Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made the appeal two days after an AP report revealed that over 100 of the bureau’s workers have been arrested, convicted or sentenced for crimes since the beginning of 2019.
The agency also turned a blind eye to misconduct accusations and did not suspend officers who had been arrested for their own crimes, according to the AP investigation. But legal and disciplinary woes aren’t the only controversies surrounding the BOP under Director Michael Carvajal.
The COVID-19 virus has spread rampantly inside a prison system also plagued by deaths, dozens of inmate escapes within the past two years and a shortage in staff that has hindered the agency’s ability to respond to emergencies.
“Director Carvajal was handpicked by former Attorney General Bill Barr and has overseen a series of mounting crises, including failing to protect BOP staff and inmates from the COVID-19 pandemic, failing to address chronic understaffing, failing to implement the landmark First Step Act, and more,” Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a statement. “It is past time for Attorney General Garland to replace Director Carvajal with a reform-minded Director who is not a product of the BOP bureaucracy.”
Carvajal is one of the last Trump administration appointees still in place nearly 10 months into President Joe Biden’s term. Though Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recently said she still has faith in Carvajal despite the difficulties, senior Biden administration officials were mulling whether to remove him in June, AP reported.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Two-thirds of the criminal cases against Justice Department personnel in recent years have involved federal prison workers, who account for less than one-third of the department’s workforce. Of the 41 arrests this year, 28 were of BOP employees or contractors. The FBI had just five. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives each had two.
The AP investigation also detailed how the Bureau of Prisons allowed an official at a federal prison in Mississippi, whose job it was to investigate misconduct of other staff members, to remain in his position after he was arrested on charges of stalking and harassing fellow employees. That official was also allowed to continue investigating a staff member who had accused him of a crime.
And in the last week, two inmates have escaped from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, marking at least 36 escapes within the last 22 months.
“We have a new Administration and a new opportunity to reform our criminal justice system,” Durbin said. “It’s clear that there is much going wrong in our federal prisons, and we urgently need to fix it. That effort must start with new leadership.”
