The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has faced significant challenges in implementing the First Step Act (FSA), a 2018 law aimed at reforming the federal prison system. Some of the challenges included delays in calculating earned time credits, inconsistent application of the risk assessment tool (PATTERN), and limited access to rehabilitative programs. These shortcomings led to legal actions, such as class-action lawsuits, and bipartisan congressional criticism. It has also led to some inmates staying in prison longer than allowed under the law, primarily due to the BOP’s inability to properly calculate prison terms under the FSA. Despite efforts to improve, including policy updates and staff training, the BOP’s slow progress continues to hinder the FSA’s intended impact on reducing recidivism , enhancing inmate rehabilitation and returning non-violent offenders to the community sooner.
The BOP recently stated that it was expanding the use of Residential Reentry Centers (RRC), commonly referred to as halfway houses, to move more eligible inmates to the community sooner. However, even with that, the BOP had trouble filling its RRC capacity it had under contract (BOP does not operate RRCs but contracts it out to vendors). The main reason is that the BOP has a history of changing how it interprets FSA and when the people are awarded credits. Further, the Second Chance Act, which allows inmates to be placed in prerelease custody for up to a year, has not been fully utilized as a complement to FSA. The primary culprit in solving this issue has been caused by a lack of computer program to handle the calculation for those eligible for FSA.
Today the BOP announced the creation of the FSA Task Force, a strategic team initiative designed to expedite the transfer of eligible inmates to home confinement while directly supporting agency staff who have been unfairly burdened by outdated data systems.
BOP Director William Marshall III provided a statement about the task force that also addressed some of the past problems. “Staff were taking the blame for delays they didn’t cause,” said Director Marshall. “They [BOP case management staff] told me their systems weren’t always showing the right dates. Inmates and their families assumed they were ignoring my directive.”
Marshall went on to say that the vast majority of BOP staff wanted to do the right thing in fully implementing FSA but they simply needed the right tools and information to do their jobs. In referencing the BOP’s new, increased budget under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Marshall said, “we will be able to provide those needed tools.”
The FSA Task Force, based at the Bureau’s Designation and Sentence Computation Center (DSCC), will work in tandem with Residential Reentry Management (RRM) offices to ensure timely home confinement placements under the FSA and Second Chance Act (SCA). While long-term technical updates continue, this manual intervention is designed to deliver immediate relief.
Nobody at the BOP wants to keep a person longer in prison, nor do they want them leaving earlier than the law allows. In a conservative approach, there are situations when people are held longer in prison because there is so much uncertainty as to the real release date. Director Marshall’s FSA Task Force will provide a resource to front line case managers to support their decisions on community placement.
A memorandum from the BOP stated that the FSA Task Force will:
“This is a win for everyone,” said Rick Stover, Senior Deputy Assistant Director at DSCC and the person heading the FSA Task Force, “Inmates are returning to their communities sooner. Staff are no longer forced to rely on flawed data. And we’re freeing up RRC beds for others who are waiting.” It is the first time that the BOP has acknowledged that computer issues have kept the Agency from fully implementing FSA.
The FSA is a landmark piece of criminal justice reform legislation signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 21, 2018. Its goal is to reduce the federal prison population, enhance rehabilitation programs, and reduce recidivism among incarcerated individuals. It was also meant to save money, something that has not occurred yet according to the BOP’s latest annual FSA report. The law made significant changes to sentencing, prison conditions, and post-release supervision.
One of the most notable aspects of the First Step Act is its retroactive application to certain drug sentences, allowing eligible prisoners to petition for reduced sentences. It also allows inmates to earn time credits for participation in vocational training, educational programs, and other rehabilitative activities, potentially reducing the length of their prison sentences.
A BOP case manager is responsible for assessing and classifying inmates, developing reentry plans, monitoring progress, recommending transfers or release programs, maintaining records, and liaising with families, legal representatives, and external agencies to support inmates’ rehabilitation and reintegration into society. It is a job with immense responsibility and one that has a huge influence on the amount of time an inmate spends in a prison institution.
BOP case managers are the primary people responsible for fully implementing the FSA. As the steward over the life of inmates, case managers play a critical role in identifying inmates who not only deserve community placement but will also do well once placed there. As inmates come to the end of their sentence, it is the case manager who can place them in the community for up to a year, though there have been reports of employees not willing to maximize the amount of time a person spends in the community.
Director Marshall and Deputy Director Josh Smith have recently been touring a number of facilities where they have spoken with staff and inmates. They have both heard these same reports of case managers not having the tools to do their job and also some pushback that some have given when it comes to returning inmates to society sooner. Marshall stated, "But let me be absolutely clear – where we find that 1% [those BOP employees not committed to his directives] who weren’t doing their jobs with integrity, we will find them and hold them accountable because accountability goes both ways.”
Hugh Hurwitz was Acting BOP Director when the FSA passed and was critical in the early days of defining the BOP’s initiatives to implement the law. Hurwitz praised the Task Force, stating, “It is great to see BOP moving forward to fully implement FSA. This is one big step toward moving low risk individuals out of prison and into community placement as the law calls for.”
Hurwitz is right in that the inmates slotted for community placement are “low risk” by the BOP’s own risk assessment tools. Most of the inmates who qualify for the program are minimum and low security who have relatively short sentences for non-violent crimes. Having a person serve a portion of their sentence in the community is not something new and has been used for decades by the BOP. However, the Agency has been slow to move inmates after the initial law was codified with the Final Rule in the Federal Register in January 2022.
One measure of success of the FSA Task Force will be both the number of people that are moved to community custody and how fast they do that.
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