The Biden administration has potentially abolished 401 federal jobs before the inauguration. Before Christmas, even.
This comes courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons, that corner of the Justice Department far from the FBI that so concerns the incoming administration. BOP bopped the Federal Correction Institution at Dublin, California and federal prison camps at Duluth, Minnesota and Pensacola, Florida.
It announced the closures to affected locals of the American Federation of Government Employees. BOP’s assistant director of human resources, Christina Griffith, stated: “We are hopeful that all employees will continue to be employed at the Bureau of Prisons with our assistance.” She added, “If our efforts to place employees are unsuccessful, the agency will have no choice to complete a formal reduction in force.”
That is, the losses aren’t final, but it’s not looking too good.
FCI Dublin operates in the East Bay area of California. In its own announcement of the closure, BOP cited “a critical staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure, and limited budgetary resources.” It said BOP “is not downsizing and we are committed to finding positions for every employee who wants to remain with the agency.” The facility was in such horrible condition, BOP temporarily closed earlier this year. BOP sent its inmates elsewhere, so it has been vacant for months. Now FCI Dublin won’t ever reopen. It remains federal property, so if could revert to the Defense Department or maybe Homeland Security.
The bureau said the high cost of living in California’s Alameda County caused difficulty in maintaining adequate staffing at Dublin. In reality, BOP has staffing shortages generally. The once-notorious FCI Thomson (Illinois) has a persistent shortfall of 132 correctional officers and other staff, according to local union president Jon Zumkehr.
Retrenchment at BOP extended to six camps. For instance, FCI Oxford, Wisconsin’s satellite camp had its inmates scatted elsewhere and its staff moved to the main prison. The satellite camp at Littleton, Colorado has deactivated, its employees moving to the prison at Englewood, for which it was the satellite.
All this against a continued slow-starvation budget for BOP. Nearly a year ago Peters alerted Congress to a $3 billion maintenance and repair backlog. The budget President Biden signed into law gave about $180 million for buildings and facilities — versus $290 million the year before.
Aaron McLothin, an officer and local AFGE president at FCI Mendota, California, also watches BOP activities. He worries that to keep their jobs, the 401 employees will have to move hours or hundreds of miles from where they work now.
He and others aren’t expecting rescue from the incoming Trump administration. If anything, the Department of Government Efficiency gambit seeks to reduce federal spending and employee ranks. Before the Biden administration ended it, the Justice Department used private prison contractors to a far larger extent than it does now. The Sentencing Project estimates around 9% of federal inmates resided in privately-operated prisons before the policy ruled it out.
But private prisons ended by executive order, not by legislation. Therefore McLothin and others I spoke with worry the cost of fixing up federally-owned facilities will prompt the return of contractors. Some groups call them profiteers. That’s unfair, but profits do rise if you substitute baloney for chicken breasts.
“Private prisons warehouse people. We don’t do that,” he said, referring to the programming and educational services for inmates.
The federal prisons question gets to the heart of the question of what government should do and what it should cost. That is, the very debate about to break out in a big way. My feeling is, if the government is to do something, it should do it right. Incarceration of felons in a secure but fair and rehabilitative way sounds inherently government. But you can’t do it with ratty facilities, understaffed with underpaid people. Some states still use private prisons for the some 1.8 million incarcerated people in other than federal custody, but that’s another story. Either way, the manner in which it incarcerates indicates much about a country.
Falling-down facilities make everyone’s life miserable, inmates and staff alike. Understaffing makes officers’ and medics’ lives more difficult and dangerous. Federal correctional facilities should be like military vehicles. Industry builds them, but the government maintains and staffs them.
Now that president-elect Trump’s so-called landing teams are visiting the agencies, I urge the BOP crew to be serious about the best way to accomplish this unglamorous but vital mission.
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