Colette Peters resigned as director of the federal Bureau of Prisons after 30 months on the job just as President Trump was inaugurated on Monday. Deputy Director William Lathrop is acting director. An agency outsider, Peters took the BOP job after heading the Oregon Department of Corrections. The challenges she faced at the BOP on day-one of her job in August 2022 were much the same at the end; staffing shortages, crumbling buildings and poor morale, reports Forbes. Soon after Trump was elected, Peters announced the closure of six male federal prison camps and one female facility, the Dublin prison in California. Dublin earned the name “rape club,” after its warden, chaplain and several staff members were convicted of inappropriate sexual relationships women prisoners. In December, BOP settled a civil lawsuit brought by 103 women who were incarcerated at Dublin for $116 million.
Speaking to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Peters has described the challenges BOP faced, but she had trouble getting results. Last year, President Biden signed a federal prison oversight law that allowed the Office of Inspector General to conduct more unannounced prison inspections. The watchdog agency has found significant shortages of staff, poor medical care of prisoners, rotten food and dirty living conditions. There were problems that Peters could not fix. Staffing, no matter how much money was spent to increase salaries and retention bonuses, was proved to have only modest success. Staffing shortages nationwide led to extended lockdowns at facilities and reduced programming. The prison bureau says it needs over $3 billion to bring its aging prisons up to modern standards. Year after year, it received only a small fraction of that, which only worsened the problem. Peters did make progress on the First Step Act, Trumps hallmark law that allowed many minimum and low security prisoners to reduce their sentences by participating in programming and productive activities. The First Step Act led to the early release of nearly 50,000 prisoners but was plagued by problems in calculating credits, which resulted in many people staying in prison longer than the law required.