The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is in the process of updating the way it calculates First Step Act (FSA) credits. In July 2024, BOP Director Colette Peters told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance hearing on Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that the BOP was using a forward-looking calculator for FSA. However, that calculator had not been fully implemented. Now that it has, prisoners are more confused and have started refusing to go to chow hall for meals until their concerns are addressed.
One critical piece of information that federal prisoners want to know relates to when they will be released. In federal cases in the past, prior to FSA, determining a federal prison sentence could be roughly estimated as 85% of the sentence imposed. The only discount on the sentence was 54 days/year of Good Conduct Time if prisoners obeyed the institutional rules. However, with the FSA, many minimum security prisoners who have a low risk of recidivism and violence, can earn up to 365 days off their sentence and an unlimited number of days toward home confinement.
Each month, eligible prisoners can earn up to 15 days off of their sentence (up to 365 days) each month for participation in certain programs or in productive activities (like work or participation in religious services). Once the prisoner hits the 365 day threshold to reduce their sentence, any FSA credits above that go toward home confinement. Those eligible for FSA credits and have a long prison term (say 10 years or more) could earn potentially years of time in home confinement. A win for the prisoner and his/her family, and a cost savings for the BOP.
Determining when a prison will leave prison is just as important for the BOP as it is for the prisoner. BOP needs to determine when a person is eligible for placement in a halfway house or home confinement. A known date for release is also important for those who go into residential drug abuse programs, which also has an incentive to reduce a prison term. To accommodate this, the BOP recently developed both a Projected Release Date and a Conditional Release Date that it started sharing with prisoners. The Projected Release Date includes the FSA credits awarded to date and the Conditional Release Date shows all of the FSA credits that will be earned over the term of incarceration. However, case managers are confused over which one should be used for planning purposes. It may seem obvious that the Conditional Release Date would make more sense, but that is not how it is working.
Assume a prisoner gets a 21-month sentence. During the beginning of that sentence, the prisoner will earn 10 days per month of FSA credits for programming. When the credits are processed, that person’s release date from the BOP will be reduced by 10 days and that is the Projected Release Date. However, prisoners keep earning credits over their entire sentence so it is important to know the date they will really leave BOP custody, that is the Conditional Release Date. Someone with a 21-month sentence will earn 165 FSA credits that reduce the sentence by that number of days. In total, a sentence of 21-months is actually approximately 12 months of incarceration. The problem is that case managers, who control the lives of prisoners, are not recognizing the Conditional Release Date and prisoners are staying in prison longer than necessary.
Prisoners at FPC Montgomery (Alabama) are on a military base and routinely have jobs outside the prison. It is mostly known as a good placement for prisoners looking to do easier time. Many prisoners there are eligible for FSA credits and they lined up outside of case managers’ offices last week to get answers to a simple question, “When am I leaving?” Tensions rose as prisoners were told to leave their units from 7:00am until 3:30pm as those meeting with case managers were not getting straight answers. According to prisoners I spoke with on condition of anonymity, tensions are high as case managers could not provide answers as to what the BOP’s position was on the new calculations.
While local news in Montgomery provided some information about the unrest at the federal prison, personal accounts from family members poured in telling of concern of escalation from staff who are taking away television time, visitation, computers and microwaves. “This is all about the BOP not giving us answers to things we know about from reading the First Step Act law,” said a prisoner at FPC Montgomery who wished to not be identified for fear of retaliation, “I should be home now and nobody is listening.”
The unrest continued through the week. According to one family member who reached out to me with concern about the conditions at Montgomery, fire alarms are being pulled by prisoners, causing the local fire department to make repeat visits to the facility in Alabama. The BOP issued a statement that “FPC Montgomery employees are carefully monitoring the situation, and the facility will return to normal operations as soon as possible.” There are 760 prisoners at Montgomery.
Prisoners told me that the BOP is not being clear about its position on First Step Act credits being awarded and many believe they are now being held against the law. Some provided information that confirms they could have been placed on home confinement months ago, a centerpiece of the First Step Act to return non-violent prisoners to society sooner. One problem the BOP has pointed to is that they are aware people are being held longer but that capacity issues at halfway houses are causing the problem.
BOP Director Peters said in a house hearing in July that the shortage of halfway house space, the primary means of monitoring those on home confinement, is at a crisis level that approaches the same level of critical infrastructure needs of aging facilities and staffing shortages across the country. That limitation of halfway house space is keeping people in prison longer, and apparently, many have had enough.
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