Trump’s new director of federal prison system led a troubled state agency

William “Billy” Marshall, the relatively unknown head of the West Virginia corrections department, has been selected to lead the troubled federal Bureau of Prisons, a Trump administration choice that took advocates for federal prison staff and incarcerated people aback Friday.

President Trump made the announcement Thursday night on his Truth Social platform.

“Billy is a Strong Advocate for LAW AND ORDER,” Trump wrote. “He understands the struggles of our prisons better than anyone, and will help fix our broken Criminal Justice System.”

Marshall inherits an agency that has been understaffed and plagued by scandal for years. The bureau has recently faced congressional scrutiny, and its union leaders are unhappy about the president’s recent order to end collective bargaining for federal workers.

In a written statement to the Marshall Project and The Times Friday, Marshall thanked Trump for “this tremendous opportunity.”

“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve the state of West Virginia,” he said, adding that he’s “excited to take that West Virginia pride to the next level.”

After decades in law enforcement, Marshall took the helm in January 2023 of the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which includes all of the state’s prisons, jails and juvenile lockups. Prior to that, he was assistant commissioner for the division and the head of the juvenile corrections division. He also spent 25 years in the state police and worked as a criminal investigation director for what is now called the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security.

It’s unclear whether that experience will translate well to a system as large as the federal Bureau of Prisons. The West Virginia corrections department incarcerates about 10,000 people on a typical day, while the federal system houses more than 150,000.

Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) — who, as West Virginia’s governor, appointed Marshall to lead the state’s prison system — praised Marshall’s selection in a Facebook post.

“I was proud to put Billy in charge of our Department of Corrections in West Virginia and we were able to turn it around after decades of decay. I have full confidence in him & know he will do a great job,” Justice wrote.

West Virginia’s prisons and jails have a fraught history. When Marshall took over, the state’s prisons were in the midst of a staffing crisis so severe that the governor had declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard to act as correctional officers.

Marshall worked with the Legislature on a package to increase starting salaries and to raise pay and offer one-time bonuses for current correctional officers.

The state’s regional jails have come under scrutiny for squalid conditions, excessive use of force and record numbers of deaths. They were the target of several civil rights suits, including one filed in 2022 that alleged the jail had broken toilets infested with maggots, 70 people sharing a single shower, and people being forced to sleep on “cold, wet floors in the winter without heat.”

In response to such allegations, Marshall said “inmates made up claims of inhumane treatment and told relatives to spread them,” a local television news station reported at the time.

A judge sanctioned state corrections officials for intentionally destroying evidence in that suit, writing that he “will not turn a blind eye to the Defendants’ blatant arrogance and flippant response to their legal obligations.” Marshall himself did not destroy evidence, the judge found, but as head of the agency, “he still bears responsibility for any and all continuing video that is lost.” Two agency staffers were later fired as a result.

Lydia Milnes, an attorney who has sued West Virginia’s corrections department several times, expressed worries about Marshall’s appointment.

“I’m concerned that he comes from a past where the culture is to use force to gain control as opposed to considering less violent alternatives,” she said. “He has continued to foster a culture of using excessive force.”

A separate suit, which the corrections department settled in 2022, alleged widespread failures of the jails’ medical and mental health care. Just this week, attorneys for people locked up in the jails accused Marshall and other state officials of dragging their feet on implementing the reforms they had agreed on and withholding critical information.

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Much like its smaller counterpart in West Virginia, the Bureau of Prisons has dealt with severe problems, including staffing shortages, preventable deaths and overuse of solitary confinement in recent years.

An investigation by the Marshall Project in 2022 disclosed pervasive violence and abuse at a high-security unit in the Thomson federal penitentiary in Illinois. After congressional inquiries and another death at the unit, the bureau closed it in 2023.

Another facility, FCI Dublin in California, was dubbed the “rape club” because of numerous sexual abuse scandals. The facility, roughly 20 miles east of Oakland, shut down last year after more than a half dozen correctional officers and the former warden were convicted of sexually abusing women incarcerated there.

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The bureau also faces massive infrastructure challenges. A report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General found needed maintenance at every bureau facility, including leaky roofs and buildings that were in such poor shape that the bureau determined they needed to be partially or fully closed. As of early 2024, the prison system estimated major repairs would cost $3 billion.

The bureau has also struggled to hire staff, and labor leaders say that problem is likely to get worse because of Trump’s executive order ending collective bargaining for agency employees. That has increased discontent among staff members, who were already upset about cuts to recruitment and retention bonuses that had bolstered officer pay at some of the agency’s hardest-to-staff facilities.

Adding to the pressure, as of February, the Bureau of Prisons was holding hundreds of immigrant detainees as part of Trump’s mass deportation efforts, a move that agency observers fear will exacerbate the prison system’s challenges.

The agency has been largely rudderless since Trump fired the prior director, Colette Peters, in January. Shortly after, at least six top bureau officials resigned, including then-acting director Bill Lothrop.

Brandy Moore White, president of the national union for federal prison workers, said she’s “cautiously optimistic” about Marshall’s appointment, though she wasn’t familiar with him.

“Somebody leading the ship is better than everybody pointing fingers,” she said.

To some federal prison workers, news of Marshall’s appointment came as a shock, and they describe it as confirmation that the White House appears to have little interest in working with federal employees.

“We were beyond surprised and a little bit disappointed that the announcement came through a social media post,” said John Kostelnik, the California-based Western regional vice president for the correctional workers union. “Our agency officials, the high-ups — they had no clue.”

Kostelnik said he and other union leaders have learned few details about Marshall, beyond the basics of his resume. Still, Kostelnik said he’s optimistic it will be a fruitful relationship and that the union is ready to “work hand-in-hand” with the new director.

Josh Lepird, the union’s South Central regional vice president, echoed that hope, but added a hint of caution: “I’m hopeful he’s here to work with us, but I don’t know,” he said. “With the current administration’s actions, it could be that he’s here to privatize us.”

On Friday morning, typically outspoken advocacy organizations offered measured responses to Marshall’s appointment.

Shanna Rifkin, deputy general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, or FAMM — a nonprofit that works to improve the justice system and prison conditions — said Marshall’s lack of federal experience didn’t necessarily pose a problem and that the organization looked forward to working with him.

“I think it’s good he has experience running a prison system and hope that he’ll be open to learning about the federal system from people in the advocacy community and impacted populations and their loved ones,” Rifkin said.

David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prisons Project, called the federal prison system a “deeply troubled agency in urgent need of reform” and said he hoped the new director would tackle the “many systemic problems that have been identified by courts, the Inspector General, and Bureau staff.”

This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.