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Journalist ISO BOP Source – Update for December 12, 2025

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

PROPUBLICA LOOKING FOR BOP WHISTLEBLOWERS

The investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica is inviting BOP employees and others with “sensitive information” about the agency to provide their stories to ProPublica.

Reporter Keri Blakinger, who has been investigating the federal prison system for several years, wrote that she is “especially interested in tips about the leadership’s priorities, contracting and budget decisions, and concerns about wrongdoing or abuses of power. And I’m always interested in any documents or data you can share to paint a fuller picture of what’s going on inside the bureau.”

Blakinger broke the story several weeks ago that BOP correctional officers were abandoning the agency after bonuses were canceled, the union contract was scrapped, and the staff was deprived of basic needs from toilet paper to food. Many were lured away by better pay at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Three weeks ago, Blakinger reported that Deputy Director Joshua Smith’s video announcing the return of “significantly enhanced” retention incentives and one-time bonuses, paid for in part from savings from the canceled union contract – angered BOP union officials, who said the video was “designed to create a narrative that the union was the problem” and that canceling the contract somehow “fixed” it.

Blakinger wrote, “If you are a current prison employee or you have particularly sensitive information to share, you can contact me directly through Signal at KeriB.123.”

ProPublica, Do You Work at a Federal Prison? Help ProPublica Investigate the Federal Prison System (November 26, 2025)

BOP, Video Message from the Deputy Director: A Bureau on the Brink (November 19, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Flattery, Politics, Money – It’s What a Pardon Requires – Update for December 11, 2025

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

LESSONS FOR CLEMENCY APPLICANTS – CONTACTS AND MONEY HELP

President Donald Trump’s clemencies continued last week with beneficiaries including former congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and his wife, and entertainment venue developer Tim Lieweke, accused of rigging bids for a $375 million basketball arena built for the University of Texas. None had gone to trial yet.

Trump claimed on Truth Social that the Cuellars’ bribery prosecution was the result of his speaking out against former President Joe Biden’s immigration policy. As for Lieweke, the pardon came after his lawyer, former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) (who hosts a Fox News program), sold Trump on the pardon while playing a round of golf with him.

“There’s nothing conventional about Trump’s pardoning,” said Margaret Love, former U.S. pardon attorney. “You don’t know whether he’s got a personal interest in the case, whether [it is] because of the nature of the offence — he’s concerned with bribery and financial crimes convictions.”

This year, roughly 10,000 federal prisoners have filed clemency petitions through the Office of Pardon Attorney. Only 10 of those have been granted. In previous administrations, OPA filtered a select few pardon applications to the president, and presidents only occasionally circumvented that process. With Trump, OPA seems to be where clemency petitions go to die. So how does an inmate get a leg up?

    • First, as Axios reported last week, “serious criminal conduct matters far less than whether the defendant pledges loyalty, flatters the president or aligns with his ideological project.” Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, pardoned the week before, wrote a fawning letter calling Trump’s accomplishments “historic” and gushing that “Mr. President, you and I also shared something deeper, a profound love for our countries. We are men of faith, patriots, willing to risk our lives for the safety of our people.”
    • Second, blame Biden. Trump said that Henry Cuellar had been prosecuted by Biden because he objected to Biden’s “open border” policies. The Honduran President complained that his case was brought “only because the Biden-Harris DOJ pursued a political agenda to empower its ideological allies in Honduras…”
    • Third, hire the right people. The Honduran President got Trump buddy Roger Stone to convince the President to issue the pardon. Lieweke had hired Gowdy’s law firm for representation in the criminal case.
    • Fourth, money always helps. Beyond paying people with presidential access, donating to a Trump cause may help. Last April, Trump pardoned Paul Walczak for tax crimes after Walczak’s mother attended a $1-million-per-person fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.

New York Times columnist Sam Sifton wrote last week that “with Trump, it often comes down to winning him over — or at least his family or closest advisers. And because there are many ways to get in his good graces — donating to his political committees, helping fund the construction of the White House ballroom, having one of his friends vouch for you — there is a cottage industry of lawyers and lobbyists seeking to exploit those avenues.”

Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor who writes about the presidential pardon power, said last week that Trump is “enamored with this power precisely because it’s unchecked.”

Politico, Henry Cuellar will seek reelection as a Democrat after Trump pardon (December 3, 2025)

Wall Street Journal, A Round of Golf Changed Trump’s Tone on the Concert Industry (December 6, 2025)

Wall Street Journal, Trump’s Pardon for Cocaine Juan (December 2, 2025)

Axios, Trump wields pardons as purest form of power (December 3, 2025)

Financial Times, ‘Why are we letting this guy go?’ Donald Trump’s pardons upend US justice system (December 5, 2025)

New York Times, Who Gets a Presidential Pardon? (December 4, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Low Sentence Undoes § 2255 Prejudice – Update for December 9, 2025

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

LAWYER’S ERROR ON GUIDELINES NOT ALWAYS PREJUDICIAL, 11TH SAYS

In 2016, Cecil Buckner pled guilty to several Hobbs Act violations and 18 USC § 924(c) counts. The presentence report classified him as a Guidelines career offender because Cecil had two prior felony convictions for a controlled substance offense. The combined statutory minimum sentence for his § 924(c) convictions was 384 months. The PSR calculated a career-offender range of 535 to 572 months’ imprisonment. Without the career-offender classification, Cecil’s guideline range would have been 504 to 534 months.

At Cecil’s sentencing, no one objected to the PSR. The district court adopted it as its findings of fact and imposed a 414-month prison sentence, reducing it by 121 months because the § 924(c) mandatory sentence was so long that it amounted to an essentially life sentence.

Later, in a 28 USC § 2255 petition, Cecil argued that the PSR was wrong in classifying him as a career offender and that his lawyer had been ineffective for failing to object to the error. Without the mistake, Cecil says, the bottom of his Guidelines range would have been 31 months lower.

It has always been generally accepted that an incorrect Guidelines calculation is enough to show § 2255 prejudice, that is, a reasonable probability of a different outcome. But last week, the 11th Circuit said this presumption is not carved in stone.

The Circuit held that the application of an erroneous Guideline range may not be dispositive on the prejudice prong when the district court gives “a detailed explanation… mak[ing] it clear that the judge based the sentence… on factors independent of the Guidelines.” Here, the district court sentenced Cecil based on factors independent of his career-offender classification, imposing a sentence of 414 months of imprisonment, only 30 months more than the mandatory 384 months for the two § 924(c)s.

Because the district court arrived at Cecil’s sentence by balancing his life expectancy with the “terror” and “fear” that he inflicted upon his victims, the 11th held, Cecil had “not established a reasonable probability that his sentence would have been different if counsel had objected to his career-offender classification.”

Buckner v. United States, Case No. 24-10001, 2025 U.S.App. LEXIS 31479 (11th Cir., December 3, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Deja Vu All Over Again – Update for December 8, 2025

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

TRUMP TRIES TO VOID BIDEN CLEMENCIES

I have previously reported that last Tuesday, President Trump wrote on his inaptly-named “Truth Social” that he was declaring an untold number of President Biden’s clemencies to be of “no further force or effect” because Trump said the proclamations had been signed with an autopen as opposed to being “directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden.”

(Trump’s reference to Biden as “crooked” has a certain ‘pot calling the kettle black‘ quality to it, but we’ll leave that alone for now).

Forgive me for reprinting the portions of this post you may have already read. I built on last Thursday’s content for LISA’s newsletter to federal prisoners and their families published last night, and it seemed to me that there was enough new content to warrant a partial repost. Like the great philosopher Yogi Berra said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

Tuesday night, Trump ranted on Truth Social that he was voiding all pardons and commutations that were signed by Biden with an autopen:

“Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized “AUTOPEN,” within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect. Anyone receiving “Pardons,” “Commutations,” or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect.”

