William Barr was a lousy attorney general, and he appointed a federal prisons chief who was much worse.
Under fire from numerous sides, Michael Carvajal resigned on Tuesday, January 5, 2022, effective when a replacement is named. Merrick Garland, the current attorney general, should waste no time naming an interim director.
A federal correctional officers’ union spokesman said, “Destructive actions by Carvajal have crippled this agency to the point of uncertainty, like a tornado leaving destruction behind. He was a disgrace to our agency. Good riddance.”
Those are strong words, but Carvajal’s brief one-year tenure was marked by multiple crises, including understaffing, an inept response to the Covid-19 pandemic, abuse and mistreatment of prisoners, rampant corruption, and numerous employees being charged with crimes, according to the Associated Press (see story here).
Carvajal was a career employee who worked his way up from correctional officer to warden and then top executive jobs. How he got that far is somewhat of a mystery, but it appears that when given overall responsibility for the sprawling federal prison system, he was in over his head.