Bureau of Prisons to Close 6 Facilities as $4 Billion Maintenance Backlog Deepens
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jul 1
Bureau of Prisons to Close 6 Facilities as $4 Billion Maintenance Backlog Deepens
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 1
Summary
Six federal prison facilities in Texas, Kentucky, Virginia and California will be shut, affecting sites that house thousands of mostly minimum- and low-security inmates; staff at Big Spring and La Tuna face layoffs or transfers.
The Bureau of Prisons said extreme staffing shortages and deteriorating infrastructure drove the closures, with Director William K. Marshall III saying last year's $5 billion funding boost is not enough to fix decades of problems.
Beaumont is the largest site affected, holding 1,651 inmates in a low-security prison and 514 in an adjacent camp, while the bureau has not said where prisoners from the closing facilities will be moved.
Morgantown, West Virginia, and Duluth, Minnesota, camps housing about 400 inmates will instead be upgraded to low-security prisons, reversing a 2024 Biden-era plan to close them as part of cost-cutting and repair efforts.