Deputy BOP Director Josh Smith’s Speech About the State of the BOP

On November 19 the BOP published a seven-minute speech by recently appointed BOP Director Josh Smith, summarizing the breathtaking failures of the BOP and pledging the dawn of a new age in the broken federal prison system.

Attributing the mess to Biden

Emphasizing in one way or another, no less than eight times, the “mess that we've inherited from the Biden administration,” Smith excuses the failures of Trump’s first term as the result of a BOP “plagued by an entrenched deep state within the Department of Justice, who often worked to undermine his reform efforts.” Lest we forget the extraordinary failures of the first Trump administration even to protect federal inmates from sickness and death during COVID, here’s a graph showing the incidence of COVID cases (no doubt under-reported) during Trump's first administration:

As of the time we published this graph in February 2021, 210 inmates and three BOP staff had died from COVID.

Can the BOP’s critical staffing shortage be fixed when the Administration is prioritizing ICE hires?

Notwithstanding the many failures of prior administrations – Trump’s included – Smith insists that the “current administration now has the right leadership in place,” and he points to the $5 billion in BOP funding included in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

But a big part of the problem – though by no means the only one – is the BOP’s extreme staffing shortfall.  Smith says the $5 billion authorized in the OBBB will “enable us to fill the 3,500 necessary staff positions cut during the Biden administration's final year and hire an additional 587 new correctional officers.” However, BOP staffing shortages have only grown during the last many months, and the BOP won’t be able to hire sufficient staff – let alone sufficient quality staff – if more attractive alternatives are available to prospective employees. As reported on November 21 by ProPublica, quoting an official in the prison workers union, “We’re broken and we’re being poached by ICE…. It’s unbelievable. People are leaving in droves.”

BOP’s litany of failures

Let’s hope that Smith and BOP Director Marshall can stay focused on the mission rather than using their position to simply reflect their boss’s obsession with the prior administration. As Smith points out, the challenges are numerous:

·      We walked into a $634 million shortfall from flat budgets of the past administration who ignored inflation, hid unfunded pay raises, and slashed retention incentives.

·      Staffing is catastrophic, with the Biden administration eliminating 3,500 positions in his final year, leaving critical areas like psychology and medical services understaffed, causing burnout and mandatory overtime for the rest.

·      The Government Accountability Office has called this one of the worst staffing crises in federal government history. Our infrastructure budget has a $4 billion maintenance backlog, with leaking roofs, broken cell doors, and outdated equipment, compromising safety and security.

·      Contraband, drugs, and weapons are coming in via drones, mail, and all of this fuels violence, worsened only by the corruption of a small percentage of our own staff.

·      Staff and inmates suicides have also surged, a heartbreaking outcome as a result of deficient health and wellness support and chronic staffing shortages. Internal affairs has a large backlog.

·      Misconduct cases have festered poisoning trust and morale amongst our staff. First Step Act The First Step Act was sabotaged by the Biden DOJ and BOP.

·      They have mismanaged millions meant for FSA implementation, building a time credit calculator that has never worked right, and FSA programming required by the law never materialized. Instead, they hired an outside contractor that blocked every outside program submitted by some of the most impactful faith-based organizations.

·      They only approved internal BOP classes. And despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the BOP still only added 100 halfway house beds in six years.

·      They diverted hundreds of millions of First Step Act funding into non-FSA programming and unrelated projects that they just labeled FSA. This mismanagement squandered taxpayer money and undermined public safety.

·      Technology at the BOP is terrible while working on 1950s mainframes that have hindered operations in every division. Training has been slashed to the bone, leaving staff unprepared for their mission.

·      Lockdowns and collective punishment have become knee-jerk reactions. And unions, they added another dynamic.

·      The BOP has been consistently voted the worst place to work in all of federal government. A damning indictment of years of neglect, low morale and eroded trust.

The way forward?

Smith reports, “In my first hundred days, I visited approximately 20 facilities, spoke to hundreds of staff, and met with dozens of stakeholders.” Not apparent, however, is whether Smith includes in the category of stakeholders to whom he spoke the inmates themselves. If he didn’t, he’d be missing a critical source of information he needs to fully understand and address the numerous crises facing the BOP.

The Trump BOP certainly has its work cut out for it. Let’s hope it can get beyond politics and focus on real change.

Richard Levitt