The warden at troubled federal prisons now runs a training center

A warden who was responsible for a culture of abuse at two different federal prisons has a new job — running a national training academy for the Bureau of Prisons.

Andrew Ciolli ran the Thomson Correctional Facility in Illinois for a year before taking charge of an even larger and better-known prison complex in Florence, Colorado. An internal Bureau of Prisons investigation last spring found that some employees at Florence used excessive force in violation of policy, and Ciolli, as warden, should have stopped it — but didn’t. Investigators referred him for disciplinary action. But now he’s landed a job as director of the office’s Management and Special Training Center, which provides leadership training and specialized instruction across the agency.

“Historically, when a supervisor is disciplined for misconduct, he will not be appointed director of anything, let alone head of a training center,” said Thomas Bergami, who replaced Ciolli as supervisor at Thomson before retiring last year .

Reporters contacted Ciolli about his new position through an office email address. An unsigned response to that email declined to comment and referred reporters to the bureau’s public affairs office.

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

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

After a two-decade career at the Bureau of Prisons, Ciolli became director at Thomson in February 2021. An investigation by The Marshall Project and NPR revealed that three people were killed and dozens more suffered serious injuries during his time in office, allegedly due to mistreatment in court proceedings and interviews. Many detainees reported being shackled for hours or days and not having access to food or a toilet. The shackles were so tight that they often left scars on people’s wrists, stomachs and ankles, giving prisoners the nickname “Thomson Tattoo.”

According to Bureau of Prisons guidelines, restraints should only be used on individuals who are in imminent danger of injuring themselves or others or causing serious property damage. While staff can apply temporary restrictions, a supervisor must approve their continued application.

When Bergami took over the facility from Ciolli in 2022, he discovered a “tremendous 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 about institutional culture and compliance with BOP policies.”

In 2023, office manager Colette Peters testified before Congress that several Thomson employees had been referred for administrative and criminal investigations for their roles in the mistreatment of prisoners. She did not name the employees. The office declined to comment on the status of these investigations.

After Ciolli left Thomson in 2022, Bureau of Prisons officials hired him to run the even larger complex in Florence with a $20,000 raise, the bureau said. Duties included running a medium-security prison, a maximum-security prison and the supermax, which houses some of the country’s most notorious prisoners in solitary confinement.

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

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

Investigators from the Bureau of Prisons’ Office of Internal Affairs reviewed video footage collected over nearly nine months at the Florence prison and found multiple instances in which staff used force against prisoners who were “docile, under control and not a threat to.” the staff or others represented”. according to a letter from the Office of Special Counsel to President Joe Biden.

Michael Antonio Thompson said he was held three times during the roughly 18 months he spent in the Florence prison, most of that time when Ciolli was warden. Thompson once remained handcuffed for more than 10 hours, he said. The officers “pepper sprayed me for free and kept me in chains for hours,” he said in a telephone interview. “Some people put chains on you and handcuff them so tight that your hands turn blue and swell like baseball gloves.” He was released from prison in 2023.

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

The Bureau of Prisons’ internal investigation found that the excessive use of restraints at Florence was part of a broader program known as the High Visibility Watch Program, records from the whistleblower investigation show. The program targeted inmates who were accused of masturbating in front of officers. Guards were ordered to fire pepper spray into their cells, handcuff them and place them in solitary confinement – regardless of whether they posed an immediate threat or not, investigators found. These prisoners were then marked with a yellow card around their neck. ​​

These actions posed a “significant threat” to the program’s participants, the whistleblower wrote, “as inmates who masturbate in prison are vulnerable to extortion, rape or assault by fellow inmates.” The Internal Affairs Bureau noted that program violated office policy, according to office records.

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 bureau’s Office of Internal Affairs investigation, employees reported that Altizer and Ciolli called the officers into a meeting after they arrived in Florence and instructed them to implement the surveillance 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 employees about the program, according to the office’s internal affairs bureau. Altizer was not interviewed as part of the investigation because he took an extended medical leave of absence shortly after the investigation began, according to investigative documents. Investigators concluded that Ciolli was at least “responsible for overseeing the management and setting policies” of the complex.

Altizer did not respond to requests for comment.

The whistleblower wrote in a separate letter to the special counsel’s office that a third official at the complex was involved in implementing the program. This individual was cleared through the investigation and was not referred for disciplinary action, but was instead promoted to warden of another prison complex.

That investigation was referred to multiple federal agencies, ultimately resulting in a report from the Office of Special Counsel to Biden stating 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. According to his LinkedIn profile and an internal office announcement, Ciolli began his new position at the training center in July. He lost his status as a senior officer at the agency and took a $3,350 pay cut, according to an email from the Bureau of Prisons.

After a series of scandals at the office, Congress moved to increase oversight of the agency. This summer, Biden signed legislation that would create a new ombudsman position at the Justice Department and require regular inspections of facilities at higher risk of abuse.

Following the Florence whistleblower report, the office also updated its use of force policy for the first time in a decade. It now explicitly states that excessive force will not be tolerated and misconduct can be prosecuted. It mandates de-escalation training and says employees have a “positive duty to intervene” if they observe colleagues using excessive force.

The policy now clarifies: Restraints may not be used for punishment or “in any way that restricts blood circulation” or “causes unnecessary physical pain or extreme discomfort.”