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Director of Oregon prisons selected to lead federal prisons system

Colette Peters (center), director of the Oregon Department of Corrections director, talks with workers in the Norway prison system during a 2017 research trip to transform Oregon prisons. (Oregon Department of Corrections)

Colette Peters, director of Oregon’s prison system, was appointed Tuesday by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the federal Bureau of Prisons. In a statement, Garland said Peters is “uniquely qualified to lead the Bureau of Prisons in its efforts to ensure the rehabilitation, health, and safety of incarcerated people, a safe and secure work environment for correctional staff, and transparency and accountability across federal detention facilities.”

Peters spent 10 years leading Oregon’s Department of Corrections, which includes 14 prisons with 4,400 employees overseeing more than 12,000 incarcerated people.

She’ll now be in charge of 122 prisons, 35,000 employees and 157,000 incarcerated people. 

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. She’ll go from overseeing a nearly $2 billion two-year budget to a nearly $8 billion annual budget. 

In a statement, Peters said she is “honored and humbled to join the federal Bureau of Prisons.”

She said based on her experience in Oregon she will focus on safe conditions for employees and incarcerated people, rehabilitation and re-entry programs in her federal role. A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Corrections said Peters would not grant interviews until she stepped into her new role. Her first day on the job will be Tuesday, Aug. 2.

Federal officials considered more than 60 people for the job. 

Peters takes over from Michael Carvajal, who resigned in January after two years on the job, following criticism of his handling of the Covid pandemic in federal prisons. 

As of July 11, seven federal prison employees and 301 federally incarcerated people have died from Covid-19, according to data from the Bureau of Prisons, One in three federally incarcerated people has tested positive for the disease. 

Peters’ journey to the federal department

Peters was born in South Dakota and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. She earned a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Colorado. She went on to work as a juvenile counselor in Iowa, a crime victim’s advocate with the Denver Police Department and an analyst for the Colorado Legislature before coming to Oregon. She spent four years as assistant director and then inspector general at the Oregon Department of Corrections and three years as director of the Oregon Youth Authority, the state’s juvenile corrections agency, before taking over the state’s prison system as director in 2012. 

Peters also has served as vice president of the Association of State Correctional Administrators and is the current chair of the National Institute of Corrections Advisory Board. 

Peters initiated a series of reforms in the state’s prisons, called the “Oregon Way,” to ensure better health among employees and more humane treatment of inmates. She expanded visitation hours and telephone access in light of research showing that contact with family and people outside the prison led to reduced recidivism rates. She initiated a remodeling of visiting areas to make them more welcoming for children. She launched a study analyzing stress and health among corrections employees, which highlighted high suicide rates and obesity. 

The state Corrections Department implemented steps to promote employees’ health in response, Peters told the Capital Chronicle in June.

Mixed reviews on her performance 

In June interviews with the Capital Chronicle, state Sen. Floyd Prozanksi, D-Eugene, and state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Portland, gave Peters high marks on her performance leading Oregon prisons. 

Prozanski chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, which considers criminal justice legislation.

He said he was contacted by the U.S. Department of Justice about Peters. 

“She is stellar,” he said. “She has all the qualifications necessary and demonstrated ability.”

Steiner Hayward told the Capital Chronicle Peters is “highly qualified” for the federal slot.

But some advocates for incarcerated people are concerned about Peters’ promotion. 

“On the evidence of her time in charge of Oregon’s prisons, she is not prepared to honestly confront problems within the carceral system,” Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, said in a statement. “The problems people are concerned about at the Bureau of Prisons are the same kinds of things happening at the Oregon Department of Corrections. So why is Peters trusted to fix things for 150,000 people when she couldn’t do it for 12,000?”

The group is currently suing the department in a class-action lawsuit for its handling of the pandemic. In Oregon, 46 incarcerated people died and more than 5,500 have tested positive. Peters is named as a defendant in the case.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Les Zaitz for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

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