Tag Archives: FSA credits

Private FSA Tool To Provide Prisoners Data the BOP Won’t – Update for March 4, 2024

Leave a comment

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

LOOKING FOR THE MAGIC DATE

Maybe the sweetest acronym a federal prisoner has ever heard – LDI – is at the heart of a new tool intended to provide all of the information (and more) that the Federal Bureau of Prisons promised with the PRD (projected release date) calculation it has now apparently abandoned.

wise240304LDI – shorthand for “Last Date Inside” – is “the date on which a federal prisoner should be released to pre-release custody (halfway house or home confinement),” according to Wise First Step. Based on an inmate’s most recent sentence computation and First Step Act time credit assessments, Wise says it “will develop a detailed report that outlines key dates you need to be aware of for you to advocate for your referral to pre-release custody.”

Complaints about BOP management of FSA credits – awarded for completion of programs that reduce recidivism – are legion. One prisoner said in an email that an Excel spreadsheet tool was released to case managers last week, but

it is problematic because the calculation tool must be updated every 30 days due to 10-15 FTC earned over that time cycle. This does nothing to ease the burden on Case Managers or help inmates plan accordingly. Even more problematic is the fact that the calculator does not take into account any of the days that will be earned while in pre-release custody… [What’s more,] RRM offices are not accepting “projected days” earned while waiting for the RRM submission to come back.

Another inmate said, “We were also told that sometime in January 2024, we would have access to the PRD on Trulincs [inmate computer system]. Of course, none of that has happened. Now the case managers are telling us that the FSA projected release would NOT help you once you received your 1 year off AND we are not going to have access to the PRD. It has been ‘shelved indefinitely’.”

The BOP announced last December that it was releasing a “Conditional Release Calculator” that provided “needed information regarding the potential positive impact of earning Federal Time Credits (FTC) towards advancing an individual’s release date,” but that calculator reflected only time “applied toward advancing the individual’s transfer to supervised release and an earlier release from FBOP custody,” not transfer to halfway house or home confinement. When in halfway house and home confinement, a prisoner remains in BOP custody.

data240304The major issue in FSA credit application right now is halfway house availability. Writing in Forbes last January, Walter Pavlo observed that inmates are being denied the right to spend their credits because “the BOP does not have room in halfway houses to monitor those who have rightfully earned First Step Act credits. The result, thousands of prisoners languish in expensive institutions rather than being placed in community halfway houses.” The First Step Act uses mandatory language, requiring the BOP to place the qualifying inmates in halfway house or home confinement, but agency officials are shrugging their shoulders in feigned helplessness because halfway houses are refusing transfers.

Inmates have been hitting a wall when trying to remedy the denials in court. Just last week, a court threw out a complaint because the petitioner had provided no facts showing that he “has been denied all opportunity to earn time credits, that he has credits to apply, or that he has been denied the ability to apply earned credits to supervised release or another form of prerelease custody.” Another district court ruled against a prisoner, holding that he “fails to include any factual allegations supporting his claim that he was otherwise qualified under Section 3624 of the FSA… for prerelease custody or supervised release.” A decision earlier last month held that “Assuming that petitioner is entitled to a total of 740 days of credits between his prerelease custody and release, his accrued credits are not equal to the remainder of his prison term. He is therefore not eligible to apply FSA time credits at this time…”

itsadate240304Using a proprietary system it has tested over the past six months, Wise will provide a series of dates that tell inmates when to begin advocating for halfway house/home confinement, when to pursue administrative remedies, and when the prisoner’s LDI falls. Wise says in its program description, “The individualized details in this report have enabled hundreds of inmates to accelerate the process for transfer out of prison.”

Wise First Step can be contacted at (202) 921-0200 and email (accepting Corrlinks) at sarah@wisefirststep.org.

Wise First Step Program

BOP, Conditional FSA Release Date Calculator (December 5, 2023)

Forbes, The Bureau of Prisons’ Halfway House Problem (January 16, 2024)

Cuong Mach Tieu v. United States, Case No. 2:23-cv-2858, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34442 (E.D. Cal., February 27, 2024)

Cook v. Peters, Case No. 3:23CV2211, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32754 (N.D. Ohio, February 26, 2024)

Urenda v Warden, Case No 2:23-cv-1410, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22513 (E.D. Cal., February 7, 202e)

Feb 1’s Here… Let the Prisoners Go! – Update for February 1, 2024

Leave a comment

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

RUMOR CONTROL 101: WHAT HAPPENS ON FEBRUARY 1? (HINT: NOTHING)

nothinghere190906My inbox has been flooded in the last few weeks with people wondering what all will happen today, Thursday, February 1st. One said changes in the gun laws will go into effect. Another heard that the meth laws will change. Another explained that all criminal history points from prior state convictions will be dropped from Guidelines criminal history. A fourth heard that acquitted conduct will be banned for sentencing purposes.

