Tag Archives: FIRST STEP Act

DeSantis Wants to Stop the ‘Jailbreak’ – Update for June 6, 2023

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

WHO CARES ABOUT THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? YOU SHOULD.

turnback230606Cher used to croon about how nice things could be if she could only turn back time.

I give you Cher-lovin’ Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Ron, running for the Republican presidential nomination behind former President Donald Trump, said a week ago that if elected president, he would call on Congress to repeal the First Step Act.

DeSantis criticized the Act as “basically a jailbreak bill.”

“So one of the things I would want to do as president is go to Congress and seek the repeal of the First Step Act,” DeSantis said. “If you are in jail, you should serve your time. And the idea that they’re releasing people who have not been rehabilitated early so that they can prey on people in our society is a huge, huge mistake.”

DeSantis has apparently forgotten that when he was in the House of Representatives in 2018, he voted for the House version of the bill, a much more pro-prisoner bill than the one that finally became First Step. He resigned his seat to run for governor before the final version passed.

rightthings230606Now many would say that basing a presidential campaign on not being Donald Trump is perhaps a canny strategy. And many also opine that Trump only championed the First Step Act because Jared Kushner – who really believed in its goals – convinced the then-president that black voters would love him for it. But James Carville was correct when he said that the right things usually get done for the wrong reasons.

The Daily Beast (a liberal publication) argued last week that First Step was a “bipartisan recognition that the growth of our carceral state has not been an effective crime deterrent… There are many people still in federal prisons who don’t need to be there, because they have aged out of crime and pose little risk to the community. These people, who are disproportionately Black and Latino, should be allowed to return to the workforce and their families.”

The Daily Beast called on Congress to build on the First Step Act by passing the First Step Implementation Act and the Safer Detention Act. “Fifty years after the beginning of mass incarceration, presidential candidates should be making the case for how they will do their part to end it,” the Beast wrote. “Congress should pass the First Step Implementation Act and Safer Detention Act and the current and future administrations must do their part to support these and other critical reforms and ensure their successful implementation.”

marijuana220412In other discouraging news, the Kiplinger letter reported last week that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is planning to propose a ban on delta-8 THC, CBD, and other alternative cannabinoids derived from hemp.

Those in support of the potential ban argue that delta-8 THC and other hemp-derived cannabinoids are created through “chemical synthesis” and should be classified as controlled substances. Kiplinger said a ban would be a “major step in the wrong direction.”

The Hill, DeSantis says he would push to repeal Trump criminal justice reform if elected (May 26, 2023)

Daily Beast, Ron DeSantis Is Flat-out Wrong About the First Step Act (June 2, 2023)

The Kiplinger Letter, Is a Possible Delta-8 THC Ban in the Works? (June 2, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Three First Step Reform Retread Bills Introduced – Update for April 24, 2023

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

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

deja171017Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) last Wednesday reintroduced three of the biggest criminal justice of the last Congress, reform bills that made it out of Senate committee but never got voted on in 2021-2022.

Yogi Berra might say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

Durbin and Grassley sponsored First Step five years ago. Now, they have reintroduced the First Step Implementation Act (FSIA) (S. 1251) and Safer Detention Act (S.1248) – both of which were approved by the Committee in 2021 but did not pass the Senate the last Congress – as well as rolled out the Terry Technical Correction Act (S. 1247).

The FSIA would allow courts to apply First Step sentencing reform provisions to reduce sentences imposed prior to First Step’s December 2018 enactment and broaden the drug safety valve (18 USC § 3553(f)) to allow courts to sentence below a mandatory minimum for nonviolent controlled substance offenses, if the court finds the defendant’s criminal history over-represents the seriousness of the defendant’s criminal record and the likelihood of recidivism.

The Safer Detention Act of 2023 would reform the Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program (34 USC § 60541(g)(5)) by clarifying that the time served required for the Program should be calculated based on an inmate’s net sentence – including reductions for good conduct time credits; lowering eligibility to include nonviolent offenders who have served at least 50% (instead of 66.7%) of their terms; and making D.C. Code offenders in BOP custody eligible for the Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program. The bill would also make federal prisoners sentenced before November 1, 1987 eligible for compassionate release.

jordan230425The Terry Technical Corrections Act (S. 1247) broadens the scope of crack cocaine offenders who are eligible for a retroactive sentencing reduction under the First Step Act of 2018. The First Step Act authorized sentencing reductions for crack cocaine offenders convicted and sentenced before the Fair Sentencing Act became effective, as long as their conduct triggered a mandatory minimum sentence. This bill extends eligibility for the retroactive sentencing reduction to all crack cocaine offenders sentenced before the Fair Sentencing Act became effective, including low-level offenders whose conduct did not trigger a mandatory minimum sentence.

Remember that this same trio of modest proposals did not pass even when the Democrats ran the House, the Senate and the White House. Now, the Republicans run the House, with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) chairing a House Judiciary Committee more interested in attacking Democrats for being soft on crime and hard on former President Trump than it is in addressing criminal justice reform.

Writing in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog last Thursday, Ohio State University law prof Doug Berman said, “For a wide variety of reasons, I am not at all hopeful that any form of federal sentencing reform will be enacted in the current Congress. But I was still pleased to learn… that a pair of notable Senators are still seeking to advance some notable (previously stalled) sentencing bills.”

underthesun230424

Kohelet was an old and wise guy when he reputedly wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes. If he were still writing, it would be about these three bills.  Nothing new under the sun, indeed, as will probably be the fate of these three – demise in December 2024, just as the last three died at the end of 2022. At that time, we will be writing of the FSIASafer Detention Act and Terry Technical Correction Act, “Vanity of vanities! All is futile! What profit hath a man for all his toil, in which he toils under the sun?”

Reintroduction of the three measures last week came as The Crime Report complained that “after four years, the impact of the First Step Act has been mixed… In March 2022 that there were 208,000 inmates in federal prisons and jails. But only 5,000 inmates… have been released through one or more provisions of the FSA.”

The Crime Report concluded

The sheer number of reforms in the FSA that are the antithesis to the Nixon-era ‘lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key’ penal philosophy of both the Bureau of Prisons and the US Sentencing Commission make it exceedingly difficult to have the promise of the FSA fulfilled. The very magnitude of the law and its stated objectives, which include reducing recidivism and improving conditions in federal prisons, has resulted in less than what was initially promised by the supporters of FSA.

First Step Implementation Act (S.1251)

Safer Detention Act of 2023 (S.1248)

Terry Technical Corrections Act (S.1247)

Sentencing Law and Policy, Senators Durbin and Grassley introduce again set of First Step follow-up bills (April 20, 2023)

The Crime Report, The Promises Of Federal Criminal Justice Reform: Shortcomings of the First Step Act (April 17, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Earned Time Credits Still a Mess – Update for January 19, 2023

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

FSA CREDIT AUTO-CALC CREATES HAVOC (AGAIN)

After a year of fits and starts, the Federal Bureau of Prisons last week rolled out its latest iteration of the automatic calculation of inmates’ First Step Act credits. Some prisoners were released (or at least saw their time cut) due to the new calculations. But it seems a larger number still was left confused and unhappy, according to Forbes.

release161117On the Early Release from Federal Prison/Cares Act/First Step Act Facebook page, one commenter reported that his halfway house reported “a glitch in the system and that to give them until the 18th to have it corrected, but they are aiming for the end of this week.” On January 12, Bruce Cameron of Federal Prison Authority reported on the Facebook site that the BOP was “aware of a couple of issues that probably caused all the problems most are having… people being marked as ineligible who are eligible and have been eligible the whole time” and “a glitch that is causing people to be earning 10 days a month instead of 15 days a month. This would be the reason why you wouldn’t see all your time you are supposed to have.”

Yesterday, Cameron told his Facebook followers, “For those impacted by the ‘glitch’ put your patience hat on for February 6!”

Writing in Forbes, Walter Pavlo reported that “while many prisoners were released this week because of the new calculation, many of them would have gone home earlier if the BOP had correctly implemented the FSA calculator much earlier… The issue that is causing much of this problem is two-fold; a correct interpretation of the FSA that most everyone forgot about and yet another error in the FSA calculator.”

Pavlo said that because FSA credits can only be applied when the credits earned equals or exceeds the amount of time remaining on the sentence, “Those prisoners who had credits that suddenly disappeared really still have them, they just cannot be applied yet because they have more days remaining on their sentence than they do FSA credits.”

computerglitch230120Pavlo said the second problem is whether a prisoner earns 10 days or 15 days of FSA credit a month. Subsection (d)(4)(A)(ii) of 18 USC 3632 says that prisoners with a minimum or low PATTERN score “who, over 2 consecutive assessments, has not increased their risk of recidivism, shall earn an additional 5 days of time credits for every 30 days of successful participation” in programming. The BOP interprets this to mean that prisoners must score low or minimum for two assessments before they can earn 15 days rather than 10.

Even if this interpretation is right, something that is less than clear, the new auto-calc program did not detect the second PATTERN risk assessment score, according to Pavlo, “so prisoners received only 10 credits for each month of programming rather than 15 after the second PATTERN score. It is a problem that the BOP is going to correct but there is no timeline for that fix.”

Forbes, Working Out The Bugs On The Bureau Of Prisons’ First Step Act Calculator (January 12, 2023)

Facebook, Early Release from Federal Prison/Cares Act /First Step Act public group (January 12, 2023, and January 19, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Here We Go Again On FSA Credits – Update for January 9, 2023

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

LUCY, CHARLIE BROWN, FOOTBALL: BOP SAYS FSA CREDIT AUTO-CALC IS HERE

First, it was a Bureau of Prisons official last spring saying that rolling automatic calculation of First Step Act earned-time credits (“FTCs”) would begin August 1, 2022. Then, Director Colette Peters told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the BOP had “completed development of and fully implemented an auto-calculation application for FSA time credits” on August 31, 2022. Then, after a disastrous October recalculation of FTCs, the BOP said on “January 1, 2023, full automation will begin…”

lucycharliebrownfootball230109The BOP’s rollout of FTCs, which for the past four years the agency has known would happen, has been promised more often than Lucy Van Pelt has convinced Charlie Brown that she’ll hold the football for him. The latest promise is that inmates will see the new rolling “auto-calc” on January 9, 2023, that is… um… today.

The United States went from being bombed at Pearl Harbor to dropping an A-bomb on Japan faster (44 months) than the BOP has taken to implementing the First Step Act earned-time credits (48 months plus).

A BOP news release last Friday announced that the Bureau is “recalculating FTC for all eligible individuals. The recalculation is expected to be complete in the coming days.” An internal memorandum distributed to halfway house and home confinement overseers last Friday asserted that FTC “recalculation is expected to be complete by January 9, 2023” but warns that “no releases will occur prior to” that date. The BOP appears to expect a large number of releases in the coming weeks.

For anyone who had been denied FTCs because of incomplete Needs Assessments surveys, the BOP granted a “grace period” that ended December 31st to complete the work. Any prisoner who needed to complete a survey but did not is now unable to reclaim previously-lost FTCs. Beginning January 1st, those still needing to complete Needs Assessment surveys cannot earn FTCs until 30 days after they complete those Assessments.

Likewise, inmates who previously declined programs – something that disqualified them from earning FTCs – have a clean slate for earning FTCs after January 1st. But people who decline programs after that date will not be allowed to earn FTCs as long as they remain in “declined” status.

People in halfway houses or on home confinement will not be affected by the changes, and “will retain prospectively estimated FTCs despite declined programs prior to implementation of the automatic calculation or any incomplete Needs Assessment prior to community placement,” according to the press release.

youcantdothat230109There are still some serious loose ends to the FTC program that the BOP has not addressed. First, the agency is still refusing to apply FTC credits to shorten sentences for those with detainers. Another magistrate judge held two weeks ago that the BOP could not exclude prisoners with immigration detainers from using their FTCs, ruling that the BOP is “required to apply time credits to eligible prisoners who have earned them and cannot categorically make prisoners ineligible for such credits in a manner that contravenes the statutory scheme set forth in 18 USC § 3632.”

Second, the BOP has yet to apply its promise that it would issue guidance to enable the agency to “work on a case-by-case basis with eligible inmates in RRCs [halfway houses and on home confinement] to identify appropriate available programming for them to earn FSA Time Credits…” Inmates in halfway houses and home confinement, especially those doing the transitional drug abuse program required of them for RDAP credit, remain in BOP custody and thus should be eligible for FTCs. The BOP has not announced any plan for fulfilling its statutory obligation to them.

BOP, Update on Calculation of First Step Act Time Credits (January 6, 2023)

BOP, Residential Reentry Center & Home Confinement Resident’s Message Auto-Calculation of Federal Time Credits (January 6, 2023)

Sierra v. Jacquez, Case No 2:22-cv-01509, 2022 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 234525 (W.D. Wash, Dec. 27, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP’s Got Nowhere to Go But Up – Update for January 3, 2023

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

THE BOP’S NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

peters220929Director Colette Peters has been at the Bureau of Prisons now for five months. As she begins her first complete calendar year at the agency, she’s not lacking for material when she compiles a list of new year resolutions.

Starting my ninth year of writing about the BOP – and being an average joe who is happier suggesting resolutions to other people than I am adopting resolutions of my own – I have some suggestions for Director in the unlikely event her list is too short.

(1) Change the Culture: The BOP has nowhere to go but up. Last year, the Partnership for Public Service‘s 2021 rankings of the best places to work in the federal government ranked the BOP in 431st place. This was out of 432 agencies. The BOP ranked dead last in 8 of 15 categories, including “effective leadership,” “innovation” and “teamwork.”

BOPad230103(2) Hire people: Walter Pavlo observed last week that “hiring new staff in this environment is difficult.” National Council of Prison Locals president Shane Fousey called it, “a staffing crisis of epic proportions.” Staffing issues lead to inconsistent and nonexistent programming, poor healthcare, loss of opportunities for sentence credit and community confinement, and institutional safety issues.

Of course, you cannot hire the people you need to work at an agency that is feeding at the bottom of the federal employment hierarchy.  No leadership, no teamwork, no innovation… no employees.

Just last week, Pavlo wrote that an FCI Miami inmate died choking on his own blood while in a COVID quarantine. His cellmate (apparently, quarantine was in the SHU), pounded and screamed for help for 90 minutes before a CO – who was responsible for multiple housing units, came along for count. Kareen Troitino, the local CO union president, said of the incident, “As a cost savings initiative, the Agency is jeopardizing lives by forcing one officer to supervise two units. This loss of life would have never happened if we had one officer in each building as we had in the past.”

(3) Clean Up Internal Investigations: Last month, the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations found that BOP employees had abused female prisoners in at least 19 of the 29 federal facilities over the past decade. In June 2021, the Dept of Justice revealed that as of 2018, inmates reported 27,826 allegations of sexual victimization, or a 15% increase from 2015. Of the 27,826 allegations, over half were staff-on-inmate sexual abuse. The BOP has over 8,000 internal affairs misconduct allegations that haven’t been investigated.

SIS230103The misconduct ranges from BOP leaks and lies that placed Whitey Bulger in general population at USP Hazelton (where he survived for under 12 hours) to ”corruption at the US Penitentiary Atlanta in Georgia to the Dept of Justice’s failure to count almost 1,000 deaths in custody across the country, to abusive and unnecessary gynecological procedures performed on women in Dept of Homeland Security custody,” according to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

(4) Use the Tools Congress Gave You: Stephen Sady, Chief Deputy Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon, recently wrote in the Federal Sentencing Reporter that the Sentencing Commission should fulfill its statutory obligation to make recommendations regarding correctional resources and programs. He told Walter Pavlo that “the BOP has failed to adequately implement critical legislation to improve the conditions of people in prison” and since the BOP hasn’t acted, the Sentencing Commission should.

The BOP could address staff shortages and morale problems by getting more people to home confinement, halfway house and early release with the need for USSC oversight, Pavlo also suggests the BOP could expand eligibility and availability of RDAP sentence reductions, “eliminate computation rules that create longer sentences… Implement broader statutory and guideline standards to file compassionate release motions any time extraordinary and compelling reasons exist… [and f]ully implement the First Step Act’s earned time credit program.’ Pavlo notes that “[n]o new legislation would be required for any of these reforms.”

nothingtosay230123(5) Practice Openness: There’s an old admonition about not picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. It’s not so much ink these days, but a blemish on Peters’s honeymoon as director is the BOP’s continued awkward of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram’s questions about allegations of systemic abuse at the women’s FMC Carswell.

Although the Star-Telegram rated its reports of Carswell mismanagement and misconduct as one of its most important stories in 2022, the newspaper complained again this week that BOP “administrators have declined interview requests, given blanket statements in answer to questions and failed to provide detailed plans about how the Bureau of Prisons intends to address the problems.”

Associated Press, Biden signs bill forcing the federal Bureau of Prisons to fix outdated cameras (December 27, 2022)

Partnership for Public Service, 2021 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings

Forbes, A Federal Public Defender Challenges U.S. Sentencing Commission To Help Fix The Bureau Of Prisons (December 28, 2022)

Forbes, Federal Inmate Dies Choking On His Own Blood While Locked In Cell At FCI Miami (December 29, 2022)

Amsterdam News, Senate committee finds widespread employee on inmate sex abuse in federal prisons (December 26, 2022)

Business Insider, Inside the federal West Virginia prison where gangster Whitey Bulger was beaten to death (December 31, 2022)

Ft Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth’s biggest stories of 2022: What will you remember most about this year? (December 31, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

A Short Rocket From (Or To) The BOP – Update for December 9, 2022

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

Today we offer our occasional “short rocket” of BOP news – not all of it good – from the past weeks.

rocket190620

EX-WARDEN GARCIA CONVICTED, FSA CRITICISM, PRIVATE PRISONS CLOSE, DOJ BLASTS BOP OVER WHITEY BULGER

AUSA Gets Sex Predator Warden: The former warden of FCI Dublin, a federal women’s prison southeast of San Francisco,  was convicted in Oakland federal court on Thursday of molesting inmates and forcing them to pose naked in their cells.

sexualassault211014Ray Garcia was found guilty of all eight charges and faces up to 15 years in prison. He was among five workers charged with abusing inmates at Dublin, who claimed they were subjected to rampant sexual abuse including being forced to pose naked in their cells and suffering molestation and rape.  The trial was noteworthy for the government arguing to jurors that they should believe inmates and former inmates over Garcia, perhaps one of the few examples in recent history of the government believing inmates over guards.

Garcia, 55 years old, retired from last year after the FBI found nude photos of inmates on his government-issued phone. Garcia was charged with abusing three inmates between December 2019 and July 2021.

At trial, Garcia claimed he had photos of naked inmates because he had caught them engaging in sex, and the pictures were evidence of their offenses. Confronted with the fact that he had never filed disciplinary reports against the women he had photographed, he explained he had forgotten to write them up.

Prosecutors introduced evidence that Garcia’s abuse of several inmates followed a pattern that started with compliments, flattery and promises of transfers to lower-security prisons, and escalated to sexual encounters. Garcia is charged with abusing three inmates between December 2019 and July 2021, but others also said he groped them and told them to pose naked or in provocative clothing. Jurors deliberated over parts of three days following a week of testimony, including from several of Garcia’s accusers and the former warden himself.

“Instead of ensuring the proper functioning of FCI Dublin, he used his authority to sexually prey upon multiple female inmates under his control,” U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said, calling Garcia’s crimes a betrayal of the public trust and his obligations as a warden.

Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, Ex-Dublin prison warden convicted of sexually abusing inmates (December 8, 2022)

LA Times, Ex-warden of California federal women’s prison goes on trial for inmate abuse charges (November 28, 2022)

Four Years After First Step, Earned Time Credits Still Unsettled: The BOP’s recent press release and program statement on First Step Act time credits allowed for a grace period until December 31 for inmates to complete needs assessments, and eliminated the rule that credits earned after an inmate was within 18 months of release could not count for sentence reduction rule.

mumbo161103Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo noted that “the information provided by the BOP was lacking in specifics as to when this program will be fully implemented. The press release stated that ‘inmates will soon be able to see all potential Federal Time Credits (FTC) they may earn over the course of their sentence.’ The use of the term “soon” is relative and causes undue stress on both inmates and BOP staff.”

In fewer than three weeks, the First Step Act will be four years old. Pavlo rightly complains that setting firm deadlines like “soon” and with “a poor track record thus far… the BOP has no timetable for having this new program statement put into action. In the interim, there are inmates in prison who could, because of this program statement, be released, placed in halfway house, placed on home confinement, or placed on CARES Act home confinement.”

Pavlo argues that while “there is no complexity to many of these calculations… there is no central authority named to conduct these assessments between the program statement announcement and the implementation of an automated calculator.” The BOP has already lived through two FSA credit calculators, the one that was implemented last January when the Dept of Justice forced the BOP to turn 180 degrees on its draconian proposed rules, and the second – touted as “an application to fully automate calculations” due last August but not implemented (with disastrous results) in October.

That October automated calculator now goes back to the drawing board, “making it over a year since the Final Rule that inmates will have clarity on what FSA will mean to them,” Pavlo wrote.

Forbes, First Step Act Delays Continue In The Bureau of Prisons And People Are Locked Up Beyond What The Law States (November 30, 2022)

BOP, P.S. 5410.10, First Step Act of 2018 – Time Credits: Procedures for Implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4) (November 17, 2022)

BOP, First Step Act Time Credits Policy Released (November 18, 2022)

BOP Inmates Out of Private Prisons: The BOP announced last week that consistent with President Biden’s January 2021, Executive Order, the agency has ended all contracts with privately managed prisons. The contract with the last private prison, McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia, ended on November 30, 2022.

The BOP said, “All BOP inmates previously housed in these private prisons have been safely transferred to BOP locations without incident.”

Since the mid-1980s, the BOP maintained contracts for 15 private prisons, housing about 29,000 federal inmates.

An interesting factoid buried in the BOP press release: the agency said it “employs 34,813 staff.” This is a substantial decrease from just a year ago, when the BOP reported 36,739 workers.

BOP, BOP Ends Use of Privately Owned Prisons (December 1, 2022)

‘BOP Lied, Whitey Died,’ DOJ Inspector General Says: In a report which should shock no one familiar with the Bureau of Prisons – except that the Dept of Justice took so long to produce it – the Inspector General has concluded that a chain of bureaucratic errors, incompetence,  health system failures, and deliberate falsification resulted in the bludgeoning death of celebrity crime boss James (Whitey) Bulger within 12 hours of his arrival at USP Hazelton in 2018.

The Inspector General determined that BOP officials at USP Coleman approved downgrading Whiteyr’s medical status from Care Level 3 to 2 solely to get BOP approval to transfer him from Coleman – where he had spent eight months in the Special Housing Unit after allegedly threatening a nurse – to Hazelton (a place known with some justification as “Misery Mountain”). The decrease in Care Level (and omission of any reference in the transfer papers to his life-threatening cardiac condition) came after a prior attempt to transfer Whitey was stopped by BOP Central Office medical staff because of his age and medical condition.

lockinsock181107Despite Whitey being a celebrity prisoner due to his notorious past, Hollywood treatment of his life, and his history of being a federal informant, over 100 people inside the BOP knew of his transfer. At USP Hazelton, even before Whitey’s arrival inmates were taking bets on how long he would survive before being killed.

Nevertheless, the BOP took no extra security precautions. As a result, within 12 hours of his arrival at Hazelton, Whitey was placed in general population and beaten to death with a padlock inside an athletic sock (colloquially known as “a lock in a sock“).

Mr. Bulger’s death was preventable and resulted from “staff and management performance failures; bureaucratic incompetence; and flawed, confusing, and insufficient policies and procedures,” the IG concluded.

A curious observation in the Report noted that BOP staff should have considered that the eight months Whitey spent in the Coleman SHU “in a single cell before his transfer from Coleman caused him to state in a September 2018 Psychology Services Suicide Risk Assessment that ‘he had lost the will to live,’ and may have affected his persistence upon arriving at Hazelton that he wanted to be assigned to general population.”

A weird twist: In 2019, accused sex predator Jeffrey Epstein allegedly killed himself in BOP custody amid rumors that the death was not what it seemed. Those conspiracy theories are largely debunked. But now, perhaps Whitey actually did commit “suicide-by-inmate” in a death that otherwise was clearly a murder.

DOJ, Investigation and Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Handling of the Transfer of Inmate James “Whitey” Bulger (December 7, 2022)

New York Times, Investigation Finds Errors and ‘Incompetence’ Led to Whitey Bulger’s Death (December 7, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Relents on FSA Credit Takeaway With “Grace” – Update for November 21, 2022

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

FSA-ELIGIBLE INMATES HAVE REASON TO BE THANKFUL (EVEN WHILE REMAINING A BIT CONFUSED)

Responding to mounting criticism about the Bureau of Prisons’ messy implementation of the First Step Act’s earned-time credits (ETCs), the BOP last week finally rolled out a program statement articulating its ETC policies.

firststepB180814For those just tuning in, the First Step Act – passed in December 2018 – established a program in which federal inmates could earn credits for successfully completing programs that were designed to reduce recidivism or participating in “productive activities” that are linked to resulting in less recidivism. Those credits (called “FSA credits” [First Step Act credits]) or “FTCs” [“Federal Time Credits) or “ETCs”) could be used by prisoners to reduce their sentences by up to 12 months or earn more time in halfway houses or home confinement. Although disrupted by the COVID pandemic and chronic staffing shortages, the BOP has been implementing the ETC program in fits and starts.

The latest snafu came in the implementation of a computer system to automatically calculate each prisoner’s ETCs (“Auto-Calc”). The system – planned for August 1 but actually launched the last week of September – automatically rescinded a lot of ETCs already granted, mostly because inmates had not completed online “needs assessment” surveys a year or more before, “surveys” that neither they nor the staff knew were mandatory in order to earn ETCs.

oddcouple210219Earlier last week, Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Committee, jointly wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland criticizing the BOP for (1) Auto-Calc’s having rescinded previously-awarded ETCs for some prisoners; (2) setting an arbitrary rule that the BOP would stop applying ETCs to the up-to-12 months’ sentence reduction when inmates are 18 months from the door; (3) not granting ETCs to people in halfway house and home confinement; and (4) failing to clean up the PATTERN risk assessment tool to address “unjustified disparities that have arisen.”

The BOP responded to Durbin and Grassley with alacrity (a sentence I never thought I’d write). As noted, when Auto-Calc came online, many prisoners who had seen their release dates move up due to award of ETCs months before suddenly lost some or all of their time because they had not completed online needs assessment surveys in 2020 and 2021. Of course, the BOP never told inmates that completion was mandatory if inmates wanted to earn credits. The BOP itself admitted that nearly half of staff interviewed for a March report indicated no familiarity with, or declined comment on, the needs assessment process and FSA incentives policies,” according to Forbes magazine.

In a press release issued Friday, the BOP said, “With the automation, some inmates noticed their time credit balance decreased due to incomplete needs assessments and/or declined programs. This policy includes a grace period, available until December 31, 2022, for inmates who have not completed all needs assessments or who have declined programs to try to address these issues. Beginning January 1, 2023, any incomplete needs assessments or any declined to participate codes will lead to the inmate not earning FTCs in accordance with the federal regulations.”

grace221121So people in federal custody now have until New Year’s Eve to figure out what needs assessments they “failed” to complete and to get them done.

The “grace period” policy is not written into the new Program Statement, suggesting that it is an 11th-hour change. Its absence from the Program Statement is a little worrisome: no one relishes going to court to enforce the terms of a press release.

Although the Program Statement doesn’t say anything about “grace” as such, it does contains a lot:

•   Every eligible prisoner with a low or minimum PATTERN score will receive a conditional projected release date based on the maximum number of ETCs he or she can earn during the sentence.

•   Prisoners remain eligible for ETCs even those locked up in the Special Housing Unit, unless they are in disciplinary segregation.

•    Productive activities have been defined in greater detail. Besides the “structured, curriculum-based group programs and classes” already defined in the First Act Approved Programs Guide, the new Program Statement provides examples such as “recreation, hobby crafts, or religious services,” visitation, ACE classes, institution work programs, community service projects, and even participation in an FRP plan.

The Program Statement provides little clue as to who determines which unstructured activities will count as “productive activities.” It only says, “Additional groups, programs, classes, or unstructured activities may be recommended to assist the inmate in establishing positive institutional adjustment and involvement in pro-social activities. The inmate’s risk level, needs assessment results, and program recommendations will be documented on the inmate’s Insight Individualized Need Plan, and the inmate will receive a copy.”

That suggests the BOP line employees will determine what unstructured programs will count, but it does not explicitly say that. The omission provides an excellent opening for confusion and unwarranted denial of ETC credit as managers at 122 separate BOP facilities define what is a productive activity in 122 different ways.

•  The Program Statement says “inmates with unresolved pending charges and/or detainers may earn FTCs, if otherwise eligible, but “they will be unable to apply them” to sentence reduction or halfway house/home confinement “unless the charges and/or detainers are resolved. An inmate with an unresolved immigration status will be treated as if he/she has unresolved pending charges with regard to the application of FTCs.”

So good news here: The BOP has consistently been defining inmates with detainers as being ineligible to even earn ETCs. Now, detainers will no longer prevent people from earning ETCs. But for some reason, the BOP continues to refuse to use ETCs for sentence reduction when people have detainers.