Trump has often claimed that Biden used the autopen, a mechanical device that allows signatures without a person using their hand, because of the former president’s physical and mental frailty. Biden issued 4,245 acts of clemency during his four years in office, more than any other US president since the start of the 20th century, according to Pew Research Center. Before leaving office last January, he issued several pardons — including for family members — and commuted sentences for about 1,700 drug offenders.

No one has reported whether Biden used an autopen to sign any of the pardons or commutations, but that has not deterred Trump from claiming he did.

Most of the clemencies were commutations rather than pardons. Biden only issued 80 individual pardons, but he did issue “pardons by proclamation” which affected entire classes of people. The pardons by proclamation included one for former military service members convicted of violating a ban on gay sex and people convicted of certain federal marijuana nontrafficking offenses.

David Super, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Georgetown University, told Government Executive last spring that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.”

“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course, we want things in writing… but there’s no constitutional requirement.”

If Trump were to try to rearrest someone who received clemency in order to return them to prison, legal experts predict the actions would be unlikely to stand. “I can’t imagine the court saying that it wasn’t a valid pardon because of the autopen issue,” Stanford University Law School professor Bernadette Meyler told The Daily Signal. “Biden made statements regarding these pardons, so it would be hard to show that they weren’t a decision of the President.”

To reverse the pardons, DOJ would have to act, and the courts would have to resolve the question. “If Biden never authorized it, it’s an invalid pardon anyway,” Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center, explained.

Ironically, Trump’s recent pardon of people “for conduct relating to support, voting… or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors… in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election” is so vague and limitless that it could apply to thousands of people. In an Eastern District of Pennsylvania case of a man accused of voting both in Pennsylvania and Florida back in 2020 (he says he voted for Trump in both places), the defendant has moved to dismiss the indictment by claiming the pardon applies to him, too.  The Dept of Justice has argued in that case that it’s up to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Edward Martin to decide who, and which possible crimes, Trump actually meant to cover.

Politico reported last week that there’s neither historical nor modern precedent for a president to delegate his pardon power to subordinates on a pardon this vaguely worded. In fact, it is remarkably similar to what Trump has accused Biden of having done.

Other clemency issues will be more difficult to litigate if it means reincarceration or returning old penalties, said John Malcolm, director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“This is totally unprecedented territory,” Malcolm told The Daily Signal. “Normally pardons and grants of clemency, for example, are not subject to challenge since a president’s pardon power is plenary.”

“Here, the issue will be litigated when Trump takes some action that runs contrary to what Biden did–such as seeking to reincarcerate someone who was pardoned or granted clemency or setting an execution date for one of the 37 death row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted–and then we’ll see what a court does,” Malcolm added.

Trump’s move is a key first step. “The bigger threat that President Trump has brought to the public’s attention is the idea of unelected staffers exercising power they don’t have,” Stewart Whitson of the Foundation for Government Accountability told The Daily Signal. “It could be at the behest of a well-funded organizations or even foreign funding pushing unelected bureaucrats to act.”

Newsweek, Trump Says All Pardons, Commutations Signed by Biden Autopen ‘Terminated’ (December 2, 2025)

Government Executive, Trump says he is voiding Biden executive actions signed with autopen (December 1, 2025)

Stanford Law School, Why Trump Can’t ‘Void’ Biden’s Pardons Because of Autopen (March 17, 2025)

Government’s Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment (ECF 23), United States  v. Weiss, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, filed November 28, 2025

Politico, DOJ claims it has the power to decide who gets Trump’s sweeping 2020 pardon (December 4, 2025)

Daily Signal, What’s Next After Trump Voids Biden Autopen Orders? (December 4, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

USSC To Propose 2026 Guidelines Amendments Next Week – Update for December 5, 2025

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

SENTENCING COMMISSION SETS DECEMBER MEETING ON 2026 AMENDMENTS

The United States Sentencing Commission announced last Monday that it would hold a public meeting on Friday, December 12, 2025, at which it is likely to vote to publish some proposed guideline amendments.