Yesterday, a prisoner complained that people were saying that effective today, FSA credits could be used by everyone, not just low- and minimum- recidivism level inmates. At least this last guy recognized that the rumor was bullshit on stilts, and responded with appropriate disgust.

The plain and sad fact is that NONE OF THESE RUMORS IS TRUE. NONE. ZERO. NADA. ZIP.

Congress is not changing the federal firearms statutes this year. With methamphetamine and fentanyl flowing across the border being a hot campaign issue, no one’s changing those laws, either. Congress can’t even approve a federal budget or aid to Ukraine and Israel, or a plan to stop the border crisis. Passing legislation that benefits a portion of the 160,000 federal prisoners is not on anyone’s radar.

True, the Sentencing Commission is considering what – if anything – to do with acquitted conduct, but any change in the Guidelines is not likely to be retroactive and is 10 months away at least. And the Supremes may cause real upheaval in the federal gun laws when Rahimi is decided in the next five months.

But nothing will happen today.

timereductionfairy231003

However, tomorrow… On February 2, the Time Reduction Fairy will emerge from her den. If she sees her shadow, we’re in for another year of no criminal justice reform. The smart money, unfortunately, is that February 2 is going to be sunny.

– Thomas L. Root

‘You Can Earn Them, Just Not Spend Them,’ Said No One To The Senators – Update for January 22, 2024

Leave a comment

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

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE FIRST STEP ACT HEARING IGNORES HALFWAY HOUSE ELEPHANT

Senate Judiciary Committee leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) presided over a hearing last Wednesday commemorating the 5th anniversary of the First Step Act. The testimony was positive, upbeat, and largely useless.

Cake201130“Five years ago, we wrote the blueprint for reimagining rehabilitation and protecting public safety, and now we know by the numbers that it works,” Durbin said to open the proceeding. “Today, I am looking forward to reflecting on what we can achieve… In order to make our system fairer, we must continue to learn from and [build upon] the proven successes of ‘smart on crime’ policies like the First Step Act. We must provide more opportunities for those who are incarcerated to reenter society successfully, reunite with their families, and contribute to their communities.”

Ja’Ron Smith, former Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy under Trump, noted that the recidivism rate for First Step releasees is about 37% lower than what it was before the Act passed, used to be. Smith said, “For those released under the First Step Act, the rate is just 125. And technical violations – not new crimes – account for a third of that number.”

J. Charles Smith III, president of the National District Attorneys Assn, said First Step “did a great job of differentiating between good people making bad decisions and bad people making bad decisions. The bad people who make bad decisions stay in jail… The good people who made a bad decision, were convicted for it, [and] went to jail for it, are getting rehabilitated and released earlier as well, as they should.”

Steve Markle, an officer with the National Council Of Prison Locals, lauded the Act but said the Federal Bureau of Prisons 20% staffing shortfall (40% among correctional officers) “not only compromises safety by reducing the number of staff available to respond to emergencies but also hinders the provision of programming for the First Step Act. To fully realize the Act’s potential,” he said, “it is crucial to address the critical staffing crisis within the Bureau. The Council believes that the staffing crisis can only be resolved by addressing the pay band issue.”

Not this kind of halfway house...
Not this kind of halfway house…

It fell to Walter Pavlo, who was not a witness at Durbin’s lovefest, to explain a major glitch in First Step Act’s implementation of the evidence-based programming problem. Inmates are motivated to earn credits because those credits can buy up to a year off their sentences and – if any credits are left after the one-year credit -more halfway house or home confinement. But, writing in Forbes last week, Pavlo observed that inmates are being denied the right to spend those credits because “the BOP does not have room in halfway houses to monitor those who have rightfully earned First Step Act credits. The result, thousands of prisoners languish in expensive institutions rather than being placed in community halfway houses.”

Prisoners with many months of First Step halfway house/home confinement credit are being told by halfway houses that they cannot be accommodated. I know of one prisoner awarded his nine months of halfway house/home confinement credit only to be told that the halfway house could only give him a third of that. The Act states in 18 USC 3624(g)(11) that the BOP Director “shall ensure there is sufficient prerelease custody capacity to accommodate all eligible prisoners.” Pavlo writes, “This is a problem that is going to persist unless something is done.”

The BOP’s Residential Reentry Management Branch administrator said in a speech two weeks ago that halfway houses had a “90-day projection of 99% utilization,” meaning, Pavlo said, “that there was no room to place any more prisoners.”