• The Program Statement makes it clear that inmates with medium/high PATTERN scores may earn ETCs, but that they cannot use them unless they work their way down to low or minimum risk assessment status.

What the Program Statement does not mention is how people in halfway houses or on home confinement can earn ETCs, despite the fact the First Step Act and the BOP’s own final rules contemplate it. In fact, reference to “community service projects” and “religious services” as unstructured activities seems to be perfectly suited for people on prerelease custody.

In the Merrick Garland letter, Senators Durbin and Grassley complained that the BOP has no mechanism to allow people on prerelease custody to earn ETCs.

makingitup221121Also unmentioned in the Program Statement is the BOP’s “18-month rule” that inmates with 18 months or less remaining on their sentences may not apply ETCs towards reducing their sentences. Senators Durbin and Grassley complained in their letter that the 18-month rule “is not supported by the FSA, nor does it further the FSA’s goal of incentivizing recidivism reduction programming for returning persons. Moreover, under this guidance, any federal prisoner with a sentence of 18 months or less would be unable to earn an earlier release date. BOP should therefore not implement an arbitrary cutoff on earning ETCs toward release.”

U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield granted habeas corpus last week to a prisoner who complained that the BOP had arbitrarily refused to apply any of his ETCs earned after January 2022 to a shortened sentence. The BOP explained that it was not applying any ETCs to a reduced sentence once the inmate was within 18 months of release.

Judge Schofield ordered the BOP to apply the prisoner’s ETCs to a shortened sentence up to the 365-day limit. She ruled,

Letter to Attorney General (November 16, 2022)

Forbes, U.S. Senators Express Concern With Bureau Of Prisons’ Implementation of First Step Act (November 17, 2022)

BOP, P.S. 5410.10, First Step Act of 2018 – Time Credits: Procedures for Implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4) (November 17, 2022)

BOP, First Act Approved Programs Guide (August 2022)

Brodie v. Warden Pliler, 2022 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 202749 (S.D.N.Y., Nov 7, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

Sentencing Commission Rolls Up Its Sleeves – Update for November 3, 2022

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

USSC SETS GUIDELINE AMENDMENT PRIORITIES

The U.S. Sentencing Commission held its first meeting in 46 months last Friday, voting in a 20-minute session to adopt priorities for the Guidelines amendment cycle that ends Nov 1, 2023.

USSC170511The USSC lost its quorum due to term expirations of multiple members in December 2018, just as the First Step Act was signed into law. That meant the commission was unable to revise the Guidelines just as First Step changes required modifications that would have prevented conflicting judicial interpretations, especially in the application of 18 USC § 3582(c)(1)(A) sentence reduction motions, commonly called “compassionate release” motions.

The compassionate release statute requires judges to consult USSG § 1B1.13, Guidelines policy on granting compassionate releases, but § 1B1.13 was written for a time when only the Bureau of Prisons could bring compassionate release motions. Most but not all Circuits have ruled that § 1B1.13 is not binding on district courts until it is amended, but the 11th has ruled that it is binding, the 8th has studiously avoided deciding the question, and others – such as the  3rd, 6th and 7th – have held that district judges cannot consider First Step Act changes in sentencing law that would result in much lower sentences when deciding compassionate release motions.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves (S.D. Mississippi), chairman of the Commission, said implementing the First Step Act through revisions to the federal sentencing guidelines would be the USSC’s “top focus.”

Other changes in the Guidelines, such as to the drug tables, could result from First Step’s lowering of drug mandatory minimums.

responsibility221103Additional priorities for the coming year include resolving circuit conflicts over whether the government may withhold a motion for a third acceptance-of-responsibility point just because a defendant moved to suppress evidence before pleading guilty and whether an offense must involve a substance actually controlled by the Controlled Substances Act to qualify as a “controlled substance offense,”

The USSC will also consider amendments to the Guidelines career offender chapter that would provide an alternative to the “categorical approach” in determining whether an offense is a “crime of violence” or a “controlled substance offense.

First Step also made changes to the “safety valve,” which relieves certain drug trafficking offenders from statutory mandatory minimum penalties, by expanding eligibility to some defendants with more than one criminal history point. A USSC press release says the Commission “intends to issue amendments to § 5C1.2 to recognize the revised statutory criteria and consider changes to the 2-level reduction in the drug trafficking guideline currently tied to the statutory safety valve.”

marijuana220412The only addition to the Commission’s previously-published list of proposed priorities that came out of the meeting was consideration of possible amendments on whether, and to what extent, people’s criminal history for marijuana possession can be used against them in sentencing.

The cannabis item was added and adopted after President Joe Biden issued a mass marijuana pardon proclamation.

The Commission’s priorities only guide what it will be working on for the Nov 2023 amendment cycle. Expect amendment proposals by late January, followed by a public comment period, and final amendments by May 1. After that, the Senate has 6 months to reject any of the amendments (a very rare occurrence). Amendments not rejected will become effective Nov 1, 2023.

Reuters, Newly-reconstituted U.S. sentencing panel finalizes reform priorities (October 28, 2022)

US Sentencing Commission, Final Priorities for Amendment Cycle (October 5, 2022)

US Sentencing Commission, Commission Sets Policy Priorities (October 28, 2022)

Marijuana Moment, Federal Commission Considers Changes To How Past Marijuana Convictions Can Affect Sentencing For New Crimes (October 28, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

“What We Have Here…” – Update for October 27, 2022

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

… IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE


failuretocommunicate221027We Should Have Told You It Would Be On the Test:
If email is any indication, not only did Federal prisoners receive First Step Act earned-time credits applied well after the credits were promised, but what was delivered was well short of what was reasonably anticipated.

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo reported that although BOP Director Colette Peters told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her September 28 testimony that the agency’s new “auto-calc” program was already up and running, “it was not until the week of October 3rd that FSA credits started to be applied. As one prisoner told me, ‘I was expecting a year of credits and I got 4 months. I have no idea what happened’.”

Pavlo said that “what happened is that the calculator still has errors in it. Prisoners who were transferred to a halfway house after receiving an interim calculation of their sentence, were called in and told they would be returning to prison after the new calculation took away their year.”

Pavlo wrote, “One of the main factors that seems to be causing issues is that federal prisoners were told to complete a needs assessment survey when they first entered prison. The survey was part of the FSA in that it was meant to provide an assessment of the types of programs, needs, that the prisoner would address while in prison. The assessment was to be done on-line through an internal computer terminal that prisoners use for email communications with their families… What prisoners were not told was that the survey’s completion was a requirement to initiating the FSA credits. All of the prisoners I spoke to stated that they were never told of the survey’s importance nor could I find information about this in the FSA nor in any directive given to prisoners.”

Pavlo’s report is consistent with email complaints I have gotten from prisoners that no one ever suggested that the needs surveys served any necessary purpose.

Pavlo quoted Emery Nelson of the BOP is quoted as saying, “Completion of the self-assessment survey is only one factor which determines when an inmate begins earning FSA time credits.”

We’re Not Listening to You: The DOJ Office of Inspector General told BOP Director Colette Peters two weeks ago about an aspect of its recent investigation into sexual abuse of inmates by BOP employees that it found troubling.

dontbelieve221027“These concerns arose when the OIG recently inquired of the BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs (OIA)… about a disciplinary action taken by the BOP following an OIG investigation of alleged sexual abuse by a BOP employee. In response to our inquiry, we were told by OIA that, in cases that have not been accepted for criminal prosecution, the BOP will not rely on inmate testimony to make administrative misconduct findings and take disciplinary action against BOP employees, unless there is evidence aside from inmate testimony that independently establishes the misconduct…”

OIG told Director Peters that BOP’s refusal to rely on inmate testimony to make misconduct findings in administrative matters “is inconsistent with the fact that such testimony is fully admissible in criminal and civil cases, and creates significant risks for the BOP in its handling of administrative misconduct matters. Inmate testimony alone has been found sufficient, and with corroborating evidence is often found sufficient, to support criminal convictions of BOP employees, where the evidentiary standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In short, inmates are not disqualified from providing testimony with evidentiary value in federal courts, and there is no valid reason for the BOP to decline to rely on such testimony… where the evidentiary standard is the preponderance of the evidence. In addition, the OIG found that in the context of sexual misconduct cases, BOP policy and federal regulations, specifically those DOJ regulations implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), require the credibility of an alleged victim to be assessed on an individual basis and not be determined by the person’s status as an inmate.”

After the OIG provided the Bureau of Prisons with a draft of its report, BOP quickly denied that it had ever said it didn’t believe inmates as a matter of policy.  The Inspector General was unimpressed:

However, contrary to this assertion, the statements made by the OIA to the OIG as reflected in this memorandum were made by OIA on multiple occasions. Moreover, as described later in this memorandum, we found that in cases where the OIG substantiated BOP employee misconduct relying on inmate testimony the OIA has, on more than one occasion, sent less serious findings to the BOP’s Employment Law Branch (ELB) and the BOP institution where the subject employee works.

So now who doesn’t believe whom?

Forbes, Bureau Of Prisons’ Failure To Communicate First Step Act (October 15, 2022)

DOJ Office of Inspector General, Notification of Concerns Regarding the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Treatment of Inmate Statements in Investigations of Alleged Misconduct by BOP Employees (October 12, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Delivers New Earned-Time Credit Restrictions – Update for September 14, 2022

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

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

thegood220914One provision of The First Step Act, signed into law in December 2018, allowed eligible inmates to earn credits toward an earlier release from prison, more halfway house or home confinement. The credits, called “earned time credits” or ETCs, were to be granted to prisoners participating in certain needs-based educational programs and productive activities. For every 30 days of successful participation, the prisoners could earn up to 15 days off their sentence up to a maximum of 12 months (365 days). ETCs could also be used to entitle the inmates to more halfway house or home confinement on a 1-1 basis: 30 days of ETC credit would earn 30 days more of home confinement, for instance.

The challenge for the Bureau of Prisons has been to keep accurate track of the credits earned by inmates. It is a multi-step analysis: First, is the inmate eligible to participate in the earned-time credit program? Second, has the inmate’s needs been properly assessed? Third, has the inmate enrolled in programming that addresses that need? Fourth, how many credits has the inmate earned in any given month?

When the BOP adopted the ETC system in January 2022, the system it enacted was 180 degrees opposed to the Draconian proposal the agency had floated previously. The adoption seems to have caught the BOP flat-footed, because it simply threw up its hands (figuratively speaking) and declared that any inmate eligible for the credits as of January 15th was assumed to have participated in eligible programs for every day since December 21, 2018 (or when the inmate arrived in the system, whichever was later).

Sweet deal. As a result, thousands of inmates were released in the days following the January adoption date.

But every Christmastime ends, and so did the BOP’s ETC giveaway. Since January 15, the agency has struggled with how to quickly calculate inmate ETCs on a rolling basis. In April, the BOP revealed in a court case that it was developing a computer program – an “auto-calculation” system – to update each inmate’s ETC credits continuously. The BOP estimated Auto-Calc would be implemented by about August 1.

The BOP finally delivered its Earned Time Credit “Auto Calculation” system last Thursday. “On time and under budget” is not a mantra at the Bureau. Delivery took about 50% longer than the BOP predicted it would. And, as Walter Pavlo said in Forbes last Friday, it “landed with a thud.”

Why the thud? The Auto-Calc system was accompanied by a memo that announced several interpretative rules the BOP is imposing by fiat. You know, rules that interpret other rules. And unlike the adoption of last January’s formal rules, there was no rulemaking proceeding, no “notice and comment” period, and scant indication the changes were coming.

The First Step Act spelled out prisoner eligibility in detail, But that hasn’t stopped the BOP from adding its own bells and flourishes.

The good news in the memo (such as it is) is that

• the BOP’s official stance is that ETCs will be applied first to reduce sentence length, and second to more halfway house and home confinement. The agency had been doing that since last January, but it had never announced that as BOP policy. Given how arbitrary the BOP can be, the announced adoption of the reduction-first approach as policy is a good thing.

