As has been written here many times over the past three years, the First Step Act has gone through several iterations and setbacks in implementation. The First Step Act (FSA) drastically changed the way federal prisoners could reduce their sentence and increase the amount of time they spend in the community at the end of their sentence.
Signed into law in December 2018, FSA allowed federal prisoners, mostly minimum security with no history of violence, to earn credits through participation in certain programs and productive activities. Upon completion of classes, prisoners can earn up to a year off of the imposed sentence and can earn other credits to serve their sentence in prerelease custody (halfway house or home confinement). While this sounds straight forward, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has evolved its position on FSA policy and the way that it calculates the credits. The result is that many prisoners have stayed in institutions longer than necessary and one can imagine the frustration.
Frustration has boiled over at some institutions where prisoners are asking case managers a simple question, “When am I going home?” Just after Labor Day, the BOP put out guidance on yet another new calculation tool and that too encountered problems. As expected, tensions were running high as the new calculation sheets showed dates when prisoners could leave the institution but case managers had a difficult time explaining them. The calculation sheets were then pulled back by staff and prisoners again had no visibility into when they were leaving the institution.
In Montgomery Alabama, a stand alone prison camp that is usually pretty laid back, prisoners decided on a bit of civil disobedience and opted to skip eating in the dining hall. While eating a meal in the cafeteria is not mandatory, organizing protests are. According to a statement from the Office of Public Affairs’ Scott Taylor, 27 prisoners from Montgomery were transferred for disciplinary reasons to FCI Atlanta pending an investigation and disciplinary hearing.
Taylor said in his statement, “On Wednesday, September 11, 2024, at approximately 10:30 a.m., numerous incarcerated individuals at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama, chose to remain in their housing units during the scheduled lunch meal. As a precautionary measure, the institution had been placed on modified operations status. FPC Montgomery employees carefully monitored the situation, and the facility returned to normal operations on Monday, September 16, 2024. “ Those 27 men have now been in disciplinary housing in Atlanta for 5 weeks with no sign of their returning back to FPC Montgomery.
BOP’s Director, Colette Peters, has made tremendous strides in implementing FSA and realizes that there are still challenges. In July 2024, Peters released a video that went into more detail about how FSA was being implemented. That video, while informative, was misleading on a number of important factors. First, it detailed a program that would maximize the amount of time prisoners would be allowed to stay in the community at the end of their sentence. Secondly, it stated that the credits were front-loaded, projected, so that prisoners could see not only when they were going home but when they could be placed in community custody. Unfortunately, what was not said was that there is a crisis in halfway house capacity. So even if prisoners qualified for community placement, there was no place to stay.
There are reports of other prison camps protesting in an effort to get clarity on FSA. Those caught up in these acts of civil disobedience are subject to being placed in restrictive housing for weeks or months, losing good time and likely being moved to another facility. This is sad state of affairs came about because prisoners were simply fed up with the lack of information they have been receiving. There needs to be some compassion and understanding of the level of frustration that prisoners are feeling as they wait at institutions hoping to be freed sooner, rather than later.
It is not known how long the men will be held or the extent of their punishment. Their loved ones have had limited contact with them and there is no certainty as to when they will return to a prison where they can visit with them again.
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