Michael Carvajal Is Resigning After Rocky Tenure

Politics|Federal Prisons Director Is Resigning After Rocky Tenure

WASHINGTON — The caput of the Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to resign arsenic the bureau struggles with issues that person overshadowed his tenure, including worker misconduct, understaffing and violence.

The director, Michael Carvajal, was appointed successful February 2020 and volition measurement down erstwhile a successor is successful place.

Anthony Coley, a Justice Department spokesman, said connected Wednesday that Mr. Carvajal’s “operational acquisition and intimate cognition of the Bureau of Prisons — the department’s largest constituent — helped steer it during captious times, including during this historical pandemic.”

Mr. Carvajal, who began his vocation successful the bureau 30 years agone arsenic a national corrections officer, took implicit the bureau conscionable arsenic the coronavirus began to expanse done the nation’s prisons. As hundreds of thousands of inmates and correctional officers became infected, Mr. Carvajal’s policies drew disapproval from lawmakers successful some parties.

His tenure continued to beryllium marked by crises, including a drawstring of inmate deaths, escapes and chronic understaffing.

After The Associated Press reported past month that much than 100 employees astatine the Bureau of Prisons had been arrested, convicted of oregon sentenced for crimes successful the past 3 years alone, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and president of the Judiciary Committee, called for Mr. Carvajal to measurement down.

“His resignation is an accidental for new, reform-minded enactment astatine the Bureau of Prisons,” Mr. Durbin said successful a connection connected Wednesday.

Mr. Carvajal submitted his resignation to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.