly significant because Congress has increasingly emphasized evidence-based programming through legislation such as the First Step Act. The law encourages inmates to complete productive activities and recidivism reduction programs, yet prisons have often struggled to provide enough classroom space and instructors to meet demand.

According to Securus, the introduction of tablets in state facilities has been shown to reduce inmate rule infractions by over 20% and make use of contraband cellphones less attractive.

Correctional News, Federal Bureau of Prisons Awards Tablet Contract as Part of Broader Modernization Push (July 10, 2026)

Forbes, Federal Bureau Of Prisons Rolling Out E-Tablets (July 9, 2026)

BOP, Federal Bureau of Prisons Awards Transformational Inmate Tablet Contract to Modernize Communication, Education and Rehabilitation Services (July 8, 2026)

Business Wire, Federal Bureau of Prisons Selects Securus Technologies to Deliver Communications and Digital Infrastructure Nationwide (July 10, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

SIS Lieutenant Meets the Enemy… In the Mirror – Update for July 7, 2026

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

THE UNTOUCHABLES

The poet Juvenal once asked, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”  Who will guard the guards themselves?

Inside the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the answer is the agency’s Special Investigation Service (SIS). SIS investigates both inmates and staff for everything from violations of the rules to criminal misconduct.

But that answer begs the next question. Who will guard the guards who are guarding the guards?

Prisoners tire of ever-increasing limitations on visitors, changes in mail delivery, more frequent shakedowns, all in the name of cutting down on contraband drugs, tobacco, cellphones and the like in the facility. Largely, they don’t think that contraband should be allowed but rather they bridle because the restrictive measures are punitive while ignoring the 9,000-lb elephant in the room, that is, the flow of contraband into prisons by staff.

Recently, the Denver Post reported that SIS Lt. Michael Popma, who works at FCC Florence, has been indicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery, providing contraband in prison and unlawful interception of oral communication. Lt. Popma, whom the Post said “was still employed as a lieutenant” as of last week, is accused of being paid more than $15,000 by an inmate’s family to “smuggle 123 cell phones, 415 electronic nicotine vaporizers and 274 bottles of alcohol into the prison,” according to the indictment.

Popma was hired at Florence in 2014 as a correctional officer and became a lieutenant in 2021. A BOP spokesman told the Post that while the agency “does not discuss potential allegations of staff misconduct or comment on matters that are the subject of legal proceedings… we generally can tell you that the Bureau of Prisons takes our duty seriously to protect the individuals entrusted to our custody as well as maintain the safety of correctional staff and the community.”

Popma, of course, is legally presumed innocent until proven otherwise, just as everyone who is now an inmate once was.

Denver Post, Colorado federal prison employee accused of smuggling cellphones, vapes into facility (June 23, 2026)

Indictment, United States v. Popma, Case No. 26-cr-130 (Doc. 1) (D.Colo, June 2, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Federal Prisons to Close! (Well, Only Some of Them) – Update for July 2, 2026

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

BOP RETRENCHMENT ANNOUNCED

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said yesterday that it will close at least six prisons, citing “extreme staffing challenges” and crumbling facilities (leaving something like 113 still running in the system).

The announcement represents the most ambitious plan yet to address both the staffing crisis and the need to clean up years of maintenance neglect. The New York Times calls the closure “the most expansive effort to shut down or consolidate federal prisons in response to funding shortages.” Ironically, BOP Director William K. Marshall III announced the plan three days short of the first anniversary of the signing of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July 4th, which gave the BOP a $5 billion one-time infusion to add to staff and fix prisons that are falling apart.

The prisons being closed are low-security facilities FCI Beaumont Low (and adjacent minimum-security camp), FCI Big Spring, and FCI La Tuna (all in Texas); FCI Petersburg Low (Virginia); and the already-shuttered FCI Taft, in the California desert north of Los Angeles (closed almost seven years ago). Additionally, the BOP will decommission the minimum-security satellite camp at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The highest-population facility affected by the closure announcement is FCI Beaumont Low, with 1,651 inmates in the low-security prison and another 514 in the adjacent camp.

The Agency also said it would change FPC Duluth and FCI Morgantown (both minimum-security facilities) to low-security facilities.

Staff freed from duties at the closed facilities in Beaumont, Petersburg and Lexington will be transferred to other co-located facilities. Some from Big Spring and La Tuna – each at least 250 miles from the next-closest BOP facility – will lose their jobs.

According to an unidentified official at the Council of Prison Locals, which served as the BOP employees’ union until the BOP cut ties with it about a year ago, the union had not been aware of the plan to close the facilities until yesterday’s announcement.

The BOP population swelled nearly tenfold between 1980 (about 25,000 prisoners) and over 219,000 in 2013. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and the abolition of federal parole left the system severely overcrowded.

Due in large part to Attorney General Eric Holder’s Smart on Crime Initiative, a policy that reserved the harshest federal penalties for the most serious offenders while reducing the prosecution of some low-level, nonviolent drug cases and later to Trump’s First Step Act, the BOP population has fallen by 30 percent since then.

BOP inmates at the affected institutions only learned that they would be relocated soon to locations not disclosed to them. The closure of these facilities will require the transfer of nearly 4,000 inmates to institutions across the federal system.

Congress observed in the First Step Act that placing prisoners close to their families was not only humane but contributed to rehabilitation. Thus, 18 USC 3621(b) provides that the BOP

shall designate the place of the prisoner’s imprisonment, and shall, subject to bed availability, the prisoner’s security designation, the prisoner’s programmatic needs, the prisoner’s mental and medical health needs, any request made by the prisoner related to faith-based needs, recommendations of the sentencing court, and other security concerns of the Bureau of Prisons, place the prisoner in a facility as close as practicable to the prisoner’s primary residence, and to the extent practicable, in a facility within 500 driving miles of that residence…

Sadly, that provision has more holes than a Swiss cheese factory. Any minimally competent BOP facility designator can easily find an excuse – bed availability, population management, education or medical needs, and the undefined but expansive “other security concerns” – to place a Hawaiian in New Hampshire or a Floridian in California.

To top it off, § 3621(b) provides that “notwithstanding any other provision of law, a designation of a place of imprisonment under this subsection is not reviewable by any court.”

In other words, the provision is utterly toothless.

Writing in Forbes, Walter Pavlo observes that “[d]ecades of correctional research have consistently shown that maintaining family connections is one of the strongest predictors of successful reentry and lower rates of recidivism.”  Good luck with that. Pavlo notes that “[f]or thousands of inmates and their families, a prison closure is not just a change in address. It is a significant disruption to the stability they have worked to build while incarcerated.”

To be sure, Marshall has an unenviable task before him. The BOP has a potful of money for repairs over the next few years, but even that is insufficient for the more than $4 billion in maintenance needed. In announcing the closures, Marshall said, “We are a Bureau that acts. These actions are necessary to address longstanding infrastructure and staffing challenges while ensuring the Bureau remains focused on its core mission of operating safe, secure, and efficient correctional facilities. We will support our workforce throughout this transition and responsibly position the agency for the future.”

BOP, Federal Bureau of Prisons Announces Facility Closures and Operational Changes (July 1, 2026)

The New York Times, Bureau of Prisons Will Close Facilities Housing Thousands of Inmates (July 1, 2026)

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Announces Multiple Facility Closings Citing Budget (July 1, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root