The BOP knew five years ago that it would have to increase halfway house capacity, but doing so is a bureaucratic nightmare. Because the BOP has relied on halfway house staff to monitor home confinement inmates, the capacity crunch has affected home confinement placement as well. A decade ago, the BOP worked with the US Probation Office to get some prisoners monitored on Probation’s Federal Location Monitoring (FLM) to allow some home confinement prisoners to be monitored by Probation rather than halfway houses. But as of now, only 3.6% of home confinement prisoners are on FLM.

The BOP has an Interagency Agreement with Probation which Pavlo says presents “an opportunity to expand FLM in a manner that is both cost-effective and consistent with the evidence-based practices. However, each district court is responsible for participating, or not, in FLM. Getting every district court to coordinate with the BOP has been an issue for years, as the few prisoners in FLM clearly demonstrate.”

release161117FLM costs far less than a halfway house per diem or halfway house-monitored home confinement. However, FLM is managed by each of the 94-odd federal judicial districts. Some participate with the BOP: others do not. Pavlo said a retired BOP executive told him, “I think the BOP would be receptive to expanding the program and it would resolve many of the issues related to capacity for prerelease custody, but the Courts are going to have to help.”

Senate Judiciary Committee, Five Years of the First Step Act: Reimagining Rehabilitation and Protecting Public Safety (January 17, 2024)

Press Release, Durbin Delivers Opening Statement During Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Fifth Anniversary of the Landmark First Step Act (January 17, 2024)

Forbes, The Bureau of Prisons’ Halfway House Problem (January 16, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

No Deference to Flawed BOP Time Credits Rule – Update for October 30, 2023

Leave a comment

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

BOP SMACKED BY CHEVRON BUT STANDS TOUGH ON DENYING FSA BENEFIT

chevron230508Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo flagged a First Step Act credit benefit that the Bureau of Prisons has been denying to prisoners except where courts order otherwise. With the Supreme Court primed this term to rein in the Chevron deference doctrine – the judicial rule that courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretation of the statutes they administer – the BOP’s denial of FSA credits until an inmate reaches his or her assigned institution is an excellent case of how even Chevron can ban some BOP overreaching.

The FSA provides that a prisoner “who successfully completes evidence-based recidivism reduction programming or productive activities, shall earn time credits” according to a set schedule. Under 18 USC 3632(d)(4)(B), otherwise-eligible prisoners cannot earn FSA credits during official detention before the prisoner’s sentence commences under 18 USC 3585(a).” Section 3585(a) says a “term of imprisonment commences on the date the prisoner is received in custody awaiting transportation to, or arrives voluntarily to commence service of sentence at, the official detention facility at which the sentence is to be served.”

But the BOP puts its own gloss on the statute, directing in 28 CFR 523.42(a) that “an eligible inmate begins earning FSA Time Credits after the inmate’s term of imprisonment commences (the date the inmate arrives or voluntarily surrenders at the designated Bureau facility where the sentence will be served).”

Any prisoner who has spent weeks or months between sentencing and final delivery to his or her designated institution can see that the BOP rule can create months of FSA credit dead time.

Ash Patel filed a petition for habeas corpus seeking FSA credit from his sentencing in September 2020 until he finally reached his designated institution on the other side of the country in April 2023. The BOP argued his FSA credits only started in April 2023, stripping him of 2.5 years of earnings. The agency cited 28 CFR 523.42(a) and urged the Court to apply Chevron deference, accepting its interpretation of when FSA credits start.

ambiguity161130The Court didn’t buy it. “Because Section 523.42(a) sets a timeline that conflicts with an unambiguous statute, it is not entitled to Chevron deference and the Court must give effect to the statutory text,” the judge wrote, citing Huihui v. Derr where the court held that while the prisoner was not eligible “before her sentence commenced, [] under 18 USC 3632(d)(4)(B)(ii), her ineligibility ended the moment she was sentenced… because FDC had already received her in custody.”

Pavlo cites Yufenyuy v. Warden FCI Berlin, perhaps the first decision to refuse to give Chevron deference to the BOP’s incorrect 28 CFR 523.42(a) rule. He rightly complains that perhaps thousands of other prisoners ‘who were sentenced and have months of time in transit getting to their final designated facility… are currently not getting those credits.” Pavlo notes that “prisoners who have a disagreement with the BOP have access to an administrative remedy process to air their grievances. However, those in the chain of command at the BOP who would review those grievances have no authority within the BOP to award these credits as it deviates from the BOP’s own Program Statement, which remains unchanged… Currently, the only solution is for every prisoner who has this situation is to exhaust the administrative remedy process, something that could take 6-9 months, and go to court to find a judge who agrees with [Yufenyuy], which could take months more.”

Exhaustion170327Not necessarily. The Huihui v. Derr Court excused exhaustion because “further pursuit would be a futile gesture because… there is an error in [the BOPs] understanding of when Petitioner can begin earning credits under 18 USC 3632(d)(4)(B) and 3632(a)… The Court thus concludes that any further administrative review would not preclude the need for judicial review. The Court thus excuses Petitioner’s failure to exhaust her administrative remedies.”

