Former Prisoner Informant Appointed Deputy Director of BOP

On June 5, 2025, Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) tapped Tennessee businessman Joshua J. Smith, 50, to serve as Deputy Director of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Smith, whom Trump pardoned in his first term, is the first former prisoner hired to hold any position at the prison agency. He will serve under BOP Director William Marshall, the former chief of the West Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC), who was appointed in April 2025, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2025, p.54.]

Smith’s criminal case stemmed from his 1996 arrest in Nashville on charges that eventually included 22 people accused of conspiring to import marijuana & cocaine from Texas. Smith pleaded guilty in April 1998. That August, after five of his co-conspirators also pleaded guilty, the government moved to depart from sentencing guidelines for Smith, citing his “substantial assistance.” He was then fined $12,500 and sentenced to five years in boot camp at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Manchester, Kentucky. See: United States v. Smith, USDC (M.D. Tenn.), Case No. 3:96-cr-00152.

When co-conspirator Curtis Barnes lost an appeal to his 114-month sentence on March 16, 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit noted that Smith …