In the wake of the new BOP director’s press releases and internal memorandum directing staff to maximize community-placement opportunities, we continue to receive complaints from people who are past their home detention eligibility date yet sitting in K2-laden residential reentry centers (RRCs). Another situation that is still depressingly common is individuals still in prison who are long past their RRC eligibility date.
Anyone who has closely followed BOP issues over the years became quickly aware that the only news in the BOP director’s press release was that he stated that, “Residential re-entry center bed availability/capacity shall not be a barrier to home confinement when an individual is statutory-eligible and appropriate for such placement.” That’s a big deal because, up until now, that was the main impediment to the application of FSA (First Step Act) pre-release credits. Congress underfunded the First Step Act from the beginning, so contract quotas limited capacity in most parts of the country – leaving people in prison and RRCs longer than intended. We can only hope the $500 million that was allocated to the cancelled Letcher, KY, prison will be diverted to expand the RRC/HC infrastructure, rather than funneling it to the reopening of Alcatraz! That would be true leadership.
Something else that is concerning and requires leadership is an issue related to the calculation of home detention eligibility dates (HDED). I never thought about this before or received previous complaints, but a recent complaint indicates it may be a new issue. The individual provided the corresponding SENTRY and FSA time credit-assessment forms, and, after review, I am certain there is problem issue with the calculation. In this case, the BOP determined the HDED based on the SENTRY-projected FSA release date rather than on the conditional release date on the assessment form. This calculation reduced the home detention allotment from 10% of a person’s sentence (or six months, whichever is less) to approximately 3%. In other words, this individual, who has a 30-month sentence, should have already transferred to home confinement. SENTRY, however, reflects an August 29 HDED due to the failure to apply FSA credits. That’s yet another FSA glitch to add to the previous ones!
Context and history
Sentence computations have always projected the six-month/10% HDED using the beginning of incarceration as the starting point same as the calculation of the good-conduct-time (GCT) projected release date. Before the First Step Act became law, there was only one projected release date in SENTRY and that was based on GCT (full term minus 15%). Historically, the GCT projected release date never changed unless a person lost time for misconduct or there was a sentence modification. However, after the FSA went into effect, the GCT release date was renamed “statutory release” in SENTRY, and the projected release date is now determined by the FSA – but without reflecting future monthly application of time credits.
This situation could be corrected without a lot of work. The BOP should simply include conditional HDED in the FSA time-credit computation, so a person could go to home confinement when they have six months left or 10% of their sentence.
I am hoping the BOP is not intentionally restricting eligibility because it has been given broad discretion on these issues. Let us not forget that in the past, the BOP held to its guns and insisted that 15 % GCT be based on a person’s net (full term minus good conduct time) instead of the gross sentence and it prevailed at the Supreme Court level. Thus, the only way to get relief is from changes in future legislation.