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons’ Dilemma On First Step Act Credits (October 27, 2023)

Patel v. Barron, Case No C23-937, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174601 (WD Wash., September 28, 2023)

Huihui v. Derr, Case No 22-00541, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106532 (D. Hawaii, June 20, 2023)

Yufenyuy v. Warden FCI Berlin, No. 22-CV-443, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40186 (D.NH, March7, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Five Years Later, BOP Still Doesn’t Have First Step Act Right – Update For October 27, 2023

Leave a comment

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

FIVE YEARS SHOULD BE LONG ENOUGH TO GET FIRST STEP ACT RIGHT

firststepB180814The First Step Act, including its innovative system for granting credits to inmates who complete programs designed to reduce recidivism, is 5 years old in less than two months. But it took three years of fits and starts before the Bureau of Prisons pretty much had a final set of rules for administering FSA credits (after a proposal that was as miserly as the final rule was generous hanging around for a year of comments).

Now, almost two years later, the BOP is still muddled in trying to launch a computer program of forward-looking calculation for FSA credits that predicts when a prisoner will leave BOP custody for halfway house or home confinement (HH/HC). The agency still lacks a comprehensive list of what types of inmate employment or education constitutes “productive activities,” which are supposed to continue a prisoner’s earning of FSA credits. And the BOP continues to deny HH/HC placement because it lacks resources, despite First Step’s requirement that inmates be placed to the full extent of their FSA credits.

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo observed that “prisoners, mostly minimum and low security, who are eligible for these credits have done their best to try to participate in programs but many complain of a lack of classes, mostly due to the challenges the BOP is having in hiring people. However, beyond that, the BOP has been liberal in accepting that the BOP does not have the staff to fulfill the demand for classes and credits are being given anyway, mostly for participating in productive activities, like jobs. This misses the primary mission of programming meant to have a lasting, positive influence on prisoners after they leave the institution.

“Now,” Pavlo said, “nearly two years since the Federal Register’s Final Rule in January 2022, the BOP still has no reliable calculator to determine the number of FSA credits a prisoner will earn during a prison term… One of the last remaining issues is for the BOP to have a forward-looking calculation for FSA credits that predicts when a prisoner will leave BOP custody. It sounds easy, but the BOP’s current computer program can only assess credits after they are earned each month, and it usually takes a full month after they are earned for them to post. The result is that each month, prisoners’ families look at BOP.gov to see if there are indeed new credits and if the amount they are expecting matches what is expected. This moving date is important because it can also determine when prisoners can leave prison for home confinement or halfway house. The result, prisoners are staying in institutions, institutions that are understaffed, for days, weeks and months beyond when they could be released to home confinement or halfway houses. This is defeating one of the other initiatives of the First Step Act and that was to get more people out of decaying BOP facilities and into another form of confinement that is far less expensive.”

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois)
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois)

First Step is important to Congress. When BOP Director Colette Peters appeared for a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing chaired by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) last month, “her answer failed to address the continued shortcomings of the implementation,” Pavlo said. “There are thousands of prisoners, many minimum security, who are stuck in prison because of a lack of a computer program that simply calculates forward-looking FSA credits…This computer program was actually alluded to in declarations the BOP submitted to federal courts in 2022 stating that it would be implemented ‘soon.’ Over a year since those declarations, there is still no program to accurately calculate when a prisoner will leave an institution.”

The BOP is facing a substantial halfway house bed shortage as well. There is also the issue of insufficient halfway house space. Unlike HH/HC placement for prisoners without FSA credits, 18 USC 3624(g)(2) does not give the BOP discretion. Subsection 3624(g)(2) says that if a prisoner is eligible (has FSA credits not already applied to a year off of the sentence), he or she “shall be placed in prerelease custody as follows,” describing halfway house or home confinement. There’s nothing hortatory about it. The BOP is required to put the prisoner in HH/HC. Excuses not accepted.

halfway161117Pavlo argued that “the only way to address this situation is to implement a task force to move prisoners through the system and catch up from the failures of the past few years. Systemic challenges of shortages of staff and augmentation which takes away staff like case managers from their jobs, cause continued problems. The BOP needs to get caught up, move prisoners along and develop reliable systems that will assure that the FSA is implemented as the law requires. While the BOP has made great strides, these last challenges of full implementation can be achieved by focusing a concerted effort on three issues; fixing the calculator, assessing the prisoners who will soon be going home as a result of that computer fix, and expanding halfway house capacity to handle them.”

