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News / Nation & World

AP investigation: Prisons boss beat inmates, was promoted repeatedly

Thomas Ray Hinkle has climbed career ladder at federal agency for three decades

By Michael R. Sisak and Michael Balsamo, Associated Press
Published: December 10, 2022, 8:37pm
3 Photos
The Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif., is shown Dec. 5.
The Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif., is shown Dec. 5. (Jeff Chiu/Associated Press) Photo Gallery

The prison staff didn’t know much about the new acting warden. Then, they say, he made a bizarre and startling confession: Years ago, he beat inmates — and got away with it.

Thomas Ray Hinkle, a high-ranking federal Bureau of Prisons official, was sent to restore order and trust at a women’s prison wracked by a deplorable scandal. Instead, workers say, he left the federal lockup in Dublin, Calif., even more broken.

Staff saw Hinkle as a bully and regarded his presence there — just after allegations that the previous warden and other employees had sexually assaulted inmates — as hypocrisy from an agency that was publicly pledging to end its abusive, corrupt culture.

So at a staff meeting in March, they confronted the then-director of the Bureau of Prisons and asked: Why, instead of firing Hinkle years ago, did the agency keep promoting him?

“That’s something we’ve got to look into,” Michael Carvajal responded, according to people in the room.

Three months later, the Bureau of Prisons promoted Hinkle again, putting him in charge of 20 federal prisons and 21,000 inmates from Utah to Hawaii as acting western regional director. Among them: Dublin.

An Associated Press investigation has found that the Bureau of Prisons has repeatedly promoted Hinkle despite numerous red flags, rewarding him again and again over a three-decade career while others who assaulted inmates lost their jobs and went to prison.

The agency’s new leader defends Hinkle, saying he’s a changed man and a model employee — standing by him even as she promises to work with the Justice Department and Congress to root out staff misconduct. And Hinkle, responding to questions from the AP, acknowledged that he assaulted inmates in the 1990s but said he regrets that behavior and now speaks openly about it “to teach others how to avoid making the same mistakes.”

Among the AP’s findings:

  • At least three inmates, all Black, have accused Hinkle of beating them while he was a correctional officer at a Florence, Colo., federal penitentiary in 1995 and 1996.
  • One inmate said Hinkle and another guard dragged him up a stairway and slammed him into walls. Another said Hinkle was among guards who threw him to a concrete floor, spat on him and used racist language toward him. A third inmate said Hinkle slapped him and held him down while another guard sexually assaulted him.
  • The Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department knew about allegations against Hinkle in 1996 but promoted him anyway. The agency promoted Hinkle at least nine times after the alleged beatings, culminating in June with his promotion to acting regional director.
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