Enticing But Evanescent BOP Cheese – Update for June 20, 2025

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BOP DANGLES THE FIRST STEP CHEESE AGAIN

So, let’s see… the Federal Bureau of Prisons first proposed that a prisoner would have to spend eight hours in one of its program classrooms in order to earn one day of First Step Act time credit (FTC) to reduce her sentence or get an extra day of halfway house. Then it reversed course, holding that an inmate would receive one day of FTC credit for every day she was enrolled in the course.

Then the BOP said that when a prisoner’s FTC credits equaled the number of days left his sentence, he would be sent to a halfway house. But wait, that was only when the halfway house finally said he could come, however long that delay might be.

The BOP said that a prisoner was entitled to as much halfway house or home confinement time as she could earn in FTCs, and on top of that, she could get up to a full year in halfway house under the Second Chance Act. But then the agency said that no one could get more than 60 days in halfway house under the SCA, no matter what the law said. But then, the BOP said that was wrong, and prisoners could get a full year under the SCA. After that, the BOP decided that any prisoner with a full year’s worth of FTCs was ineligible to get any SCA time in a halfway house.

Got it?

Not yet, because in its latest policy reversal/about face/ tweak, the BOP this week decided that its last pronouncement was “inoperative,” as Nixon White House spokesman Ron Ziegler famously said. Now, BOP Director William K. Marshall III has announced “the dawn of a new era,” a restoration of “integrity and fiscal responsibility to the federal prison system.” This of course is a tacit admission that integrity and fiscal responsibility have been wanting at the BOP, akin to the emperor acknowledging that yes, indeed, he is naked as a jaybird.

Marshall said in a press release that henceforth

• FTCs and SCA eligibility will be treated as cumulative and stackable, “allowing qualified individuals to serve meaningful portions of their sentences in home confinement when appropriate.”

• The BOP’s Conditional Placement Dates — “based on projected credit accrual and statutory timelines — will drive timely referrals, not bureaucratic inertia.”

• Stable housing and “community reintegration readiness, not past employment,” will guide placement decisions.

• Halfway house bed capacity will not be a barrier to home confinement placement when a prisoner is statutorily eligible and “appropriate for such placement.”

The press release quotes Marshall as saying the new policies “mark[] a bold shift from years of inaction toward a policy rooted in public safety, fiscal responsibility, and second chances. By empowering the agency to release more people who are ready to return to society, we not only save taxpayer dollars, we strengthen families, ease overcrowding, and build safer communities.”

The latest policy flip-flop comes on the heels of Marshall’s appointment, the week before, that BOP veteran Richard Stover has been appointed “to serve in furthering the implementation of the First Step Act.”

That announcement did not specify Stover’s title, place in the chain of command, or precise duties. Nevertheless, in the six plus years since passage of First Step, the BOP has not designated any management-level employee as being responsible for BOP compliance with the law. Marshall said that appointment of Stover to oversee First Step implementation and Josh Smith as Deputy Director “reflect a critical investment in strengthening our leadership infrastructure to better support staff, improve operations, and fully implement the First Step Act—the cornerstone of our path to safer facilities and stronger outcomes.”

Stover has 28 years with the Bureau, starting as a case manager, rising to Warden and ultimately serving as a Senior Deputy Assistant Director. Most recently, Stover ran the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie. Marshall said in his announcement of the appointment that Stover’s “work developing the First Step Act Time Credits policy and his leadership at institutions like FCI Danbury demonstrate his deep expertise in executing complex reforms with clarity and precision.”

All of this is great stuff, but like Charlie Brown with Lucy holding the football, we’ve been here before. It has always been baffling to me that the BOP, chronically broke and understaffed, wasn’t hustling people with accumulated FTCs into inexpensive home confinement as quickly as possible under 18 USC 3624(g)(2). Under the SCA, the BOP can only place a prisoner in home confinement for 10% of an inmate’s sentence (up to six months maximum). But 100% of a prisoner’s FTCs can be used for home confinement.

Skeptics (and heaven knows I am one) note that even the press release contains just enough wiggle room to let the BOP take away everything it has given. Home confinement will be allowed for “qualified individuals,” but who is “qualified” and under what criteria (and decided by whom) is opaque. After all, prisoners must be “appropriate for such placement,” whatever that means.

For that matter, promising that statutory eligibility “will drive timely referrals, not bureaucratic inertia,” has a chicken-in-every-pot flavor to it. Just like no one asked where all those chickens were going to come from, the idea that people are going to go to halfway houses that won’t accept them has a delusional quality to it that matches its lofty blandishment.

Walter Pavlo, writing in Forbes, observes:

The memorandum is going to be well received by inmates and their families. However, the BOP has a history of slowly implementing programs that favor inmates but quickly adopting restrictions that keep them in prison longer. The Trump administration continues to be one that looks for results among those appointed to serve and it will be up to BOP leadership to deliver on this one as the directive is clear. It is the implementation of this directive that will be the next challenge.

Challenge, indeed. My take on it is a little less diplomatic: The cheese has been dangled in front of the inmate mice again. Let’s see how soon it is moved this time.

BOP, Bureau of Prisons Issues Directive to Fully Implement First Step Act and Second Chance Act (June 17, 2025)

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Retracts Rule, Truly Expands Halfway Houses (June 17, 2025)

BOP, Message from the Director (June 5, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root