William “Billy” Marshall, the comparatively unknown head of the West Virginia corrections division, has been chosen to steer the troubled federal Bureau of Prisons, a Trump administration selection that took advocates for federal jail workers and incarcerated folks aback Friday.
President Trump made the announcement Thursday evening on his Reality Social platform.
“Billy is a Sturdy Advocate for LAW AND ORDER,” Trump wrote. “He understands the struggles of our prisons higher than anybody, and can assist repair our damaged Prison Justice System.”
Marshall inherits an company that has been understaffed and stricken by scandal for years. The bureau has not too long ago confronted congressional scrutiny, and its union leaders are sad about the president’s latest order to finish collective bargaining for federal employees.
In a written assertion to The Marshall Undertaking and Los Angeles Instances, Marshall thanked Trump for “this great alternative.”
“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve the state of West Virginia,” he mentioned, including that he’s “excited to take that West Virginia pleasure to the subsequent degree.”
After a long time in legislation enforcement, Marshall took the helm in January 2023 of the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which incorporates the entire state’s prisons, jails, and juvenile lockups. Previous to that, he was assistant commissioner for the division and the pinnacle of the juvenile corrections division. He additionally spent 25 years within the state police and labored as a legal investigation director for what’s now known as the West Virginia Division of Homeland Safety.
It’s unclear whether or not that have will translate nicely to a system as giant because the federal Bureau of Prisons. The West Virginia corrections division incarcerates nearly 10,000 folks on a typical day, whereas the federal system homes greater than 150,000.
U.S. Sen. Jim Justice — who, as West Virginia’s governor, appointed Marshall to steer the state’s jail system — praised Marshall’s choice in a Fb publish.
“I used to be proud to place Billy answerable for our Division of Corrections in West Virginia and we have been capable of flip it round after a long time of decay. I’ve full confidence in him & know he’ll do an awesome job,” Justice wrote.
West Virginia’s prisons and jails have a fraught historical past. When Marshall took over, the state’s prisons have been within the midst of a staffing disaster so extreme that the governor had declared a state of emergency and deployed the Nationwide Guard to behave as correctional officers.
Marshall labored with the legislature on a bundle to extend beginning salaries, and to boost pay and supply one-time bonuses for present correctional officers.
The state’s regional jails have come underneath scrutiny for squalid circumstances, extreme use of power and file numbers of deaths. They have been the goal of a number of civil rights fits, together with one filed in 2022 that alleged the jail had damaged bathrooms infested with maggots, 70 folks sharing a single bathe, and other people being pressured to sleep on “chilly, moist flooring within the winter with out warmth.”
In response to such allegations, Marshall mentioned “inmates made up claims of inhumane remedy and instructed family members to unfold them,” a neighborhood tv information station reported on the time.
A decide sanctioned state corrections officers for deliberately destroying proof in that swimsuit, writing that he “won’t flip a blind eye to the Defendants’ blatant vanity and flippant response to their authorized obligations.” Marshall himself didn’t destroy proof, the decide discovered, however as head of the company, “he nonetheless bears duty for any and all persevering with video that’s misplaced.” Two company staffers have been later fired because of this.
Lydia Milnes, an lawyer who has sued West Virginia’s corrections division a number of occasions, expressed worries about Marshall’s appointment.
“I’m involved that he comes from a previous the place the tradition is to make use of power to realize management versus contemplating much less violent alternate options,” she mentioned. “He has continued to foster a tradition of utilizing extreme power.”
A separate swimsuit, which the corrections division settled in 2022, alleged widespread failures of the jails’ medical and psychological well being care. Simply this week, attorneys for folks locked up within the jails accused Marshall and different state officers of dragging their ft on implementing the reforms they’d agreed on, and withholding crucial info.
Much like its smaller counterpart in West Virginia, the Bureau of Prisons has handled extreme issues, together with staffing shortages, preventable deaths and overuse of solitary confinement in recent times.
An investigation by The Marshall Undertaking in 2022 disclosed pervasive violence and abuse at a high-security unit within the Thomson federal penitentiary in Illinois. After congressional inquiries and one other demise on the unit, the bureau closed it in 2023.
One other facility, FCI Dublin in California, was dubbed the “rape membership” due to quite a few sexual abuse scandals. The power, roughly 20 miles east of Oakland, shut down final yr after greater than a half-dozen correctional officers and the former warden have been convicted of sexually abusing ladies incarcerated there.
The bureau additionally faces huge infrastructure challenges. A report from the Justice Division’s Workplace of the Inspector Common discovered wanted upkeep at each bureau facility, together with leaky roofs and buildings that have been in such poor form that the bureau decided they wanted to be partially or totally closed. As of early 2024, the jail system estimated main repairs would price $3 billion.
The bureau has additionally struggled to rent workers, and labor leaders say that downside is more likely to worsen due to Trump’s government order ending collective bargaining for company staff. That has elevated discontent amongst workers members, who have been already upset about cuts to recruitment and retention bonuses that had bolstered officer pay at a few of the company’s hardest-to-staff amenities.
Including to the stress, as of February, the Bureau of Prisons was holding tons of of immigrant detainees as a part of Trump’s mass deportation efforts, a transfer that company observers worry will exacerbate the jail system’s challenges.
The company has been largely rudderless since Trump fired the prior director, Colette Peters, in January. Shortly after, no less than six high bureau officers resigned, together with then-acting director Invoice Lothrop.
Brandy Moore White, president of the nationwide union for federal jail employees, mentioned she’s “cautiously optimistic” about Marshall’s appointment, although she wasn’t accustomed to him. “Someone main the ship is healthier than all people pointing fingers,” she mentioned.
To some federal jail employees, information of Marshall’s appointment got here as a shock, they usually describe it as affirmation that the White Home seems to have little curiosity in working with federal staff.
“We have been past stunned and just a little bit upset that the announcement got here by way of a social media publish,” mentioned John Kostelnik, the California-based Western regional vp for the correctional employees union. “Our company officers, the high-ups — they’d no clue.”
Kostelnik mentioned he and different union leaders have realized few particulars about Marshall, past the fundamentals of his resume. Nonetheless, Kostelnik mentioned he’s optimistic it is going to be a fruitful relationship, and that the union is able to “work hand-in-hand” with the brand new director.
Josh Lepird, the union’s South Central regional vp, echoed that hope, however added a touch of warning: “I’m hopeful he’s right here to work with us, however I don’t know,” he mentioned. “With the present administration’s actions, it could possibly be that he’s right here to denationalise us.”
On Friday morning, usually outspoken advocacy organizations provided measured responses to Marshall’s appointment. Shanna Rifkin, deputy common counsel of FAMM — a nonprofit that works to enhance the justice system and jail circumstances — mentioned Marshall’s lack of federal expertise did not essentially pose an issue and that the group regarded ahead to working with him.
“I believe it’s good he has expertise working a jail system and hope that he’ll be open to studying concerning the federal system from folks within the advocacy group and impacted populations and their family members,” Rifkin mentioned.
David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s Nationwide Prisons Undertaking, known as the federal jail system a “deeply troubled company in pressing want of reform,” and mentioned he hoped the brand new director would deal with the “many systemic issues which have been recognized by courts, the Inspector Common, and Bureau workers.”
