Facility Operations

One of the main impediments to effective BOP operations is its inability to update its policies on a timely basis. For instance, the policy on halfway houses (residential reentry centers, or RRCs) has not been updated since before the First Step Act of 2018 was passed. According to BOP regulations, policy modifications should be made via formal “change notices” or temporary “operations memoranda.” Instead, however, agency personnel often simply issue internal memos. The resulting lack of consistency and transparency was recently documented by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General. 

Unit Management Manual

The Unit Management Manual,  updated in April 2024, is essential to understand.

The April revision included some encouraging modifications, summarized below. However, we are skeptical that unit managers will actually attend team meeting, and we do not expect release plans to be processed 27 months prior to an AIC’s exit from prison. That would indeed be a pleasant surprise, if so.

The latest revisions that we believe are most critical to note are:

• Requires unit managers to chair all initial classification and program reviews.
• Specifies timeframes for conducting program reviews for individuals in the Special Housing Unit (SHU), outside hospital or out on writ.
• Requires unit managers, case managers and correctional counselors to be accessible to AICs in their assigned unit daily, during their scheduled hours of work. In addition, AICs held in the SHU, Health Services or other restricted units (such as Secure Mental Health Unit), where staff are not as accessible, must be visited daily by a member of the unit team.
• Mandates that the unit manager continuously maintain an up-to-date schedule of unit programs, services and activities and post it in a location easily accessible to employees and AICs. The schedule must include the following (when applicable): staff schedules, including holiday coverage; town hall meetings,  unit open houses (with hours) and unit-based counseling groups; and classification, program review and unit team meetings.
• Stipulates that AICs should be provided copies of their PATTERN, SPARC-13 and FSA time-credit assessments.  
• Instructs that in their PATTERN scoring, AICs should be marked as “no need” for drug programs if they completed RDAP or NRDAP more than five year previously and have not been found guilty by a disciplinary hearing officer of violating code 112 (use of narcotics, marijuana, drugs, alcohol, intoxicants or related paraphernalia, not prescribed by a medical provider). 
• Requires release planning to be complete 27 months prior for AICs scheduled to go to a district other than where they were sentenced, then sent to their proposed supervising authority. The release plan should include their sentence computation data, judgment and commitment order, presentence investigation report, final progress report and supervision release plan. 
• Instructs the unit team to assist AICs, as necessary, to resolve pending charges, warrants and/or detainers. Examples of this assistance includes facilitating legal calls, verifying dates of incarceration  and/or developing a payment plan to resolve court obligations.  If updated information is received, the unit team should inform the Records Office .

Prison capacity

A document, known as a “Population Report,” is used by BOP designators and facility staff to monitor institutional populations throughout the country. It includes the rated capacity of each facility (total capacity minus the infirmary, etc.), their target populations, and the population in specialized units such as those for RDAP, BRAVE, SKILLS and CHALLENGE, etc.

It is important to know the target population of each facility compared to the current population, which is regularly updated on the BOP website.  The more a facility exceeds its target population, the less likely it is for a resident to obtain a transfer or initial designation to that prison. When people are recommended for transfer to crowded facilities, the Designation and Sentence Computation Center (DSCC) is authorized to place them anywhere else for population management purposes.  

This document should be read in conjunction with the Program Statement on Rated Capacities. Note that many facilities are not in compliance with this directive given the standard on square footage, etc. Before the “tough on crime” era and determinate sentencing, BOP facilities abided by this directive which allows for significant single cell housing.  

Prison maintenance

There has been massive underfunding of facility maintenance, as documented in this 2023 report from the Office of the Inspector General. Its conclusion: “All 123 of the BOP’s institutions require maintenance, with a large and growing list of unfunded modernization and repair needs, and three of these institutions are in such critical stages of disrepair that they are fully or partially closed. The DOJ OIG found that the BOP’s efforts to address these issues were negatively impacted by two major factors: a mismatch between available and needed funding, and the absence of a well-defined infrastructure strategy.”

Additional resources

• Prison beds:  Facility staff have the authority and capability to specify, when medically necessary, that a particular AIC be given a lower bunk or a specialty mattress or pillow, as illustrated by this document from the Butner facility in North Carolina.