BOP Shutters “Rape Club” in California, Director Peters Quits
The troubled federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) lost Director Collette Peters on January 20, 2025, when she resigned just as incoming Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) was sworn into to office. Peters held the job for just 30 months, and her replacement will be the agency’s sixth director since Trump took office for his first term eight years earlier.
BOP announced on December 5, 2024, that it would permanently close the troubled Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Dublin, California. A half-dozen minimum-security prison camps will also be mothballed. The announcement followed a report by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz of BOP’s parent agency, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ), which found “escalating strategic management and operational challenges”— including “deteriorating facilities, staffing challenges, and concerns over institutional safety and security and healthcare.”
As PLN reported, BOP rushed the transfer of 605 prisoners from FCI-Dublin in April 2024, right in the middle of a class-action federal lawsuit over sexual abuse of prisoners so rampant that the lockup was nicknamed the “Rape Club.” That “ill-conceived” transfer drew the ire of the federal court for the Northern District of California, which appointed a Special Master to oversee its rulings in the case—the first time the BOP has ever been sanctioned in such a manner. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.13.]
Seven months later, BOP announced that the prison would permanently close, throwing in the towel on Peters’ repeated promises to remediate conditions there. The agency also gave up on prison camps adjacent to FCI-Oxford in Wisconsin, FCI-Englewood in Colorado and FCI-Loretto in Pennsylvania, as well as the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Duluth, Minnesota, FPC-Morgantown in West Virginia and FPC-Pensacola in Florida.
The moves came in response to staff convictions and prisoner lawsuits at the “Rape Club,” as well as other problems that Horowitz identified, including an estimated $3 billion in unaddressed infrastructure needs. Closures of FPC-Pensacola and FPC-Duluth specifically cited their “significant disrepair” and “aging and dilapidated infrastructure.” But an earlier report from the OIG in May 2023 faulted the BOP for requesting just $200 million in funds—less than one-tenth of what it needs—of which Congress appropriated only $59 million.
The OIG report also identified a chronic and widespread short-staffing crisis, which BOP appeared to acknowledge in closing FPC-Morgantown “to maximize existing resources” by transferring its staff to another lockup 23 miles away in Hazelton. Closely related to the staffing crisis, Horowitz added, is the prevalence of contraband in BOP lockups, as well as rampant employee misconduct has persistently gone unaddressed. That has seriously eroded public confidence in BOP. See: Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing the Department of Justice, DOJ OIG (October 2024).
Additional source: AP News
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