As you know, last September the BOP changed its email system to make mass emailing of this newsletter impossible.

This is a copy of the newsletter for January 27, 2025. I have reformatted it to eliminate graphics so everything printed in black will fit into a Corrlinks email (if you are providing it to an inmate).

LISA Newsletter for January 27, 2025 – Sentencing Commission Proposes Drug Table, Meth, Supervised Release Changes

LISA publishes a free newsletter sent to inmate subscribers in the Federal system. Due to BOP Corrlinks limitations, the newsletter must be sent in small batches throughout the week.

Edited by Thomas L Root, MA JD

Vol 11, No 4

<><>

‘Ice’ Is Melting
There’s a New CO on Duty
You Should Thank a Goldfish

<><>

‘ICE’ IS MELTING

Last Friday, the Sentencing Commission announced proposed defendant-friendly amendments to Guidelines on supervised release, the drug quantity tables and enhanced offense levels for “ice” and pure methamphetamine.

The possible amendments, released for public comment, also propose cracking down on distribution of drugs laced with fentanyl as well as an increased enhancement for packing a machine gun during a drug crime.

The biggest surprise is a proposed change to adopt one of three options, to top out the drug quantity table at Level 30, 32 or 34 instead of the current 38. The Commission “has received comment over the years indicating that [Guideline] 2D1.1 overly relies on drug type and quantity as a measure of offense culpability and results in sentences greater than necessary to accomplish the purposes of sentencing.”

The second proposed amendment would essentially wipe out the drug quantity table’s 10-to-1 focus on meth purity and eliminate the enhanced penalty for crystal meth, known as “ice.” Commission data show that in the last 22 years, the offenses involving meth mixtures has remained steady while the number of offenses involving “meth (actual)” and “ice” have risen substantially. A recent Commission report found that today’s meth is “highly and uniformly pure, with an average purity of 93.2 pct and a median purity of 98.0 pct.” In other words, all meth is pure, making the higher base offense level for pure meth the norm rather than the exception.

The change could decrease Guideline base offense levels by up to 4.

The other significant change is to supervised release (SR), which would dramatically reduce the cases in which it is added to the end of a sentence. The SR change would also adopt inmate-friendly standards for early termination of SR, making getting off SR after a year much easier to do.

The Sentencing Commission proposal says nothing about whether the drug quantity table reduction or meth changes – if they are adopted – would be retroactive. Retroactivity would be decided in a separate proceeding, and the USSC is in the middle of a painful re-evaluation of when and whether retroactivity should be allowed.

For now, the proposed amendments will be out for public comment until March 3, 2025, with reply comments due by Mar 18, 2025. The Commission will decide what it will adopt as final amendments by May 1, and those will become effective (absent Congressional veto) on Nov 1, 2025.

US Sentencing Commission, Proposed Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines (Preliminary) (Jan 24)
<><>

THERE’S A NEW CO ON DUTY

Any hopes that Colette S. Peters would continue her 18-month stewardship of the Bureau of Prisons were dashed in the first hours of the new Trump Administration as the Director was unceremoniously shown the door.

Trump dumped Peters, a BOP outsider who had run the Oregon prison system before being recruited by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring order to the BOP’s chaotic management in 2022. She has been temporarily replaced by William W. Lothrop, previously a deputy director of the BOP who started as a USP Lewisburg correctional officer in 1992. Lothrop’s first message to BOP employees noted that “[o]n January 20, 2025, Director Peters separated from the Federal Bureau of Prisons…,” not even including the obligatory ‘thanks for your service’ that is customary in most such announcements.

Bouncers have hustled drunk patrons out of bars with more dignity.

Other executive actions Trump took last week affecting the BOP included restarting federal executions, expanding death-penalty prosecutions, restarting the use of private prisons, and ordering that people whose death sentences were3 commuted be imprisoned in conditions “consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.” Trump also issued first-day orders revoking Biden’s diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility emphasis for federal employees, instituting a federal hiring freeze, banning work-from-home, and ordering transgender prisoners to be housed according to their birth sex.

Lothrop has already begun to implement Trump’s hiring freeze, issuing an order last Monday prohibiting filling any vacant positions and revoking offers made for jobs scheduled to start after Feb 4. Although BOP’s chronic staffing shortages are well known, the White House has not exempted any critical BOP positions in healthcare or custody from the freeze.

“We haven’t recovered from the hiring freeze from 2017, and a new one is going to be devastating to an agency that is not even really keeping afloat,” Brandy Moore-White, president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Council of Prison Locals – the union that represents some 30,000 BOP employees – told Law360 last Tuesday.

Writing in Forbes, Walter Pavlo noted that “while Peters attempted to put on a face of a kinder, gentler BOP, staff continued to feel the pressures of long hours and mixed assignments as a result of augmentation (a practice that allows medical staff, case managers or executive assistants to act as corrections officers where there are shortages). There was little progress made with mending relationships with union representatives [and] the BOP ranked near the bottom in employee job satisfaction among over 430 federal agencies. The union is also seeking to reverse the closure of the prisons that Peters announced in December.”

Fox News said Peters was “touted as a reform-minded outsider tasked with rebuilding an agency plagued for years by staff shortages, widespread corruption, misconduct and abuse,” but nevertheless suggested that the FCI Dublin sex scandal and dire conditions at prisons inspected by the Dept of Justice inspector general were her fault, conveniently overlooking her predecessor Michael Carvajal’s contentious leadership and relations with Congress.

