Category: News
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I Was An Inmate In Federal Prison During 2 Government Shutdowns The government shutdown today October 1, 2025 which isn’t new there have been 5 government shutdowns in the last 10 years and I was personally an inmate in federal prison during two of them. The most notable was in 2018 which was featured on…
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What’s The Problem Now? By now, everyone knows that Federal Prison Director Billy Marshall issued a memorandum back in June and posted it on the Federal Bureau of Prisons website. This memo directed case managers in the BOP to stack First Step Act (FSA) and Second Chance Act (SCA) benefits to provide inmates the maximum…
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Bad To The Bone Yes, that’s right. Superbowl Champion running back and kickoff returner Wendell Smallwood has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for stealing $645,000 in a PPP fraud scheme. Smallwood was playing for the Philadelphia Eagles when they made it to the Superbowl in 2017, but apparently, his career in football…
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Low Level Offenders May See Their Firearm Rights Restored Soon That’s right. President Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and the Justice Department are working on restoring the firearm rights of some convicted felons under 925(c). Under federal law, anyone convicted of a felony, meaning a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, is automatically…
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In response to an Executive Order from President Trump signed earlier this year, today BOP Director William K Marshall III terminated the Master Agreement with Council of Prisons Locals 33 (CPL-33) the union that represents federal prison correctional officers. Many feel that this is a welcomed change for inmates and some staff who’ve witnessed first…
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Evidence Has Shown For a Decade That Longer Sentences Don’t Reduce Crime On Monday Lisa Legal moved this story about new legislation proposed in Congress to combat crime in Washington DC. The world has seen that President Trump has moved the National Guard into our nation’s capital, and 4 other United States cities to help…
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This Follows Officers Being Exposed To Dangerous Substance We just received work that three Bureau of Prisons correctional officers at the low security federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, had to seek medical attention last Friday. They were exposed to a fentanyl-like substance in the Grandville unit. The unit officer, along with two officers who…
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It’s Aimed At Making Reentry Easier Representatives Barry Moore (AL-R) and Herb Conway (NJ-D) have introduced a bipartisan bill to solve a big problem. It’s called the Bureau of Prisons Release Card ID Act. The idea is to give inmates, upon their release, a federal ID card that will be nationally recognized and valid for…
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Cell Phone Jammers Will Be Voted On This Month The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to vote on a new policy change on September 30th, which may allow prisons (federal and state) to install cell phone jammers around their institutions to prevent contraband cell phones from making calls out of prisons. To this day,…
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U.S. Sentencing Guidelines And The ACCA You may remember earlier this year when the United States Sentencing Commission proposed two key amendments. The first affected the armed career criminal enhancement and whether or not they could use state offenses as a predicate to either this enhancement or the 851 enhancement. The other proposed amendment dealt…
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This Call Is From A Federal Prison. You Will Not Be Charged For This Call. Starting this Tuesday, August 19th, inmates are purported to once again have access to 510 total minutes per month. If they’re FSA eligible and programming to their FSA needs, they will be given 300 free minutes per month with the…
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Trump Downgrading Marijuana? USSC Says No No Retro and More When I was an inmate in Federal Prison I was a jailhouse lawyer and during that time (2018-2024) me and several other inmates relied on the information provided weekly from Jermey Gordon and Lisa Legal. We always knew we could trust those two sources over…
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Free Commissary & An Even Bigger Prize Coming! At the beginning of July, we announced that three lucky winners would get a free month’s worth of commissary on their books, or their loved one’s books, if you follow Federal Prison Tips on Tiktok and/or Instagram and “like” as many posts as you can. Yesterday, we…
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A Recap On Our Phone Policy Many families have reached out to say they’ve tried calling our office and nobody answers. Let’s make sure you’re calling the right number – we have 11 full time employees here at Federal Prison Tips, all of whom have been to federal prison. Several of them answer our phones…
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Has The Day Finally Come? Have you heard the rumor that some felons may see their Second Amendment rights restored? Well, it’s 100% true. President Donald J. Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pardon Attorney Ed Martin are teaming up together to discuss, reinstitute, and revitalize U.S.C. 925(c), which outlines the pathway in which non-violent…
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Clearing Up The Confusion Just how many clemencies and pardons will President Donald Trump’s pardon office grant? There seems to be some confusion about this, even though there was a big story about it a few weeks ago. Joe Biden granted 6,600 clemencies before he left office on January 20, 2025. President Trump vowed to…
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How Good Will A Lawyer Perform That Isn’t Being Paid At All Now that DOGE has completely imploded what does this mean for government oversight? Federal Prison Tips has received documentation confirming that CJA Appointed attorneys for federal defendants facing federal prison that can’t use the Federal Defender’s Office will not be paid until October…
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Former CO Blows The Whistle & Gets Punished Apparently Ms. Smith, the unit manager at Yazoo Federal Prison Low in Yazoo, Mississippi, isn’t the only corrupt staff member at the complex. Former correctional officer Fred Chambliss from Yazoo, Mississippi, has gone to the FBI to report the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Department of…
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Cash App Payments, Legality, & If We Accept Them You’ve probably heard from other TikTok creators in the prison space that you can go to prison for sending or receiving cash app payments from somebody in prison, whether it’s state or federal prison. The truth is, there’s no actual law on the books in regards…
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One Singular Line Item For The BOP As you’ve probably heard by now, the Big Beautiful Bill was passed this week in Congress and now will be enacted into law. It has a lot of tax provisions and political consequences we won’t get into. The one thing it gives the federal prison system is $5,000,000,000.…