What It Looks Like And What To Expect
Usually, before your loved one is ready to leave federal prison, a home inspection from the United States Probation Office will take place. They will need to verify a few things about the home that the soon-to-be-back-inmate will occupy.
Once the inmate tells the prison the address at which they intend to live, it will be forwarded to the probation office. Eventually, a probation officer, will visit the residence – without warning or an appointment. It can sometimes be an headache trying to have someone available to see the probation officer.
When they make contact at the home, they will want to know who the inmate will be living with, and what their relationship is to the former inmate. Next, they will want to verify that the environment will be productive and conducive to re-rentry.
Next, the most obvious – they will want to see, with their own eyes, that the premises isn’t a haven for drugs, alcohol, and/or guns. No one will be going home to a trap house.
They will also need to verify that the people the former inmate will be living with aren’t felons themselves, and aren’t likely to commit more crimes.
How intense the probation officer is going to be about these things varies on an individual basis. There’s no quantifiable checklist you can find online to see what a probation officer is working with – it’s pretty much entirely based on their feelings.
Either way, the probation officer will have the final say in any and all matters.
Typically, the home visit from probation occurs between 90 to 120 days before the inmate moves on to begin halfway house placement, home confinement, or their term of supervised release. Don’t count on this as a hard fact – it could be longer or shorter. Strict timelines are never characteristic of the Department of Justice.