BOP Would Walk 500 Miles… – Update for October 3, 2025

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME

One of several pervasive First Step Act myths I hear regularly from inmates is that the BOP is required to place them in facilities located within 500 driving miles from their homes. FSA sponsors trumpeted this as a great gift to prisoners when FSA passed nearly 7 years ago, but – as always – the fine print is what counts. And the fine print has more holes than a window screen.

In 18 USC § 3621(b), Congress said that “subject to bed availability, the prisoner’s security designation, the prisoner’s programmatic needs, the prisoner’s mental and medical health needs, any request made by the prisoner related to faith-based needs, recommendations of the sentencing court, and other security concerns,” the BOP shall place the prisoner in a facility as close as practicable to the prisoner’s primary residence, and to the extent practicable, in a facility within 500 driving miles of that residence.”  Any BOP manager whose had his or her morning coffee can find another “security concern” exception sufficient to place a prisoner anywhere there’s an opening.

Now, the Dept of Justice Inspector General has reported that the BOP has been dogging it. In an audit released last week, the IG said that the BOP’s inmate placement data showed that a third of the inmates the audit evaluated were over 500 miles from their release residence on September 28, 2024. What’s more, despite the law, the BOP continued to use a straight-line, or “as the crow flies” calculation instead of driving miles, resulting in an undercalculation for the inmates evaluated of about 8% (8,600 people).

Additionally, the IG found that out of a sample of 100 inmates (placed both more and less than 500 miles from home), for 26% the auditors could not determine the reason the inmates were placed where they were, “particularly when there were comparable facilities closer to the inmate’s residence.”

Not that it matters. Under § 3621(b), BOP designation decisions are “not reviewable by any court.”

Dept of Justice Office of Inspector General, Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Place Inmates Close to Home (Report 25-083, September 25, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root