October 7, 2024
Bureau Of Prisons Announces Updates To First Step Act Calculations
The BOP announced yesterday that it was going to provide updates to prisoner sentence computations to provide more clarity of release dates. When a sentence is imposed, prisoners are given 54 days of Good Conduct Time for every year of the sentence. For example, someone with a 2 year sentence would earn 108 days off of their sentence and someone with 3 years would earn 162 days off the sentence. However, the First Step Act credits, up to 15 days for every 30 days of programming, are earned monthly for participation in programming and productive activities. This has caused issues for the BOP as they cannot award First Step Act credits until they are earned. The resulting problem was that both prisoners and their case managers could see a date in the future when the prisoner would likely be released but there was no mechanism to plan for such a release.