First Step Act Introduced The PATTERN Score
PATTERN in the Federal Bureau of Prisons stands for the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Esimated Risks and Needs.
It’s used when referring to an inmate’s PATTERN score, which is meant to calculate someone’s risk of recidivism.
Recidivism, of course, is the likelihood that an inmate will return to prison by committing further crimes.
The PATTERN tool was created by President Trump in summer of 2019, some months after the First Step Act was signed into law.
But, the PATTERN score isn’t some flippant government tool. It ranks every inmate in federal prison based on things like their age, current and past convictions, their criminal history, their level of education, how many classes they’ve taken in prison, whether they’ve taken a drug education course, including RDAP, and a few other things.
All of those components weigh into the inmate’s PATTERN score. The lower the PATTERN score, the less likely that inmate is deemed to be a recidivism risk.
Elements like completing classes, finishing RDAP, and aging into higher age ranges will decrease an inmate’s PATTERN score.
According to the First Step Act, inmates in Federal Prison with a high or medium recidivism level based on the PATTERN score are supposed to earn 10 days per month for participating in evidence based recidivism reduction programs.
Then, inmates with a low or minimum PATTERN score earn 15 days per month off their sentence.
Now, these credits accumulate, but they aren’t actually applied as a sentence reduction or sooner RRC placement until an inmate reaches a low or minimum PATTERN score calculation.
We have been told that accumulated Federal Time Credits (FTC)s will soon be applied to medium and high recidivism risk inmates as well.
Of course, if anyone is past their conditional release date, we can help: 407-434-0175
Check out the PATTERN scorecard below:
