Warden of troubled federal prisons now runs training center

A warden who oversaw a culture of abuse at two different federal prisons has a new job: heading a national training academy for the Bureau of Prisons.

Andrew Ciolli ran Thomson Prison in Illinois for a year before heading an even larger and more high-profile prison complex in Florence, Colorado. An internal Bureau of Prisons investigation conducted last spring found that some staff members in Florence used excessive force in violation of policy, and Ciolli, as warden, should have stopped it — but didn’t. Investigators have referred him for disciplinary action. But he has now taken on a role as director of the agency’s Management and Specialty Training Center, which provides leadership training and specialized instruction across the agency.

“Historically, a director who is disciplined for misconduct is not reinstated as director of anything, let alone a training center,” said Thomas Bergami, who succeeded Ciolli as director at Thomson before retiring last year.

Reporters contacted Ciolli via an agency email address for his new position. An unsigned response to that email declined to comment and referred reporters to the agency’s Office of Public Affairs.

In a statement, Bureau of Prisons spokesman Carl Bailey confirmed that Ciolli oversees daily operations at the training center but said he “does not provide or supervise training.” Responsibility for the training “rests solely with the subject matter experts, who operate independently of Mr. Ciolli’s supervision,” Bailey wrote.

He added that “allegations of employee misconduct are taken seriously” and that the agency is “fully cooperating” with watchdog agencies “to bring those who abuse the public trust to justice.”

After a two-decade career rising through the ranks of the Bureau of Prisons, Ciolli became director of Thomson in February 2021. An investigation by The Marshall Project and NPR revealed how three people were killed during his time in office and dozens more claimed to have suffered severely. mistreatment in court cases and interviews. Many detainees described being held for hours or days without access to food or a toilet. The restrictions were so tight that they often left scars on people’s wrists, stomachs and ankles, which prisoners nicknamed the “Thomson tattoo.”

According to Bureau of Prisons policy, restraints should only be used on someone who is in immediate danger of harming themselves or others or causing serious property damage. While staff may implement temporary restrictions, a director must approve their continued use.

When Bergami took over the facility from Ciolli in 2022, he discovered a “huge problem with inmate abuse,” he said in an interview last year. The Bureau of Prisons closed a maximum-security unit at Thomson in 2023, citing “significant concerns regarding institutional culture and compliance with BOP policies.”

In 2023, bureau director Colette Peters testified before Congress that multiple Thomson staffers had been referred for administrative and criminal investigations for their roles in abusing prisoners. She did not mention the names of the employees. The agency declined to comment on the status of those investigations.

After Ciolli left Thomson in 2022, Bureau of Prisons officials assigned him to run the even larger complex in Florence, with a $20,000 pay increase, the agency said. The job included overseeing a medium-security prison, a maximum-security prison and the Supermax – where some of the country’s most notorious prisoners remain in single-cell solitary confinement.

But the recent federal investigation found that similar patterns of abuse found at Thomson, such as the excessive use of restraints, followed Ciolli to Florence. Last spring, a Florence employee charged with investigating employee misconduct reported that officers routinely used restraints on inmates who did not meet the criteria for such treatment, according to a letter he wrote to federal officials. “All inmates were behind a secure door, there was no immediate threat to staff, and no actual disruptive behavior was observed by any inmate that would have endangered a staff member,” the whistleblower wrote to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent research agency. body that handles such complaints.

The names of Ciolli and other Florence officials were redacted in investigative data obtained by The Marshall Project and NPR. But their job titles and descriptions have been recorded and two people with knowledge of the investigation have confirmed their identities.

Investigators from the Bureau of Prisons’ Internal Affairs Bureau reviewed video footage collected over nearly nine months at the Florence Penitentiary and found multiple examples of employees using force against inmates who were “docile, under control and not a threat for staff or others.” This is evident from a letter from the Office of Special Counsel to President Joe Biden.

Michael Antonio Thompson said he was detained three times during the roughly 18 months he spent in the Florence prison, much of it while Ciolli was warden. Thompson was once held in handcuffs for more than 10 hours, he said. Officers “mocked me for nothing and held me for hours,” he said in a telephone interview. “Some people will chain you up and tighten the handcuffs until your hands turn blue and swell like baseball gloves.” He was released from prison in 2023.

Bailey, the agency spokesman, declined to comment on Thompson’s experience for “privacy, safety and security reasons.”

An internal Bureau of Prisons investigation found that the overuse of restraints in Florence was part of a broader program known as the High Visibility Watch Program, according to data from the whistleblower investigation. The program targeted inmates accused of masturbating in front of officers. Guards were ordered to fire pepper spray into their cells, force them into restraints and escort them to solitary confinement — regardless of whether or not they posed an immediate threat, the researchers found. These prisoners then received a yellow card around their neck. ​​

These measures posed a “significant threat” to those participating in the program, the whistleblower wrote, “as inmates who engage in masturbation in a prison environment are susceptible to extortion, rape, or abuse by fellow inmates.” The Internal Affairs Bureau ruled that the program violated agency policy, agency records show.

Several other employees moved from Thomson to Florence around the time of Ciolli’s departure in 2022, including Associate Warden David Altizer. According to the investigation by the agency’s Internal Affairs Bureau, staff members reported that Altizer and Ciolli called agents into a meeting after arriving in Florence and instructed them to implement the watch program. The whistleblower told investigators that Altizer and Cioli said “they had run a similar program at another location and it was successful.”

When asked by investigators, Ciolli denied his involvement and said he “did not recall” telling staff about the program, according to the agency’s Office of Internal Affairs. Altizer was not interviewed in the investigation because he went on extended medical leave shortly after the investigation began, according to investigation documents. Investigators concluded that Ciolli was at least “responsible for providing management oversight and responsible for setting policies” of the complex.

Altizer did not respond to requests for comment.

The whistleblower wrote in a separate letter to the Office of Special Counsel that a third official at the complex was involved in implementing the program. That person was cleared by the investigation and not referred for disciplinary action, but was promoted to warden of another prison complex.

This investigation was referred to several federal agencies, ultimately resulting in an Office of Special Counsel report to Biden explaining that most of the whistleblower’s allegations were true.

Both Altizer and Ciolli were referred for disciplinary action, but neither was fired from the agency. Altizer retired in April. Ciolli started his new role at the training center in July, according to his LinkedIn profile and an internal announcement from the agency. He lost his status as a senior executive at the agency and took a $3,350 pay cut, according to an email from the Bureau of Prisons.

After a series of scandals within the agency, Congress has taken steps to increase oversight of the agency. This summer, Biden signed a law that would create a new ombudsman position at the Justice Department and require regular inspections of facilities with a higher risk of abuse.

Following the Florence whistleblower report, the agency also updated its use-of-force policy for the first time in a decade. It now explicitly states zero tolerance for excessive force, and that misconduct can lead to criminal prosecution. It requires de-escalation training and states that employees have a “positive duty to intervene” if they see colleagues using excessive force.

The policy now makes clear: restraints may not be used for punishment, or “in a manner that restricts blood circulation” or “causes unnecessary physical pain or extreme discomfort.”