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The Trump administration is halting some hiring at the federal Bureau of Prisons, the crisis-plagued agency where chronic understaffing has led to long overtime shifts and the use of prison nurses, teachers, cooks and other workers to guard inmates.
The move, which coincides with President Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign to cut the cost and size of the federal government, was announced Thursday by the agency’s newly appointed director, William K. Marshall III. Some union officials characterized the move as a “hiring freeze,” though the agency denied that, saying some positions would continue to be filled.
The Bureau of Prisons will maintain current staffing levels at least through the end of the fiscal year, Sept 30, Marshall wrote in an email to staff titled “Staffing and Hiring Decisions.” The agency will still work to fill critical positions, such as correctional officers and medical clinicians, and will honor job offers that are currently pending on an accelerated timeline.
The change comes days after Trump ordered the Bureau of Prisons to reopen Alcatraz, the fabled former penitentiary in San Francisco Bay that last held inmates more than six decades ago.
The dilapidated facility, now a popular museum and tourist attraction, will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild at a time when the federal prison system is facing a $3 billion repair backlog and myriad other woes. Marshall said this week that the cash-strapped agency will conduct “an immediate assessment to determine our needs and the next steps” on Trump’s Alcatraz directive.
Since mid-March, 11 federal prison inmates have died. Last week, an inmate in Miami tested positive for tuberculosis, while others were diagnosed with COVID-19. In February, a Bureau of Prisons official told Congress that more than 4,000 beds within the system — the equivalent of at least two full prisons — are unusable because of dangers like leaking or failing roofs, mold, asbestos or lead.
In his announcement Thursday, Marshall told employees that changing the Bureau of Prisons’ hiring practices are necessary to “avoid more extreme measures” as it navigates budgetary challenges. The plan will “maintain stability and protect the livelihood of our workforce to the fullest extent possible,” he wrote.
The hiring freeze is likely to exacerbate a staffing crisis at the agency, which has more than 4,000 unfilled positions, union officials said. The administration previously eliminated some pay bonuses that were credited with retaining and attracting new staff. In one example of staffing problems, a federal jail in Brooklyn had more than 150 vacancies despite a hiring surge that increased staffing by about 20%. Before that, the facility was operating at about 55% of full staffing, according to court filings.
“We’re already severely understaffed, they took our retention pay, they have been literally stripping all the things away from us that matter,” said Aaron McGlothin, union president at the federal prison in Mendota, California. “Freezing an already severely understaffed agency will lead to tragic consequences, we are tired of doing more with less.”
Trump suspended hiring across many parts of the federal bureaucracy when he took office in January, but initially spared the Bureau of Prisons and other law enforcement agencies. At the same time the administration and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut probationary workers and offered buyouts to hundreds of thousands of workers across the government.
Trump previously imposed a hiring freeze at the Bureau of Prisons during his first term, in 2017. That freeze was blamed for accelerating the glut of vacancies and overtime spending — a trend that has continued for years as the agency has struggled to hire and retain employees. Some correctional officers have been pressed into duty for 16-hour shifts and 80-hour weeks.
“Staff are mentally and physically exhausted from the do more with less directives,” McGlothin said, noting a wave of retirements in the wake of Trump’s actions. “Nothing ever good comes from these situations and I pray no one is injured or killed over these senseless decisions.”
An ongoing investigation from The Associated Press has uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, an agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates, 122 facilities and an annual budget of about $8 billion.
AP reporting has revealed rampant misconduct, including staff-on-inmate sexual abuse, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides.
In December, the agency announced it was permanently closing its women’s prison in Dublin, California, in the wake of rampant sexual abuse by employees, including the warden. It addition, it idled six prison camps across the country, moves it said were done to address “significant challenges, including a critical staffing shortage, crumbling infrastructure and limited budgetary resources.”
