GAO Finds BOP Employee Misconduct Process Flawed – Update for October 7, 2025

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‘JUSTICE DELAYED’: BOP MISCONDUCT RESOLUTION SYSTEM FLAWED, GAO SAYS

The Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency, issued a report last week criticizing the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ backlog of over 12,000 unresolved employee misconduct complaints.

The BOP received 15,000 employee misconduct allegations last year alone, with beefs ranging from unexcused absences to inmate abuse. The most frequent allegations involved charges of unprofessional conduct or failure to follow policies. Other common allegations claimed employees were absent without leave or failing to follow a supervisor’s instructions. These kinds of accusations have increased during the last 10 years.

Criminal misconduct made up about 14% of allegations lodged in the last decade, allegations of physical and sexual abuse such as those at FCI Dublin, which have resulted in seven convictions so far. But, as of last February, the BOP had more than 12,000 employee misconduct cases awaiting investigation or discipline.

The GAO report noted that the BOP had hired more investigators and taken other steps to reduce the number of open cases. However, the Report found, the BOP “continues to miss its own goals for reducing the backlog of cases and doesn’t have a plan for meeting those goals.”

Bureau officials told GAO that the longer a misconduct case drags on, the more difficult it is to hold employees accountable. As time passes, the employee who is the subject of the complaint “may not remember the details of the incident when investigators question them. Or the employee might leave the bureau before being disciplined.” About 37% of the 12,153 cases open as of February 2025, had been unresolved for three years or longer.

The Report also found that while the BOP collects data on employee misconduct and compares the information from year to year, it doesn’t track misconduct trends across longer periods. “This means the Bureau is missing opportunities to identify trends and address them,” the GAO said.  Also, while the BOP trains employees to prevent misconduct, it doesn’t use their feedback to evaluate the training’s effectiveness.

The BOP was once again on the GAO’s High Risk List for 2025 because of crumbling facilities and threats to prison safety posed by understaffing (which, last week’s Report notes, “can exacerbate employee misconduct. To ensure that incarcerated people are treated humanely and keep its facilities secure, the bureau needs to address these issues and improve its approach to holding employees accountable.”

The Wall Street Journal last week argued that the BOP’s decertification of the 30,000-member employees’ union will help with misconduct allegations. The Journal said, “One of the strongest arguments against prison-guard unions is their role in shielding abusive officers from discipline. In some cases, the unions have ‘frustrated and undermined accountability,’ David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, has said.”

After the FCI Dublin sexual abuse scandal, both prisoners and staff said union interference delayed corrective action. Seven of eight corrections officers charged with sex abuse crimes pled guilty or were convicted by juries, according to news reports. At the trial of the eighth officer, the local union president testified that the union abhorred “dirty officers” but claimed the defendant – Darnell “Dirty Dick” Smith, who was charged with 15 sex crimes against women inmates – was accused in retaliation by prison managers for speaking up about their alleged misconduct.

At USP Thomson in 2022, union resistance thwarted a new warden’s plan to fire violent officers. In January 2023, the union called for the warden to be canned for failing “to address the rampant sexual assault and misconduct of employees by inmates.” Some correctional officers tried to persuade inmates to assault the warden.

One BOP inmate told The Marshall Project earlier this year: “On a day-to-day basis, the union is a threat to the well-being of most inmates. It’s what guarantees that the officer who beats you will get away with it.”

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo said, “Employee misconduct in federal prisons has consequences that ripple far beyond the individuals directly involved. For incarcerated people, misconduct can lead to harm, abuse, and violations of their basic rights. For staff, it can create a work environment where trust erodes and morale declines. The BOP has consistently ranked last in employee satisfaction, and the recent demise of their union has, for the moment, been troubling for many frontline staff. For the institution as a whole, unresolved allegations undermine legitimacy and weaken public confidence in the system. Legal and financial risks also rise, as cases of abuse or negligence can result in costly lawsuits and federal scrutiny.”

GAO, Bureau of Prisons: Strategic Approach Needed to Prevent and Address Employee Misconduct (GAO-25-107339, September 29, 2025)

Wall Street Journal, Trump Fires the Prison-Guard Union (October 4, 2025)

Forbes, Study Critical Of Bureau Of Prisons Investigating Misconduct (October 1, 2025)

GAO, High-Risk Series: Heightened Attention Could Save Billions More and Improve Government Efficiency and Effectiveness (GAO-25-107743, February 25, 2025)

KTVU-TV, Former FCI Dublin officer charged with sex abuse provides witness list (September 10, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root