Forbes, Time For A Bureau Of Prisons Task Force To Implement The First Step Act (October 16, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

First Step’s Coming Birthday Reason for Hagiography – Update for October 19, 2023

Leave a comment

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

FIRST STEP ACT TURNS FIVE YEARS OLD

Cake201130The anniversary is still 63 days away, but a couple of early hagiographic articles on the First Step Act’s 5th birthday are already being posted.

The Crime Report said last week that First Step “now allows federal inmates to significantly reduce their actual penal custody time. That fits into the primary goal of The Act, which is to reduce recidivism among nonviolent offenders through greater emphasis on rehabilitation in the Bureau of Prisons.”

The philanthropy Arnold Ventures interviewed Colleen P. Eren, Ph.D., author of a new book, Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movement to End Mass Incarceration. She noted that “33,000 people have been released from federal prison so far under the First Step Act, according to FAMM. The recidivism rate for those people is 12.4% compared to a rate of around 43% for others exiting federal prison. The First Step Act made President Obama’s Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive, resulting in the release of around 4,000 people who were sitting in prison under the 1987 crack cocaine sentencing disparity. It also made it easier to get compassionate release, and a total of 4,500 people have been released under that change.”

compromise180614First Step was far from perfect, but Dr. Eren says that’s more of a feature than a bug. “The First Step Act is an example of people not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There were differences to negotiate between conservative reformists and progressive reformists. Conservatives think that the incarceration system went too far but that it’s not fundamentally flawed… Left-leaning organizations refused to give their support until sentencing reform was included, which was significant… The left had to accept the PATTERN risk assessment – They said it was racist, reinforced existing disparities, and didn’t go far enough toward ending mass incarceration. It was a classic reform-versus-revolution tension.”

Five years into the Act, the BOP has yet to work out properly accounting for FSA credits and placing prisoners with credits in halfway house and home confinement appropriately. But as frustrating as the implementation of First Step has been, life before the Act passed was much bleaker.

The Crime Report, The First Step Act: A Five-Year Review and the Path Forward (October 10, 2023)

Arnold Ventures, Historic Bipartisan Justice Reform Turns Five (October 6, 2023)

Colleen Eren, Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movement to End Mass Incarceration (Stanford Univ Press, Sep 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Ending the Summer With the Rocket’s Red Glare – Update for September 29, 2023

Leave a comment

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

rocket190620This weekend marks the end of summer, maybe not astronomically or meteorologically, but Monday the Supreme Court begins its next term, called “October Term 2023.”  Fall is here, but first, we’re going to end the summer with a short rocket:

DOES NOT COMPUTE

The BOP announced in late 2022 that it was developing a calculator to project the maximum number of earned-time credits – now being called FSA credits – a prisoner could earn at the outset of a sentence. That way, a prisoner would know upfront his or her projected release date and the date that halfway house or home confinement could begin.

notcompute230929You may have been skeptical, recalling that in 2022, the BOP promised monthly auto-calculation of FSA credits (with more launch dates than North Korea’s missile program) that never happened, either. August became September became October, then November, and finally January. Writing in Forbes magazine last week, Walter Pavlo reported that the BOP has likewise been unable to determine likely dates for prerelease custody, depriving inmates of benefits of FSA credits to which they are entitled by law because the BOP is unable to scramble to arrange halfway house or get residence approval for home confinement.

What’s worse, Pavlo reported, “there is no date for when this calculation issue will be addressed. Until then, prisoners continue to line up outside of their case manager’s office to plead their case that their release date is closer than what the BOP is calculating. As one prisoner told me, ‘My case manager said, ‘the computer tells your release date and it could be tomorrow, or next week, or next year, it does not matter to me. But I don’t have the ability to make that decision myself’.”

The BOP Office of Public Affairs told Pavlo that “credits cannot be applied to an individual’s projected release date until they are actually ‘earned.’ Further, as an individual can earn 15 days of time credits, and as there is no partial or prorated credit, it is feasible that earned credits could be greater than the number of days remaining to serve. However, the earned time credits are ‘in an amount that is equal to the remainder of the prisoner’s imposed term of imprisonment.’ Simply stated,” Pavlo said, “the credits are earned, and they cannot exceed the remaining time to serve at the point they are earned.”

bureaucracybopspeed230501The BOP’s position, according to Pavlo, is that “ordinarily, the applicability of time credits towards pre-release custody will be limited to time credits earned as of the date of the request for community placement. However, in an effort to ensure eligible adults in custody receive the maximum benefit, the agency is developing additional auto-calculation applications that will calculate a “Conditional FSA Release Date” and an “Earliest Conditional Pre-Release Date” which would include the maximum FTC benefit.”

Basically, the BOP is still trying to figure out how to implement a First Step program it knew about 5 years ago.

