The Federal Bureau Of Prisons: A Case Study In Repeated Failure

For more than a decade, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General has told essentially the same story about the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Different years. Different directors. Different initiatives. But the same findings appear again and again in the DOJ’s Top Management and Performance Challenges reports: chronic understaffing, crumbling infrastructure, unchecked contraband, staff misconduct, deficient healthcare, and an inability to implement lasting reform.

By 2026, the question is no longer whether the Bureau of Prisons has problems. The question is why, after dozens of reports, hundreds of recommendations, congressional hearings, and billions of dollars, those problems remain largely unresolved. Even Trump knew that things had to change when one of the first people he fired upon taking office was BOP Director Collette Peters.
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