When Kara Guggino got locked up in 2012 for armed robbery, she knew she’d be among other lawbreakers in federal prison.
Guggino said she’s not surprised by a report that more than 100 federal prison employees have been arrested or convicted of crimes since 2019.
This is the central finding of a recent Associated Press story that said the agency “is a hotbed of abuse, graft and corruption, and has turned a blind eye to employees accused of misconduct.”
The report led Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to call for the firing of BOP Director Michael Carvajal, who took office during the Trump administration.
“We have a new Administration and a new opportunity to reform our criminal justice system,” Durbin said in a statement. “It’s clear that there is much going wrong in our federal prisons, and we urgently need to fix it. That effort must start with new leadership.”
After representing more than two dozen women who have accused BOP officials of sexual abuse, including Guggino, Bryan E. Busch is disappointed and frustrated with the federal government’s response.
“It’s been very frustrating,” the Atlanta lawyer said, “because getting the government to actually prosecute these people has been very, very difficult.” He filed a lawsuit last year on behalf of Guggino and others that was settled.
Those people include the correctional lieutenant who Guggino said raped her on multiple occasions while she was incarcerated in the federal prison in Tallahassee — more than 10 times over a two-year period, she estimated.
She recalled the day following a Halloween night rape several years ago when the officer crossed the prison compound to meet Guggino, now 37, who was with her cellmate. He gave her a morning-after pill, she said, and “told me to take it right now in front of him.”
The lieutenant retired with full benefits and was not prosecuted, according to a Justice Department brief.
A Justice Department spokesperson in Florida said it “does not wish to make any comments” about Guggino’s rape allegations.
An examination of top lines from Justice Department inspector general files provides ample examples of widespread and alleged misconduct by BOP officials, including these from the last month:
• “Federal Correctional Officer Pleads Guilty to Making False Statements About Engaging in Unlawful Sexual Activity with Jail Inmate” at the federal jail in Los Angeles.
• “Current And Former Metropolitan Correctional Center Employees And Inmates Indicted For Bribery, Contraband Smuggling, Narcotics Distribution, And Obstruction Of Justice Offenses” in New York
• “Former Bureau of Prisons Corrections Officer Sentenced for Sexually Abusing an Inmate and Witness Tampering” in Aliceville, Ala.
A statement to the Associated Press from the Justice Department said it is “committed to holding accountable any employee who abuses a position of trust, which we have demonstrated through federal criminal prosecutions and other means.”
That level of accountability is far too weak for prisoner advocates, who fight prison abuse.
Deborah M. Golden, a D.C.-based lawyer who has represented federal prisoners for two decades, said the prison system has “worrisome culture of lawlessness.” Her email cited the Florida lawsuit Busch filed, which alleged that six correctional officers at Federal Correctional Institution, Coleman, in Florida admitted prohibited sexual inmate contact with inmates, with little consequence.
In a strong letter in October to Carvajal, the BOP director, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) noted that no Coleman officers were prosecuted, and he demanded greater accountability in the case. All female prisoners apparently were transferred from Coleman “just two days prior to the on-site audit,” required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act, Rubio wrote, asking, “How can you be confident in the findings of an audit that failed to interview female inmates who were held at FCI Coleman?”
Regarding the Coleman officers, Carvajal told Rubio in a letter “appropriate administrative action was taken” and that criminal prosecutions were the responsibility of other agencies. He did not explain the timing of the transfers, but said the outside auditors “had the option” of interviewing former Coleman prisoners.
Bolstered by the nation’s system of mass incarceration, BOP is “an agency that is largely unaccountable to the public,” the “people that it purports to protect” and even its staff, said Amy Fettig, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates criminal justice reform. “Bad things happen,” she added during a phone interview, with “a culture of no accountability.”
Officers’ claims of consensual sex with the incarcerated is refuted by the prison power dynamic that provides women little choice, said Taylar Nuevelle. She is a former federal prisoner who founded “Who Speaks For Me,” a D.C. based nonprofit that works on “the intersections of trauma and the rise in incarceration rates” among women and girls.
When an officer favors a prisoner who also is a sexual partner, Nuevelle said it has serious implications for other prisoners who are not involved. The “illicit affairs,” she added, promote “discord, distrust and outbreaks of violence.”
It’s not just correctional officers who have been charged with sexual abuse.
A Justice Department news release describes the alleged sexual assault of a female prisoner at the Dublin, Calif., federal facility for women by an associate warden who later became the top official there. Ray J. Garcia was charged in September in a complaint that said he allegedly took photographs of the naked inmate. “In addition,” the release said, “law enforcement located hundreds of sexually graphic photographs — including photographs of male and female genitalia and nude photographs of Garcia — on Garcia’s work cellphone issued by BOP.” He pleaded not guilty.
The Associated Press reported on a former chaplain at the federal prison in Berlin, N.H., who is now behind bars. In 2019, he was sentenced to 40 months for accepting bribes in exchange for smuggling drugs, cellphones and other contraband. He hid the goods in a prison chapel cabinet where inmates would collect them.
Having long worked on prison issues, Fettig found the Associated Press story “shocking, but it’s not terribly surprising.”
“We should never have a government agency that operates with so little public accountability,” Fettig said about the bureau. When we do, he said, “bad things happen.”
Read more:
