Epstein’s Death Highlights A Staffing Crisis in Federal Prisons

Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide in a New York jail followed steep and persistent staffing shortages that exceeded the rate of decline in the federal prison population, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project.

The numbers tell the story: The analysis found that the federal prison system lost 12 percent of its workforce from the start of the Trump administration through the end of 2018. Administration officials have argued that the staff drop, which resulted partly from a hiring freeze, was mitigated by a reduction in the number of federal prisoners. But the drop in Bureau of Prisons’ staff was nearly double the rate of decline in the prison population overall, the analysis found.

Over a two-year period between Sept. 2016 and Sept. 2018, the bureau lost 10 percent of its employees. In that same period, the total number of federal prisoners dropped by