Policy priorities – which may or may not be reflected in proposed amendments – include revisiting the penalty structure in the USSG § 2D1.1 drug guidelines, including issues of methamphetamine purity. They also suggest the possible restructuring the § 2B1.1 theft/fraud guidelines “to ensure the guidelines appropriately reflect the culpability of the individual and the harm to the victim, including (A) reassessing the role of actual loss, intended loss, and gain; (B) considering whether the loss table in § 2B1.1 should be revised to simplify application or to adjust for inflation,” as well as role in the offense and victim impact.

US Sentencing Commission, Public Meeting set for December 12, 2025 (November 24, 2025)

US Sentencing Commission, Final Priorities for Amendment Cycle (90 FR 39263, August 14, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

I Really Do Hate To Say ‘I Told You So’ – Update for December 4, 2025

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

TRUMP TRIES TO VOID BIDEN CLEMENCIES

On Tuesday, I warned that President Trump wrote last week on the inaptly-named “Truth Social” that he considered “[a]ny document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them,” to be of “no further force or effect.” Trump said he was overturning all the executive orders under the Biden administration and “anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden.”

I speculated that “anything else” might include clemencies, but that Trump had not yet tried to void any of them. But that was Tuesday morning. On Tuesday night, Trump ranted on Truth Social that he had voided all pardons and commutations that were signed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden, with an autopen:

Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized “AUTOPEN,” within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect. Anyone receiving “Pardons,” “Commutations,” or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Trump has repeatedly claimed without citing any evidence that Biden’s use of the autopen, a mechanical device that allows signatures without a person using their hand, resulted from the former president’s physical and mental frailty. Biden issued a record 4,245 acts of clemency during his four years in office, more than any other US president since the start of the 20th century, according to the non-partisan Pew Research Center. It is not known whether Biden used an autopen to sign pardons.

Before leaving office in January, Biden issued several pardons — including for family members he said he wanted to shield from politically motivated investigations — and commuted sentences for a number of nonviolent drug offenders. Trump, known for his criticism of political rivals, has repeatedly seized on Biden’s use of the autopen to sign official documents during his presidency.

Most of the clemencies were commutations rather than pardons. Biden only issued 80 individual pardons, but he did issue “pardons by proclamation” which affected entire classes of people. The pardons by proclamation included one for former military service members convicted of violating a ban on gay sex and people convicted of certain federal marijuana nontrafficking offenses.

David Super, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Georgetown University, told Government Executive last spring that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.”

“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement.”

If Trump were to try to prosecute or arrest someone who received clemency in order to return them to prison, legal experts predict the actions would be unlikely to stand. “I can’t imagine the court saying that it wasn’t a valid pardon because of the autopen issue,” says Stanford University Law School professor Bernadette Meyler. “Biden made statements regarding these pardons, so it would be hard to show that they weren’t a decision of the President.”

Of course, as he has already demonstrated, Trump is unlikely to shrink from trying to reimprison someone simply because no one believes his power extends to such an action.

Newsweek, Trump Says All Pardons, Commutations Signed by Biden Autopen ‘Terminated’ (December 2, 2025)

Government Executive, Trump says he is voiding Biden executive actions signed with autopen (December 1, 2025)

Time, Why Trump Can’t ‘Void’ Biden’s Pardons Because of Autopen (March 17, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Most Recent Pardons Don’t Bode Well For Federal Clemency – Update for December 2, 2025

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

PARDONS FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE WEIRD

President Trump conducted the annual turkey pardon on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, sparing “Waddle” and “Gobble” from the processing house.

At the same time, he extended the pardon to the Peach and Blossom, the two turkeys President Biden pardoned last year. Trump contended that Biden’s pardon of the birds was invalid because it was signed with an autopen instead of by Biden himself.

“The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed, in other words to be killed, but I stopped that journey and I am officially pardoning them,” Trump said.

Last Friday, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States.” 

Trump also said that he has now overturned all the executive orders under the Biden administration and “anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden.”

