Bureau of Prisons to close 7 facilities, threatening about 400 federal jobs

Citing a “very difficult budget situation,” the Bureau of Prisons on Thursday notified the union for federal prison workers that it plans to close seven facilities, impacting approximately 400 employees. 

Senior human resource official L. Cristina Griffith wrote that BOP is hopeful all employees will be able to remain with the agency but that layoffs could begin in nine months. 

“It is our objective to avoid formal [reduction in force] procedures and to carry out this change with as little disruption to employees as possible,” she wrote. “I believe our objective, in this regard, is the same, and together we can work to avoid this option.”

However the American Federation of Government Employees is less optimistic. National President Everett Kelley said in a statement on Thursday that “the reality is most [BOP] facilities are in isolated locations far from each other, so many if not most employees affected will face disruptive relocations to remain employed.”

He also warned that if President-elect Donald Trump institutes a hiring freeze across the federal government, as he did at the start of his first term, then finding federal work for affected employees outside of BOP would be “difficult if not impossible.” 

“The closure of these facilities and likely loss of so many skilled and dedicated workers will exacerbate the existing staffing crisis within [BOP], making our prisons less safe for staff, inmates and the surrounding communities,” Kelley said. 

BOP is shuttering the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, and two federal prison camps (minimum security institutions) respectively in Duluth, Minnesota, and Pensacola, Florida, which will eliminate 326 positions. 

The agency is also closing a camp in Morgantown, West Virginia, and those 75 workers will be reassigned to another federal correctional complex in the state at Hazelton, which is about a 30 minute drive away. 

Additionally, BOP is deactivating three satellite camps, but those employees will be reassigned to each camp’s associated federal correctional institution. 

Earlier this year, BOP issued a memorandum to senior leaders that it had to take on more than $400 million in new expenses — due to a govermentwide 5.2% pay increase for employees and inflation — without receiving any additional funding to cover it. While the agency said it should prioritize hiring, a corrections officer and union representative told Government Executive in October that workers “are leaving in droves” and “running from this agency” because of job strain. 

The Government Accountability Office in 2023 added management of the federal prison system to its high-risk list, partly because staffing has been a longstanding issue with “vacancies and the growing use of overtime to help address them [continuing] to present a serious threat to inmate and staff safety.” 

Eric Katz contributed to this report