WASHINGTON (AP) – The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Friday he plans to hold a hearing on the crisis-hit Federal Bureau of Prisons after The Associated Press reported the agency is keeping its embattled former director on the list. of wages. adviser to his successor.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who called for Michael Carvajal to be fired last November amid countless failures, told the AP in a statement that he was appalled by the continued misconduct within the agency and its unwillingness to completely crack down connections with the former director.
Carvajal submitted his resignation in January but remained in charge of the Bureau of Prisons until the new director, Colette Peters, was sworn in on Tuesday. after a long research process.
On Thursday, AP reported that Carvajal will stay until the end of the month as a senior adviser to Peters, former director of the Oregon state prison system.
After speaking with Peters this week, Durbin said he “hopes for serious reforms at the BOP” but it’s time to move on from Carvajal’s failed leadership.
“It’s no secret that the Bureau of Prisons is plagued by misconduct,” Durbin said, noting his calls for Carvajal’s ouster last fall. “It is time to put the scandals and mismanagement of the Carvajal era in the past and focus on fixing this broken institution.”
“That’s why, in addition to my commitment to working with the new BOP leadership, I plan to hold a BOP oversight hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee when we return from the August state work period,” Durbin said.
Durbin did not give a date for the hearing or say what witnesses might be called or topics discussed. The Senate returns from its August recess after Labor Day.
Peters has vowed to overhaul the federal agency, which was plagued by a host of problems during Carvajal’s two years at the helm. She has pledged greater transparency and accountability for the Bureau of Prisons, the largest component of the Justice Department with a budget of more than $8 billion.
Carvajal, a fixture of the Trump administration, submitted his resignation on January 5 amid growing scrutiny of his leadership after AP reporting revealed widespread problems at the Bureau of Prisons, including rampant sexual assaults at a women’s prison in Californiawidespread criminal behavior of staffdozens of escapesdeaths and staffing problems that hamper emergency responses.
Durbin called for Carvajal’s sacking last November after the AP revealed that more than 100 Bureau of Prisons employees have been arrested, convicted or sentenced for crimes since the start of 2019. Durbin doubled down on his call for Carvajal’s removal in a speech on the Senate floor last December.
“From day one, Director Carvajal has shown no intention of reforming the institution,” Durbin said. “For years, the Bureau of Prisons has been plagued by corruption, chronic understaffing and abuse of senior officials.”
By then, Carvajal was already on the hot seat. Biden administration officials had discussions in the spring of 2021 about whether to remove Carvajal, after the AP reported that correctional officer vacancies were forcing prisons to expand their use of cooks, teachers, nurses and other workers to guard inmates.
In one of his final acts as director, Carvajal clashed with senators at a hearing last week after he refused to accept responsibility for a culture of corruption and misconduct that has plagued his agency for years.
Carvajal, testifying before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, insisted that he had been shielded from trouble by his subordinates. But it was copied in the email, and some of the problems were detailed in reports created by the agency’s headquarters.
Carvajal blamed the size and structure of the Bureau of Prisons for its ignorance of issues such as inmate suicides, sexual abuse and the free flow of drugs, weapons and other contraband.
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