Last week while we were all debating whether it was Laurel or Yanny, watching white people calling the police on black people just because they can, and continuing to marvel at the comedy of errors that is the current presidential administration, the federal prisons director quietly resigned from his position because he couldn’t take another minute of working with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and first son-in-law and Donald Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner.
Mark S. Inch, a retired Army major general with 35 years of military service under his belt, was appointed to oversee the Federal Bureau of Prisons nine months ago. The New York Times reports that the former military police commander turned in his resignation May 16.
Inch reportedly complained about being excluded from major staffing, budget and policy decisions by Sessions while also being marginalized by Kushner in the drafting of prison-reform legislation.
Add to that the stress of being caught between two different ideologies—Kushner is a proponent of correction-system reforms and more lenient federal sentencing, while Sessions opposes major parts of a bipartisan prison-reform bill that Kushner backs.
Inch tried to stay in the middle ground, but in the end it proved to be too much for him to handle. Hugh J. Hurwitz, a career bureau official and former assistant director, will run the Bureau of Prisons until a replacement is found.
A Justice Department official told the Times that Sessions was surprised by Inch’s resignation and has not yet begun a search for his successor.