Unless it’s an autopen doing the signing

It is not clear what “anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden” might include, such as clemencies. However, any notion that pardons might be excluded was undercut by Trump’s comments during the turkey pardon. Trump has previously suggested that Biden’s clemencies were illegal, but he has not yet tried to void any of them. His recent actions suggest that such an attempt is not out of the question.

Trump continues to issue clemencies one at a time, even where doing so contradicts his policies. In a Saturday social media post, Trump said that drug cartels present one of the most pressing dangers to the USA, saying in a social media post that airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

But this pronouncement followed Trump’s Friday social media announcement of a pardon for Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking charges and has 35 years to go on his 45-year federal sentence.

The New York Times said, “The two posts displayed a remarkable dissonance in the president’s strategy, as he moved to escalate a military campaign against drug trafficking while ordering the release of a man prosecutors said had taken “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.”

Trump said he had issued the pardon to Hernández because “they gave him 45 years because he was the president of the country — you could do this to any president on any country.”  Trump said that friends had alerted him to the wrongs done to Hernández: “Many people that I greatly respect” had told him Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States,” wrote Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) on X. “Lock up every drug runner! I don’t understand why he is being pardoned.”

Meanwhile, just in case you think Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson has gone dormant, she said in a Thanksgiving social media post that Trump had commuted the 7-year sentence of a private equity executive who had served less than two weeks for his role in what prosecutors described as a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of victims.

David Gentile reported to prison on November 14th and suffered horribly in a minimum-security camp for nearly two weeks before being released on Thanksgiving Eve, according to the BOP. Alice Johnson said that she was “deeply grateful to see David Gentile heading home to his young children” and called it an “act of mercy.”

A White House official used the old refrain of “Biden something something,” suggesting that the Biden administration’s Ponzi scheme claim against Gentile’s company – good enough to convince a unanimous jury – was nevertheless “profoundly undercut by the fact that GPB had explicitly told investors what would happen… At trial, the government was unable to tie any supposedly fraudulent representations to Mr. Gentile.” The White House official spoke on condition of anonymity due to not being authorized to speak on the topic.

Ironically, we have always advised people seeking clemency that arguing the unjustness of their conviction was strongly disfavored.  Apparently, that’s the case no longer.

ABC News, Trump’s turkey pardoning turns political, but Waddle and Gobble are spared (November 25, 2025)

NBC, Trump ‘cancelling’ Biden executive orders signed by autopen (November 28, 2025)

New York Times, In Announcing Pardon of Drug Trafficker While Threatening Venezuela, Trump Displays Contradictions (November 29, 2025)

Wall Street Journal, He Was Convicted of Running a Narco State. Now Trump Plans to Pardon Him. (December 1, 2025)

Reuters, Trump frees former GPB Capital CEO after Biden admin’s Ponzi scheme sentence (November 30, 2025)

X.com, Alice Marie Johnson – All Grace (November 27, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

BOP To Close Terminal Island – Update for December 1, 2025

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

TERMINAL ISLAND CLOSING AS BOP RAMPS UP INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIR

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is closing FCI Terminal Island – located near Long Beach, California, near Los Angeles – over concerns about crumbling infrastructure, according to an internal memo obtained last week by the Associated Press.

Director William K. Marshall III told BOP staff on Tuesday that the agency is suspending operations at Terminal Island, a low-security prison south of Los Angeles that currently houses 952 inmates. The decision to close the facility “is not easy, but is absolutely necessary,” Marshall wrote, calling it a matter of “safety, common sense, and doing what is right for the people who work and live inside that institution.”

Marshall said if the prison remains open, falling concrete in tunnels that deliver infrastructure could hurt workers or create a prison-wide emergency. “There is a very real risk that falling concrete could strike the steam lines,” he wrote. “If that happens, heat to the institution could be lost instantly, creating an emergency that could require the evacuation of nearly 1,000 inmates in a matter of hours. We are not going to wait for a crisis. We are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.”

