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In 2017, during the initial days of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, a government-wide hiring freeze was implemented, with exemptions granted only to “essential areas.” Notably absent from this exemption list was the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a decision that led to the permanent loss of many positions. By 2019, Eric Young, then-president of the Council of Prison Locals C-33 under the American Federation of Government Employees, declared staffing at the BOP to be in a dire state, calling it the “lowest our staffing has ever been.” The positions lost in that freeze were never recovered, and now, with Trump’s return to the presidency, another hiring freeze has set the stage for further challenges within the BOP.

Colette Peters has resigned as Director of the Bureau of Prisons after 30 months on the job just as President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Monday. Deputy Director William Lathrop will take over as 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 pretty much the same at the end; staffing shortages, crumbling buildings and poor morale.

Adam “PacMan” Jones told me in an interview that it is difficult to watch so many people being put into prison for decades. “This sh*$ got to stop,” Jones told me, “you got one guy doing ayahuasca and they make a documentary about how great it is. Meanwhile, we got people in prison for decades for something like marijuana and it is legal now. That don’t make sense to me.”