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons’ Challenges With First Step Act Release Dates (September 17, 2023)

rocket190620

SCHUMER MAY ADD CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROVISIONS TO NEWLY-REFERRED MARIJUANA BILL

Fresh from getting the Senate Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) indicated yesterday that he may attach criminal justice reform language to the cannabis banking bill that just passed the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday.

Speaking on the Senate floor, he said he was “really proud of the bipartisan deal we produced,” a reference to the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking (SAFER) Act, S.1323. And while the legislation will be brought to a full Senate vote “soon,” Schumer promised to include “very significant criminal justice provisions” in it, Marijuana Moment reported.

Schumer didn’t say what those reforms might be noting he would “talk more about that at a later time.”

marijuana-dc211104“Attaching any additional provisions – let alone ones on criminal justice — could imperil SAFER‘s chances of winning Senate approval, according to the finance website Seeking Alpha. “Prior attempts to add criminal justice language into marijuana-related legislation has led to controversy.”

In May, Schumer said a marijuana banking bill would have social justice reforms and criminal expungement language attached. And in 2022, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said he would favor a “SAFE Banking Plus” bill that includes criminal justice reforms.

Marijuana Moment, Schumer Touts Bipartisan ‘Momentum’ Behind Marijuana Banking Bill That He Plans To Bring To The Floor ‘Soon’ With More ‘Criminal Justice Provisions’ (September 28, 2023)

Seeking Alpha, Schumer indicates he may tie in criminal justice to marijuana banking bill (September 28, 2023)
rocket190620

$117 A DAY WON’T BUY YOU PERFORMANCE

Maybe that’s all the performance you can expect for $117 a day. That’s what the BOP said last week is the current average cost of incarceration based on fiscal year 2022 data. The average annual COIF for a Federal inmate housed in a halfway house for FY 2022 was $39,197 ($107.39 per day).

BOP, Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration Fee (COIF), 88 FR 65405 (September 22, 2023)
rocket190620

HAZELTON BOP UNION SAYS EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS HOBBLE STAFFING AS SHUTDOWN LOOMS

Picket signs waved all day long last Friday as members of the FCC Hazelton local 420 union representing the prison say the staffing shortage has gotten so bad officers have to work 16-hour shifts 4 to 5 days a week, with stringent employment standards partly to blame.

Union President Justin Tarovisky says the prison is currently short-staffed by more than 80 corrections officers. He complained that the union held a recruiting event where they took in 60 applicants, but the BOP office in Grand Prairie, Texas, that oversees these applications has been disqualifying applicants for superficial reasons.

hazeltonpicket230929“A lot of that common sense hiring has left this agency,” Tarovisky told WDTV, a Weston, WV, television station. “They’re handcuffing these applicants that are applying and disqualifying them for simple errors and it’s not our staff that’s disqualifying them, we can’t even get them in the door to interview them because they’re being disqualified by people halfway across the country.”

There have been only 10 new staff hired at Hazelton this year despite the desperate need with some other prison staff members having to take on the duties of corrections officers. Tarovisky says the prison needs to be able to hire applicants directly to keep officers and community members safe.

The grueling hours are taking a toll on prison staff wellbeing and many are feeling the impact at home. A Dept of Justice Office of Justice Programs report in 2020 found that the suicide rate of corrections officers is seven times higher than the national average.

From the “You Think Things Are Bad Now” department: ABC News reports that all 34,537 BOP employees would still have to go to work if the government closes for lack of funding on Sunday, leaving them without a paycheck during the period of the shutdown.

“A shutdown is absolutely devastating for our members,” Brandy Moore-White, the president of CPL-33, told ABC News. “Not only do our members put their lives on the line every single day to protect America from the individuals incarcerated, but now they’re having to go out… and figure out how they’re going to pay their bills and how they’re going to feed their families.”

All government employees are guaranteed pay during the time of the shutdown, but that money is not paid until after the shutdown ends. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, the promise of money next week does not buy you groceries today.

WDTV, Hazelton Prison corrections officers protesting hiring practices (September 22, 2023)

ABC News, Government shutdown would be ‘devastating’ for Bureau of Prisons employees (September 27, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Anti-Crime Candidates Should Embrace First Step – Update for August 21, 2023

Leave a comment

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

THE HILL ARGUES GOP SHOULD LAY OFF FIRST STEP ATTACKS

firststepB180814Writing in The Hill last week, Marc Levin – chief policy counsel for the Council on Criminal Justice – wrote that while the First Step Act was a bipartisan effort to rein in excessive penalties for low-level drug offenses and allowed some people in federal prison to earn time off their sentences by completing programs, Republican presidential candidates “in their attempts to pass the Trump train on the right are now claiming that the Act caused a crime surge while sidestepping their burden of proof.”

These attacks are ironic, Levin wrote, given Republicans’ past support for the law, and the fact that many left-wing groups opposed it primarily because they felt it didn’t go far enough.

While it is reasonable to ask whether First Step is “somehow to blame for the subsequent uptick in crime,” Levin wrote, “the best evidence currently available suggests otherwise.” People released early with FSA credits, for example, comprise under 1% of all prisoners in the US. What’s more, some 38 states offer earned credits like those provided for in the Act, and those states have found that such credits boost program participation rates, improving behavior behind bars and prospects for success upon release.

recividists160314The BOP has reported that 12.4% of those released early due to FSA credits have been reincarcerated at the federal, state or local level. Even these numbers overstate matters: the BOP has acknowledged the number includes all those released at various times since the Act went into effect in 2019.

Levin writes that “legitimate policy disagreements on crime should be part of political campaigns. But prison reforms at the state and federal level have been embraced across the spectrum because all Americans have an interest in a system that treats people fairly and breaks the cycle of crime without breaking the bank.”

The Hill, The GOP was for these prison reforms before turning against them (August 16, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

DOJ Issues ‘Speedo’ First Step Act Report – Update for May 9, 2023

Leave a comment

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

DOJ ISSUES FIRST STEP ANNUAL REPORT

The First Step Act required the Dept. of Justice to issue five annual reports describing the implementation of various First Step programs. Last week, the DOJ released its third of the five reports required by law.

skimpysuit230509It reminds me of the old joke about skimpy bathing suits: What they reveal is interesting, but what they conceal is vital. With the end of CARES Act home confinement tomorrow at midnight, perhaps the biggest issues I see arising – judging from the email I get – are FSA credit eligibility, timely posting of FSA credits by the BOP, and the definition of “unstructured productive activities.” The Report is chock-a-block with stats and dense prose, but it falls pretty short in providing much useful information about these three areas.

Eligibility: The Report says that 53% of prisoners have minimum or low recidivism risk. Another 20% are medium risk while 27% are high risk. When the 63-category exclusions from FSA credit listed in 18 USC § 3632(d)(4)(D) are factored in, only 57% of all BOP inmates are eligible for FSA credits. 

For much of that the under-subscription, you can blame Congress, which in its zeal to pass First Step confused the goal of putting prisoners in programs to reduce recidivism  – which is to reduce recidivism – with a reward that should be withheld from some people because of their offenses of conviction. What this means, of course, is that some of the inmates whom society most needs to have rehabilitated – like people who run around with guns committing drug crimes or bank robberies – are the ones being denied incentives for changing their evil ways.

evilways230509Timely FSA Credit Update: Monthly updating of FSA credits for inmates is important for release planning as well as psychologically (it’s easier to be enthusiastic about a program when you can see regular progress: that’s why the airlines keep sending you emails telling you how many frequent flier miles you have amassed). The BOP’s history in tabulating FSA credits and reporting accurate numbers to prisoners is littered with failure.  

Not that you can tell that from the Report. Breezing past history, the Report says that “in August 2022, the Bureau began automatically calculating credits for individuals, which promotes consistency, allows the BOP to provide accurate calculations on a routine basis, and allows individuals in custody to track their time credits and prepare for prerelease from custody.” In fact, the August auto-calc launch was a disaster. The BOP successively promised at the end of September, in October, in mid-November, and at least twice in January 2023 that auto-calc was finally working. I still get emails weekly from different institutions asking me when FSA credits will update for the preceding month.

No Structure to ‘Unstructured Productive Activities’:  The FSA credit program not only awards credits for completing programs. It also rewards participation in “productive activities.”  The BOP has defined what some of those are but also includes a catch-all for ‘unstructured productive activities’, which might include work, adult education classes, independent study or leading an inmate recreation group.

unstructuredanimals230509It might include a lot, sort of like defining mammals as elephants, giraffes, and ‘perhaps all other non-elephants and non-giraffes with mammary glands.  We get the elephants and giraffes part of it, but exactly what else might there be?

The Report does not contribute at all to answering the question of just what an “unstructured productive activity” might be. One line of the Report says, “Moreover, while structured [evidence-based recidivism reduction] programs and [productive activities] with a facilitator-led curriculum are listed in the FSA Programs Guide, other activities, such as work assignments may also be recommended by staff to address individual needs as well as qualify for time credits for eligible individuals in custody.”

“Recommended by staff” without any central guidance seems like a recipe for inconsistency among different facilities, let alone possible favoritism among individual staff and inmates. In other words, it seems that the method of defining what an unstructured PA might be is itself just a little too unstructured.

Just a week ago, a Government Accountability Office manager noted the “BOP remains unable to provide a simple list of ‘unstructured activities’” that qualify for FSA credits… And in terms of what programs that might be made available, like, there are a lot of recidivism reduction programs that just haven’t been evaluated, that haven’t been monitored. So BOP doesn’t really have a good sense for how effective they are.”

