We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
THERE’S A NEW C.O. ON DUTY
It was probably inevitable as soon as she started calling inmates “adults in custody,” but if there were any lingering hopes that the Federal Bureau of Prisons would pursue a course of compliance with the law were dashed in the first hours of the new Trump Administration as BOP Director Colette S. Peters was unceremoniously shown the door.
Trump replaced Peters, a BOP outsider who had run the Oregon prison system before being recruited by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring order to the chaotic management practices of her predecessor, BOP lifer Michael Carvajal, who retired under pressure in 2022.
Peters was removed Monday, being temporarily replaced by William W. Lothrop, previously the deputy director of the BOP who started as a USP Lewisburg correctional officer in 1992. Lothrop’s message to BOP employees noted that “[o]n January 20, 2025, Director Peters separated from the Federal Bureau of Prisons…,” not even including an obligatory ‘thanks for your service’ that most such announcement include. Bouncers have hustled inebriated patrons out of bars with more dignity.
Other executive actions Trump took this week regarding criminal justice including restarting federal executions and expanding death-penalty prosecutions, as well repealing Biden’s January 2021 executive order banning BOP use of private prisons.
Additional Trump first-day executive orders made changes that will affect the BOP workforce, including revoking Biden’s diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility emphasis for federal employees, instituting a federal hiring freeze, and banning work-from-home.
“We haven’t recovered from the hiring freeze from 2017, and a new one is going to be devastating to an agency that is not even really keeping afloat,” Brandy Moore-White, president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Council of Prison Locals – the union that represents some 30,000 BOP employees – told Law360 on Tuesday.
Despite the introduction of legislation in 2022 to make appointment of the BOP Director subject to Senate approval, the appointment is still one made by the President without legislative oversight.
Writing in Forbes, Walter Pavlo noted that Peters’ relationship with front line BOP staff was “strained.” He said,
While Peters attempted to put on a face of a kinder, gentler BOP, staff continued to feel the pressures of long hours and mixed assignments as a result of augmentation (a practice that allows medical staff, case managers or executive assistants to act as corrections officers where there are shortages). There was little progress made with mending relationships with union representatives [and] the BOP ranked near the bottom in employee job satisfaction among over 430 federal agencies. The union is also seeking to reverse the closure of the prisons that Peters announced in December.
Fox News said Peters was “touted as a reform-minded outsider tasked with rebuilding an agency plagued for years by staff shortages, widespread corruption, misconduct and abuse,” but nevertheless suggested that the FCI Dublin sex scandal and dire conditions at prisons inspected by the Dept of Justice inspector general were her fault, conveniently overlooking Carvajal’s contentious leadership and relations with Congress.
The Dublin “rape club” scandal occurred prior to Peters’ hiring, although the nightmarish midnight closure of the women’s prison a year ago lays at her feet. In April 2024, the 600 women held at Dublin were taken to 13 other prisons across the country, “in journeys that many describe as horrific,” according to Oakland TV station KTVU. Congressional leaders called the transfer procedure “appalling” and demanded answers from Peters about why the prison was shut down so abruptly.
Kara Janssen, an attorney with one of the firms representing Dublin inmates in a class action against the BOP over Dublin, told KTVU she’s glad to see Peters go. “I don’t think she was doing a good job,” Janssen said. “It is probably a good thing that she is not there anymore. I hope that President Trump appoints someone who will take reform efforts seriously. The BOP is a very, in my opinion, dysfunctional agency. And it really needs somebody that can put it in a different direction.”
Pavlo thinks that Trump will appoint an outsider to run the BOP. He wrote, “With one of the largest budgets in the Department of Justice, the BOP is ripe for a makeover, but it will take a strong leader to guide the agency to stability while also making it more efficient and humane.”
Law360, Trump Installs New Prisons Chief, Revives Private Facilities (January 21, 2025)
Forbes, Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters Out On Trump’s First Day (January 21, 2025)
Fox News, Bureau of Prisons director out as Trump’s Justice Department reforms take shape (January 22, 2025)
BOP, Message from the Acting Director (January 21, 2025)
KTVU, Bureau of Prisons director Colette Peters out as President Trump takes office (January 22, 2025)
– Thomas L. Root