The Federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, released a town hall video today July 15, 2024 on the First Step Act of 2024. The video highlights what the FSA is , how inmates are assessed, how credits are earned and how they are redeemed.
One of the biggest questions and debates across the BOP amongst “adults in custody” is what happens after the first 365 credits are redeemed.
Cooper went on to explain, in a clip we threw on our TikTok that as the law is written, the first 365 days of credit go towards supervised release. This effectively gets an eligible, credit earning inmate out up to a year early.
The rest of the time is what’s been in question. The law clearly states that the time is applied to RRC, which is halfway house or home confinement. Cooper says in the clip that is exactly the case.
What he didn’t say, was that there is a limit to how much RRC time an inmate can earn, because there’s not. He said “the rest of the credits”. He did add a caveat that it’s based on sentence remaining (obviously) and a white box in the corner of the video proclaimed that it’s based on “bed space”.
The Bed Space Argument
RRC encompasses both home confinement and halfway house. Many of our viewers and clients are on pre-trial home confinement pending trial, sentencing or self-report. One of the conditions of that home confinement is that a United States Probation Officer had to approve the housing arrangement. In those cases, there should be nothing hindering the ability to go back to that home after serving time in federal prison.
Specifically, there is no “bed space” problem for those adults in custody who have an already approved home to go to for home confinement. Halfway houses could argue that they don’t have the capacity to monitor additional inmates on home confinement, however there is a conduit under the United States Probation office that would be able to monitor those inmates in those cases.
As to the actual halfway house bed space issue, many inmates report that when they get to halfway houses that were supposedly “full” there are plenty of open beds.
In addition, the First Step Act requires the BOP to make accomodations for all these extra inmates with redeemable credits towards RRC. This calls for the BOP contracting with more facilities and better utilizing the home confinement mechanism.
All in all, eligible inmates have been waiting for an official word from the BOP and that word came today.
Many of our clients serve 18-24 months less time in prison, even after sentencing, to learn more email info@federalprisontips.com or use our contact page here.