Nothing in last week’s Report even acknowledges any of these problems, let alone suggests that it is being addressed.

DOJ, First Step Annual Report – April 2023 (issued May 2, 2023)

Federal News Network, How Bureau of Prisons can escape its own cage (April 25, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Detainers No Longer Disqualify Some FSA Credit Application – Update for February 13, 2023

Leave a comment

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 BLUES

BOP Cries ‘Uncle’ On Detainer FSA Credit: As of a week ago, at least six district courts had granted habeas corpus petitions filed by prisoners denied use of FSA credits because they had detainers.

uncle230213FSA credits, for those folks tuning in late, are credits awarded to federal prisoners under the First Step Act for the prisoners successfully completing Bureau of Prisons programs that have been determined to reduce the risk of recidivism, such as GED classes, anger management, parenting skills, and drug/alcohol rehabilitation.  Prisoners may use the credits to reduce their sentences by up to one year or to get more time in halfway house or home confinement at the end of their sentences.

Despite the fact that Congress wrote detailed instructions into the law about what prisoners were to be excluded from earning FSA credits, the BOP took it upon itself to decide that other classes of prisoners – specifically those with detainers on file from state authorities or federal immigration officials – could not earn FSA credits. Unsurprisingly, a number of inmates filed petitions for habeas corpus with federal courts challenging the BOP’s unauthorized tinkering with the statutory scheme.

Last week, facing the reality that the detailed eligibility requirements Congress wrote into the FSA credit program prevents the BOP from adding its own spin to the standards as a matter of law, the Bureau abandoned its efforts to deny people with detainers the right to reduce their sentence length with FSA credits.

In a supplement to the November 2022 program statement on FSA credits issued last Monday, the BOP issued an updated P.S. 5410.01 deleting requirement that inmates have no detainers or unresolved pending charges, to include unresolved immigration status, in order to use FSA credits to shorten their sentences. Prior to the BOP program statement on FSA credits issued last November, the BOP had ruled that people with detainers or unresolved state charges were ineligible for any FSA credits. In November, the BOP moderated its position, holding that people with detainers could earn FSA credits but not spend them unless they cleared up the detainers.

Last week’s announcement wipes out any BOP resistance to people with detainers getting to apply up to 365 FSA credit to reduce their sentence length by up to a year. The only people ineligible now because of detainers are noncitizens “subject of a final order of removal under immigration laws.” And that is practically no one in the system.

A detainer will still prevent inmates from using FSA credits for halfway house or home confinement. Whether First Step’s detailed exclusions from credit override the BOP’s traditional refusal to give halfway house and home confinement to people with detainers has yet to be decided.

elsa230213PATTERN Recidivism Score Frozen on Prerelease Custody: Last week’s changes also clarify that if a prisoner has had two regular program reviews (which occur annually or more often as a prisoner approaches the end of the sentence) at which the PATTERN score was reviewed before going to halfway house or home confinement, he or she will not be reassessed again. In other words, the recidivism score you take out the prison door with you will remain yours as long as you’re in BOP custody (which you are at halfway house or on home confinement… If you go to prerelease custody before you’ve had two reassessments, however, you’ll be reassessed while you’re in halfway house or home confinement.

This should not be terribly significant unless the BOP is gearing up to start awarding FSA credits for programming and productive activities while in halfway house or on home confinement. The BOP promised this over a year ago, but nothing has happened yet to implement it.

Look Ma, No Hands!: The changes also provide that “FSA Time Credit Assessments (FTC Worksheets) will be automatically uploaded to the Inmate Central File during each auto-calculation. Inmates will be provided a copy of the most recent FTC Worksheet during regularly scheduled program reviews.”

There’s some advantage to taking the input and uploading away from case managers, in that it assures uniformity and correct calculation. On the other hand, as a lot of people have already experienced, it complicates and extends the process for getting errors corrected.

Groundhog Day at DSCC: Speaking of errors, a memorandum from the BOP’s administrator of the Residential Reentry Management Branch issued last week announced yet another nationwide re-calculation of FSA credits over the past weekend.

groundhogday230213The memo predicts “several hundred immediate releases affecting community placements, as well as the need to advance [halfway house and] home confinement dates and initiate new referrals to the Residential Reentry Office.”  Those releases should be happening between this morning and Wednesday.

The automatic calculation of FSA credits was first promised August 1, 2022, then was effective October 1, 2022, only to collapse in a heap of withdrawn credits and miscalculated dates. It was then to be fixed by January 9, and then January 23, and then February 6…

I keep hearing Sonny and Cher singing…

P.S. 5410.01CN, First Step Act of 2018 – Time Credits: Procedures for Implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4) (February 6, 2023)

BOP, Retroactive Application of First Step Act Time Credits (February 9, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root