The 87-year-old Terminal Island facility is the latest prison to be targeted for closure as the BOP struggles with mounting staff vacancies, a $4 billion repair backlog, and an expanded mission to support President Trump’s immigration crackdown and to invest billions in a rebuilt Alcatraz prison.

In a statement to Government Executive, a BOP spokeswoman said efforts to protect staff and inmates at the facility will begin immediately. “A strategic and targeted approach will be used to relocate inmates currently housed at FCI Terminal Island to other locations across the agency,” she said. “Several placement options are being evaluated, with a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations.”

BOP said decisions regarding what to do about the facility, including whether and how to repair it, will wait until a “further assessment” of the situation there. News of the planned evacuation came just days after the agency touted $2 billion in funding to address deferred maintenance priorities across the federal prison system from this year’s budget reconciliation law.

According to the Los Angeles Times, an assessment last year revealed that Terminal Island needs $110 million in repairs over the next 20 years, raising questions about whether the BOP will ever be in a position to move inmates back to the facility.

In late 2024, the BOP announced that seven other facilities would be shuttered. The decision to close one, FPC Duluth, was reversed, but the others have been decommissioned.

The report that Terminal Island will close came only a few days after BOP Deputy Director Joshua Smith released a video message to BOP staff reporting that $2 billion had become available for repair of BOP infrastructure. He said the BOP hasn’t

wasted a minute. We began with the simplest most commonsense step imaginable. We looked at how money was actually being spent, and what we found was jaw-dropping. Entire complexes that included two USP’s getting only $1.8 million, while a standalone USP somehow got $2 [million]. No rhyme, no reason, just the same old good old boy system deciding whose friends got taken care of.

Smith said that facilities, functions planning, construction, maintenance, and environmental energy – roughly 2000 positions within the institutions – will report to his office. “This isn’t bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake,” Smith said. “That’s how we get things done, centralized oversight, national prioritization, real accountability, and the kind of data-driven decision making that finally lets us attack the backlog instead of just talking about it.”

The infrastructure program will depend on training inmates in skilled trades and having them work on infrastructure repair in positions that pay on a scale with UNICOR.

Associated Press, Federal Bureau of Prisons says falling concrete is forcing it to close a prison near Los Angeles (November 25, 2025)

Government Executive, Bureau of Prisons to ‘suspend operations’ at California penitentiary (November 25, 2025)

KABC-TV, San Pedro prison to suspend operations amid concerns over falling concrete (November 25, 2025)

Los Angeles Times, Crumbling ceilings in underground tunnels force closure of Terminal Island prison (November 26, 2025)

BOP, A New Era For Facilities (November 22, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

Prison Fellowship Backs Safer Supervision Bill – Update for November 28, 2025

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

PRISON FELLOWSHIP THROWS SUPPORT TO SAFER SUPERVISION ACT

(And, no, I am not even going to comment in passing about the President’s annual turkey-pardoning spectacle last Tuesday, which President Trump managed to make even more cringeworthy than normal by using the occasion to take yet another swipe at former President Biden).

Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest faith-based nonprofit serving currently and formerly incarcerated people, announced last week that its staffers –including 18 former prisoners – will blitz congressional offices to encourage lawmakers to support the Safer Supervision Act (S. 3077 and H.R. 5883).

The legislation aims to modernize federal supervised release by requiring courts to make individualized determinations at sentencing whether supervision is appropriate and allowing FTCs – earned time credits during incarceration – to be applied toward conditional release.

Supervised release has become almost universal in federal sentencing. In 2024, it was imposed in nearly 99% of cases involving black defendants, 98% for white defendants, and 83% for Hispanic defendants. The average term of supervised release in 2024 was 47 months, following an average prison term of just over five years.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Senate version and Representative Laurel Lee (R-FL) – no relation to Mike – introduced the House bill. Both bills have Democratic Party co-sponsors.

S. 3077, Safer Supervision Act

H.R. 5883, Safer Supervision Act

Daily Reflector, Prison Fellowship Urges Congress To Pass Safer Supervision Act With Day of Action on Capitol Hill (November 18, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root