The Dublin “rape club” scandal occurred prior to Peters’ hiring, although the nightmarish midnight closure of the women’s prison a year ago happened on her watch. Last April, the 600 women still at Dublin were taken to 13 other prisons across the country “in journeys that many describe as horrific,” according to Oakland TV station KTVU. Congressional leaders called the transfer procedure “appalling” and demanded answers from Peters about why the prison was shut down so abruptly.

Kara Janssen, an attorney representing inmates in a class action against the BOP over Dublin, said, “I don’t think she was doing a good job. It is probably a good thing that she is not there anymore… The BOP is a very, in my opinion, dysfunctional agency. And it really needs somebody that can put it in a different direction.”

Pavlo thinks that Trump will appoint an outsider to run the BOP. He wrote, “With one of the largest budgets in the Department of Justice, the BOP is ripe for a makeover, but it will take a strong leader to guide the agency to stability while also making it more efficient and humane.”

Law360, Trump Installs New Prisons Chief, Revives Private Facilities (Jan 21)

Fox News, Bureau of Prisons director out as Trump’s Justice Department reforms take shape (Jan 22)

BOP, Message from the Acting Director (Jan 21)

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters Out On Trump’s First Day (Jan 21)

Forbes, Sweeping Changes for the Bureau of Prisons Under the Trump Administration (Jan 23)

KTVU, Bureau of Prisons director Colette Peters out as President Trump takes office (Jan 22)
<><>

YOU SHOULD THANK A GOLDFISH

A neighbor’s 7th grade kid once entered a science fair project studying exactly how short a goldfish’s attention span might really be. His conclusion was that it was pretty short.

For the sake of federal clemency, we should all hope that the American public’s focus is as brief.

By now you know President Biden granted clemency a week ago Friday to 2,490 people with drug offenses. He followed that with last Sunday’s pardons to members and staff of the House of Representatives Jan 6 Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen Mark Milley, and Capitol police officers who testified about the J6 riot. He then pardoned members of his own family and a commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who was doing life for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Trump complained that Biden’s pardons “set[] an unbelievable precedent, it creates poor precedent,” and then announced clemency for about 1,500 people convicted of crimes related the J6 insurrection.

The J6 clemency grant was “a last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision to try to move past the issue quickly, White House advisers familiar with the Trump team’s discussions told Axios, illustrating Trump’s “unpredictable decision-making process” and showcasing his “determination to fulfill a campaign promise to his MAGA base — regardless of political fallout.”

Trump followed those pardons with one for Ross Ulbricht, the creator of “one of the biggest illegal drug markets in American history.” The primary difference between drug traffickers in federal prison and Ulbricht is that those other guys did not sell drugs online or take Bitcoin in payment. Then Trump pardoned two Washington DC cops who had been convicted of murder after recklessly chasing a 20-year-old man until he was hit and killed by a car. Trump said the victim was an illegal immigrant who was a criminal, but the victim actually was an American citizen whose “crime” was riding his moped on a sidewalk. On Thursday, Trump pardoned nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists who had been convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances.

Condemnation for both Biden’s and Trump’s actions is loud. The Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote, “A handful of previous presidents have triggered controversy with their clemency decisions. But Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have stretched tradition to the breaking point with their politically tinged actions. Americans should hope that, moving forward, future presidents don’t continue to push the limits and instead exercise a modicum of restraint by using their pardon power in more traditional fashion.”

Verdict argued, “Yet now, as with so much in contemporary politics, the return of President Donald Trump has changed how we think about the pardon power. The personal is political with Trump, only more so.”

Reason said, “Monday was a big day for presidential clemency, but that does not mean it was a good day. Both outgoing President Joe Biden and incoming President Donald Trump used that power in self-interested, short-sighted ways, sacrificing the public interest to benefit political allies and, in Biden’s case, family members.”

For now, the presidential clemency power has become solely a political tool, the use of which may completely obliterate its traditional use as a tool of mercy applied to people whose offenses had no political veneer. We can only hope that like goldfish memory, public perception of presidential clemency dims rapidly enough so that it once again is applied to address individual defendants’ situations rather than to score political points or favor political supporters.

Dept of Justice, Office of Pardon Attorney, Clemency Warrants (Jan 24)

Reason, President Trump Comments on President Biden’s Pardons: “An Unbelievable Precedent” (Jan 21)

White House, Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on Jan 6, 2021 (Jan 20)

Axios, “F–k it: Release ’em all”: Why Trump embraced broad Jan. 6 pardons (Jan 22)

Reuters, Exclusive: Trump starts new term with 47% approval; Jan. 6 pardons unpopular, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds (Jan 21)

MSNBC, Jan. 6 defendants weren’t the only controversial Trump pardon recipients this week (Jan 23)

Washington Post, The Biden-Trump pardons show collapsing executive restraint (Jan 21)

Las Vegas Review-Journal, The bipartisan abuse of the pardon (Jan 25)

Reason, Biden and Trump Show Presidents How to Abuse Clemency (Jan 22)

Verdict, Five Ways of Looking at Presidential Pardons (Jan 22)
<><>

The LISA Newsletter is copyright 2025, LISA Foundation, PO Box 636, Norwalk OH 44857.

Your family may read our newsletter online (or print it to send it to you by snail mail) at www.lisa-legalinfo.com.

PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER