There are four security levels in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP); minimum, low, medium and high. High security prisons are identified as U.S. Penitentiaries that house some of the most dangerous criminals, many doing life sentences. The compounds housing these prisoners which make up over 18,000 (11.8%) of the prison population have double fenced razor wire, electrical charged fencing, perimeter patrols and secure cells. In short, they are expensive to operate.
At the other end of security spectrum are minimum security facilities that are commonly called “camps.” Most do not even have any fencing around them, have fewer staff to monitor the prisoners and routinely allow prisoners to go unsupervised into the community for work details. Camps house those who have less than 10 years remaining in their sentence, many far fewer, and their populations are prisoners that were that are serving time for crimes that were not violent (low level drug dealers and white collar offenders).
One would think that the cost of housing a prisoner at a high security facility would be far more than the average cost of housing a camper. However, a recently released statement from Donald Murphy of the BOP’sOffice of Public Affairs states an increase in the average cost of housing minimum security prisoners that approaches the average cost of housing someone at a U.S. Penitentiary.
Of the BOP’s nearly 160,000 prisoners, 24,000 of them are minimum security. The BOP’s statement was that the average cost of housing a minimum security prisoner in 2024 is $151.02. The cost of housing someone in a U.S. Penitentiary is $164.87 (Lows were $129.72 and Mediums are $122.50). Since there are more minimum security prisoners than high, the total costs of housing minimum security prisoners far exceeds the costs of housing those in high security.
At a time when the BOP is under tremendous pressure due to shortages of staffing, poor morale and crumbling infrastructure, the costs of continuing to house prisoners in institutional settings is coming into question.
It is getting more expensive to house prisoners throughout the BOP. Food costs have risen for prisons as much as they have for U.S. households. Healthcare costs have increased and the BOP has used money to retain employees while providing sign-on bonuses to attract new people. According to testimony by BOP Director Colette Peters before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, the BOP needs to hire 6,500 people, 3,500 of those are for medical professionals. The BOP is also trying to maintain its 122 facilities that have been estimated to cost $3 billion to fully bring them up to standard. Each year, the BOP is given only a fraction of that budget to do what maintenance it can.
One place to cut cost is to look at those in prison camps to see if there is an alternative, such as home confinement or halfway houses, to move them out of costly institutions. However, the BOP has, as Director Peters has stated, a shortage of halfway house capacity across the country.
The First Step Act mostly benefits minimum security prisoners. The law allows the BOP to reduce sentences of prisoners by up to a year for participation in programming and productive activities. In addition, prisoners can also earn time toward home confinement. However, the BOP’s troubles in implementing the First Step Act, signed in December 2018 by President Donald Trump, have left many minimum security prisoners who could be on home confinement or a halfway house in prison. Almost six years since becoming law, the BOP’s annual report on the First Step Act for 2024 stated “... As was the case in the last Report, it is too soon to assess cost savings resulting from the implementation of the FSA.” The reasons given for not having cost savings were attributed to certain fixed costs necessary to operate institutions, such as food and medical contracts.
During the pandemic, the BOP was authorized to move many minimum security prisoners to home confinement under the CARES Act. Some of the prisoners had years to serve and some are still serving their sentence. Prisoners moved to home confinement under the CARES Act represented one of the biggest successes for the BOP.
According to the Final Rule on the CARES Act posted in the Federal Register, “Between March 26, 2020, and January 23, 2023, the Bureau placed in home confinement a total of 52,561 inmates. The majority of those inmates have since completed their sentence.” In addition, the Final Rule went on to state that there were “notable cost savings to taxpayers.” The CARES Act expired in April 2023 and another program, the Elderly Offender Pilot program meant to move older, sicker inmates out of institutions, has also expired. It should be noted that BOP’s Murphy stated that the cost of housing a prisoner in a federal medical center (there are 7 across the country) is $281.80/day, the highest per prisoner cost in the BOP. There are also minimum security prisoners in these facilities as well.
The cost of halfway house placement is still high at $126.17/day. Halfway houses provide beds for some prisoners and home confinement supervision for others. However, halfway house placement represents a 20% cost savings over institutional living.
The BOP’s prisoner population has shrunk over the last 12 years from over 200,000 to around 160,000 today. However, the BOP’s current budget of $8.3 billion, continues to be the largest portion of expenditures in the Department of Justice. Sixty-eight percent of that budget is for staff salaries and benefits. However, some question how many people the BOP needs to run operations. According to past budget requests by the BOP, in FY 2013 there 41,904 authorized positions at the BOP (20,162 correctional officers and 21,742 positions listed as other). The prisoner population then was 217,000 federal inmates, yielding a ratio of 5.2:1 prisoners to staff. For FY 2024, there are 42,398 authorized (14,900 correctional officers and 27,798 other) for 158,500 prisoners, giving a ratio of 3.7:1 prisoners to staff. It should be noted that the BOP used a figure of 170,000 inmates each of the past two years for its budget planning but the average was about 10,000 fewer than that.
Hiring is a continued challenge for BOP as it is for jails, prisons and law enforcement across the country. This is not a problem that is going away anytime soon. While President Joe Biden signed into law this year a federal prison oversight bill, it requires the BOP to do even more with the same budget. One solution is to have fewer prisoners in institutions and move them to other forms of confinement, like halfway houses. Minimum security prisoners offer a way to safely move people from institutions into the community with little risk of the community.
If prisoners move out of camps, it creates a cascade of prisoners to be moved from higher security prisons to lower ones. One key to moving prisoners is creating a place for them to go. Halfway houses are in short supply and an NBC investigative report found that many, mostly minimum security prisoners, are staying in institutional prisons longer than necessary because of problems the BOP has with implementing the First Step Act.
Former BOP Acting Director Hugh Hurwitz wrote an opinion piece in The Hill. There he called for an independent study of prison facilities and staffing so that the BOP can “examine its current and future needs and provide Congress with the information it requires to make well-informed decisions.” However, the BOP has the authority to move more people to community facilities but lacks the capacity or will to do so.
A look at the numbers indicates that moving prisoners to halfway houses from institutions is a cost effective way to reduce costs, if only the BOP would use the tools it has at its disposal. The passage of the First Step Act was meant to address this very issue but has yet to realize the cost savings which was the centerpiece of the legislation. In the 2024 budget, the BOP admitted that the increase use of “these reform tools could reduce population estimates and result in projected savings for the BOP.” If only it would act.
