Jeremiah Bourgeois
Introduction
Jeremiah Bourgeois is the director of the Office of the Corrections Ombuds, Washington State’s independent prison watchdog, who was fired by Governor Bob Ferguson on April 24, 2026, after being placed on paid leave and informed of an investigation into alleged ethical misconduct — accusations including misusing a prison ID badge and creating a “toxic” workplace that Bourgeois denies and attributes to his push to keep the watchdog independent from the prison agency it oversees.
Background Information
Bourgeois was appointed to lead the OCO by Ferguson in late 2025. His path to the post was unusual: he had served 27 years in prison, was released in 2019, graduated from Gonzaga Law School, and served on Washington’s Sentencing Guidelines Commission before taking the watchdog job.
The OCO is a small state agency that investigates problems inside Washington’s prisons. Its recent work included documenting improper use of pepper spray, a delayed response to a suicide attempt at the Washington Corrections Center for Women, and a 2024 report finding that prisoners in solitary confinement across the state were not receiving basic quality-of-life care such as showers and regular meals — and that facilities used what the report called “dehumanizing and traumatizing” restraint methods, including spit hoods and shock shields.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Fired amid an investigation; no charges filed. The ethics allegations against Bourgeois are unproven and denied; no criminal or civil action has been reported.
On April 20, 2026, Bourgeois was notified of an investigation into alleged ethical misconduct and ordered in a letter to cease all work and contact with OCO employees, according to The Seattle Times; he was placed on paid leave days before his firing. Ferguson’s administration cited accusations of unethical behavior as the primary reason for the investigation, including Bourgeois misusing a prison ID badge and creating a “toxic” workplace.
Bourgeois denied the allegations and refused to follow the restrictions, sending a defiant email to the governor’s office in which he claimed Ferguson had “no authority to instruct me as to how I conduct my work.” On LinkedIn on April 23, he wrote that his efforts to make the OCO less beholden to the state Department of Corrections had “apparently displeased” Ferguson. The LinkedIn posts were cited in the termination letter delivered to him the following day.
Public Reaction and Consequences
After the firing, Bourgeois sent a text message to The Seattle Times saying he was “happy to have had this opportunity to serve the people of Washington. I did so with integrity.” The dispute between a governor and the head of an office created to be independent of the corrections establishment drew coverage from prison-law and government-accountability outlets, with Prison Legal News filing the case under government misconduct.
Neither the governor’s office nor Bourgeois has publicly detailed the evidence behind the ID-badge or workplace-culture accusations, and the investigation’s findings — if any were ever completed — were not released in the coverage reviewed for this page.
Current Status
Bourgeois was fired on April 24, 2026, and his departure leaves the prison watchdog’s leadership in the governor’s hands. No lawsuit over the termination and no findings from the ethics investigation had been reported as of the latest coverage.
Whether Bourgeois contests the firing in court, what the ethics investigation concluded, and who replaces him — and whether the successor keeps the OCO’s critical posture toward the Department of Corrections — remain open questions.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Bourgeois’s firing ended a watchdog tenure that began as a milestone — a formerly incarcerated Gonzaga-trained lawyer leading the state’s prison oversight office — and turned, on his own account, into a cautionary tale about what happens when that oversight antagonizes the governor who appointed it. The ethics accusations remain unproven on the public record; the firing, and the loss of the platform from which the OCO documented pepper-spray misuse, solitary-confinement conditions, and “dehumanizing” restraints, are not.
Sources
- Prison Legal News: “Washington Governor Fires Independent Prison Watchdog” source