We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

STUFFING

Walter Pavlo reported in Forbes last weekend that the Bureau of Prison – despite being told by Congress in the First Step Act almost six years ago to expand halfway house capacity to accommodate prisoners using FSA credits, has increased contracted-for halfway house bed space by a paltry 1% in the last 6 years.

The BOP Office of Public Affairs reported that as of January 1, 2019, the BOP was contracting for 10,408 halfway house beds. As of two months ago, the BOP contracted for 10,553 halfway house beds. Pavlo wrote that “the BOP is now telling some halfway house providers… that they are canceling some solicitations for additional capacity because of ‘budgetary and staffing considerations.’”

Pavlo reported, “Many prisoners and their families are telling me that case managers are telling them that there is no room at halfway houses, and the result is that many minimum security prisoners spend a greater portion of their sentence in prison rather than in the community… BOP notes that ‘many of the unfilled beds in a halfway house are at locations that are hard to fill or are outside of the release residence area of individuals requesting community confinement placement’.”

So the Bureau argues to prisoners that the halfway houses are stuffed without room for people, who therefore lose the benefit of their FSA credits. Pavlo says that’s a myth. He and former BOP Director Hugh Hurwitz surveyed halfway houses and BOP usage of them, finding that only 82% of the BOP’s contracted halfway house capacity is being used. What’s more, the halfway houses have even more space open than that, space the halfway houses would like to fill but is not under BOP contract.

“BOP could look to modify those existing contracts to increase the number of beds available,” Pavlo wrote.

For now, it appears that the halfway house shortage has less to do with stuffed beds and more to do with BOP unwillingness to fill them.

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Halfway Houses Must Change Due to First Step Act (November 23, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root