• any halfway house or home confinement awarded using ETCs will be granted “in addition to release needs-based recommendations made under the Second Chance Act.” In other words, if the Second Chance Act would have entitled a prisoner to placement in a halfway house for six months even without ETCs, and you have 120 days of ETC credit applied to halfway house, you would be placed for 10 months.

• the Auto-Calc system will update ETCs monthly.

• the BOP verified that ETCs may be applied toward early release in addition to the early release benefit for RDAP graduates. In other words, RDAP now double counts toward early release, up to 12 months off for successful completion of the program as well as an additional credit of up to 150 days ETC credits for finishing RDAP.

• In order to earn 15 days credit for every 30-day period instead of 10 days for every 30-day period, inmates need to (1) start out with a low- or minimum-risk PATTERN level; OR (2) have dropped to a low- or minimum-risk PATTERN level and maintained it for two consecutive assessment periods. This is good news, because a number of inmates who entered the system with low or minimum scores have been told in the past few months that they have to have two consecutive assessment periods under their belts before getting 15 days of ETC credits in a month.

thebad220914But there is bad news in the memo, too:

• The memo codifies what I first learned last month. The BOP will not credit ETCs toward early release for inmates who are 18 months from release. At 18 months, the BOP says, “the release date becomes fixed, and all additional ETCs are applied toward” halfway house or home confinement.

This is a slight improvement over what the BOP was saying a month ago. In a declaration the BOP filed in Marier v. Bergami, the BOP manager said the cutoff was 24 months. But it still means, practically speaking, no inmates with sentences of less than 42 months will have enough time to collect ETCs entitling them to 12 months off their sentence (the maximum allowed by law).

This also means that unless an inmate can complete the in-custody portion of RDAP with at least 18 months left, the RDAP ETCs will apply to more halfway house or home confinement, not more time off.

Pavlo complained in Forbes last week that “with this more restrictive condition, BOP is even going against the Department of Justice’s intent of FSA which was to ‘transfer eligible inmates who satisfy the criteria in § 3624(g) [awarding of FSA credits] to supervised release to the extent practicable, rather than prerelease custody [halfway house and home confinement]’… In Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, the cost of incarceration fee for a federal prisoner at a federal facility was $107.85 per day; in FY 2020, it was $120.59 per day. It costs less than half that to place a minimum security prisoner on home confinement and it costs nothing if the prisoner is not in custody at all. Thousands of prisoners will be affected by this unilateral decision by the BOP. For many prisoners, their date for returning to society has been prolonged by a memorandum that is both unfair and arbitrary.”

• The memo states that “inmates who refuse or fail to complete any portion of the needs assessment and/or refuse or decline any program recommended to address a specific identified need area, are considered “opted out” and will not earn ETCs.” This hardly seems to be bad news, except that it assumes that the failure to complete needs assessment or refusal or declining to take a program is intentional.

More than one inmate has already reported that he or she was marked “refused” for not taking a program that simply was not available at the time. One inmate only saved from being marked “refused” by proving that he had sent the staff member responsible for the program a request to be put on the “wait list.”

• Starting eight months ago, the memo says, “all components of the SPARC-13 needs assessment must be complete to be eligible to earn ETCs. Failing to do so is considered ‘opted out.’ In other words, if an inmate fails to complete a required survey to enroll in a recommended program which addresses a specified need, the inmate will not be eligible to earn FTCs.”

The SPARC-13 is the Standardized Prisoner Assessment for Reduction in Criminality, a battery of surveys mandated by the BOP’s Initial Review of the SPARC-13 Needs Assessment System, issued last March. Judging from inmate reports, few have been given the surveys to complete. Even if they are asked to do so now, it is not clear whether any programs completed between January 15 and September 8 will count if the SPARC-13 was not done prior to that time.

• the memo states that “while inmates continue to earn FTCs, inmates can only apply the FTCs if they have no detainers, unresolved pending charges, and/or unresolved immigration status issues.”

These restrictions do not appear in the First Step Act and make little sense. It is logical that the BOP would not send inmates to detainers to halfway house or home confinement. That is a long-standing limitation. But there is no security issue in letting inmates with detainers benefit from shortened sentences. If an inmate gets a year off, the BOP simply lets the detaining agency know to pick up the inmate on Sep 12, 2022, instead of Sep 12, 2023, for instance.

Pavlo quotes a retired BOP employee as saying of the memorandum, “BOP is creating their own language and leaving the discretion in the hands of case managers to interpret who is eligible and who is not. They have completely disrespected the intent and FSA law states.”

theugly220914Finally, the ugly. The memo notes that “as a reminder, the unit team will determine an inmate’s eligibility to earn FTCs based on the current conviction and prior criminal convictions.” This means that basic decisions applying the statute are decentralized among close to a thousand unit teams. Given some of the errors already made by unit teams unschooled in the FSA, the amount of administrative remedy and judicial review such decision-making decentralization will spawn is likely to be quite significant.

A final thought: The Administrative Procedure Act (5 USC § 552), with its “arbitrary and capricious” standard, governs just about all federal agencies. However, Congress specifically stated in 18 USC § 3625 that the APA does not “apply to the making of any determination, decision, or order under this subchapter.”

The catch here is that § 3625 is specific to 18 USC Chapter 229, Subchapter C. The portion of the FSA establishing ETCs is set out in the newly-created Subchapter D. Congress either decided not to exempt the BOP’s implementation of the ETC from the APA, or it just forgot to do so. Either way, the ETC program appears to be subject to APA challenges, something new for BOP management.

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons’ Interpretation of First Step Act Will Leave Thousands of Inmates Incarcerated (September 9, 2022)

BOP, Memo on Implementation of Auto-Calculation (September 8, 2022)

BOP, Initial Review of the SPARC-13 Needs Assessment System (Mar 2022)

Declaration, ECF 10-1, Marier v. Bergami, Case No 21C50236 (ND Ill, Aug 9, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root