The Rabbit Hole: Foxes in the Guardhouse

Editor’s Note: We all know corruption. It’s the councilmember on video taking an envelope of cash in an unmarked brown envelope in exchange for a vote. The lobbyist hiring a congressman’s son for a no-show job on the eve of a key congressional hearing. The all-expenses-paid first-class trip to a conference that just happens to be at a five-star beach resort and has very few actual panels or talks. In the past, the outrage was swift, and the consequences would be expected. But what happens when the corruption is so ever-present that it’s become commonplace and an expected outcome instead of an outlier? In this week’s The Rabbit Hole, reporter Peter Beck surveys hundreds of federal criminal cases to look at one federal agency that has been struggling with the normalcy of corruption for far too long. -Seamus

One federal agency stands above the rest for how often its employees break the law. It includes a secretary who took bribes to smuggle in drugs. A nurse who had a relationship with an incarcerated man and then lied to federal investigators. A chaplain who sexually assaulted a parishioner. And a lieutenant who waited more than 90 minutes to respond to a man in a medical crisis, who would pass away. 

Since the beginning of 2022, at least 154 Bureau of Prisons employees and contractors have been charged in federal court for crimes ranging from fraud, abuse, and bribery to violating constitutional rights, according to an new analysis of federal charges by Court Watch. The overwhelming majority of charges stem from allegations that happened while the federal officials were on duty.

Between 2019 and 2021, more than a hundred other Bureau of Prisons officials were charged. That puts it at least 254 employees over seven years, or roughly 36 a year, a staggering rate that surpasses any other federal law enforcement agency.

The federal prison system is often thought of as the lesser of two evils: any criminal defendant or defense attorney will tell you it’s the much more preferable option—in terms of resources, conditions, and safety—over state prison systems. That may be the case, but the scale of corruption and abuse at federal prisons, as well, reveals the pervasive inequities embedded in America’s prisons. 

In 2021, conditions at two federal carceral facilities became so severe that the Bureau of Prisons was forced to suspend operations. 

In Atlanta, corruption and security lapses were widespread enough that the U.S. Penitentiary was decommissioned from a high-security facility to a low-security one after more inmates died there than at any other prison in the country. And at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, which the government used to hold defendants awaiting trial in the Southern District of New York, officials had to shut down the entire facility after it earned a reputation for being harsher than Guantanamo Bay.

Very little appears to be done to fix the crisis. In 2023, a former Bureau of Prisons director told federal investigators with the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General that the Bureau’s internal employee disciplinary process was “horrible.” The then-deputy director bluntly acknowledged, “It takes too long to get anything done.” And an official who oversees a region of the prison system told investigators the process for evaluating prison infrastructure was a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” culture

So far, at least 24 Bureau of Prisons officials have been charged in 2026 across 17 separate facilities, according to a review by Court Watch. Their arrests tell a grim story about daily prison life and how correctional officers and incarcerated people interact.

To understand how corruption and abuse can shape a prison system, look no further than the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta.