I retired after 20 years in the Bureau of Prisons I can tell you even though my agency always seemed to hire Directors from within except 2 times it has always been an inept person that by their actions was hard to believe they ever stepped inside a prison. Some of the decisions that came out.
So Ms Cheatle not having answered was probably a 50/50 she honestly didn’t bother to learn or never knew and went through her 27 years with her head in the sand. Other half was utter arrogant narcissistic Director DNA
I have seen BOP Directors testify and didn’t have a clue in stuff like number of inmates I. Private facilities, size of SHU cells (while older orisons operate under a waiver and are generally smaller cells than new ones he should have had a general idea line staff are expected to know that for CCA inspections and program reviews)
We had an Officer killed in USP Atwater in 2008 and a big inquiry like this they gave BOP 350 million for a 2nd Officer in High security USPs fast forward the Director then didn’t want staff to carry gas because he felt staff would misuse it. He at least had the civility to retire when he gets a DUI in 2011 (of course his golden parachute was landing a CEO job with CCA or Corcivic)
So later we start getting OC issued to high USP’s in 2012 by the new appointee
Feb 2013 a second Officer is killed at USPCanaan PA and another inquiry EXCEPT Congress wanted to know where the 350 million went and why there wasn’t a second officer assigned and staff hired. The Director (Samuals) answered that that was the last director and he didn’t do anything wrong….he was at the wheel for 2 years and did nothing said nothing about “hey we don’t have these staff we are suppose to”
By October we had a second staff member in each housing unit at high USPs (USP housing units hold approximately 120 or so inmates per unit so before that it was 1 Officer to 120 days you had some councilors and such but 70% of bad things happens after the 4 pm count)
Samuals retired later then our hope was they appominyed General Mark Inch who we had high hops for and had some great ideas (retired with a military correctional and MP background) he lasted 6 month befor the BOP Central Office Honey Badgers (what we called the females that ran everything sand got into their positions (literally) by being like Kamala!
They couldn’t get their way so they basically sup him into issues with their drama and he quit. **** time later one of the Assitant Directors involved was retired because she gave 6,000 positions back to OPM to look great was caught in an affair with the union head for BOP (who was suppose to be protecting spots) and she had an unprofessional relationship with a former inmate and steered some contracting bids to his company.
I could go on but the point is there is hardly a Director of an agency that has their hands dirty in the right way by actually working up. Most are Ostriches and have zero clue what their agency should really be doing.
www.bop.gov
www.bop.gov