WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 01: Alice Marie Johnson, who had her sentence commuted by President Donald … [+]
President Donald Trump is expected to secure the confirmation of Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General, became Trump’s nominee after Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration due to insufficient support ahead of his confirmation hearing. Bondi’s primary task will be to reshape the Department of Justice (DOJ), a frequent target of Trump’s criticism during his campaign. Among the DOJ’s priorities will be the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), one of the largest budgetary demands within the department and one fraught with operational challenges.
The BOP is facing significant financial pressures. Despite the inmate population decreasing by 50,000 over the past 12 years, costs have continued to rise due to increasing healthcare expenses and the maintenance of aging facilities. While the BOP requested an additional $3 billion beyond its FY2024 budget of $8.3 billion, Trump has made it clear that no funding increases are forthcoming.
In anticipation of these cuts, BOP Director Colette Peters has already closed FCI Dublin and six male prison camps, signaling the likelihood of further closures and consolidations. These measures aim to address the gap between operational needs and available resources.
As Trump returns, he will see that his hallmark criminal justice reform law, The First Step Act, is still struggling to gain traction. The BOP has accomplished much under Director Peters to implement the program but there are still problems. There is insufficient halfway house and many case managers, the primary BOP employees implementing the program, remain confused over the exact interpretation of the law. This has led to frustration by staff and anger with prisoners who believe they should be serving more of their sentence in the community.
The First Step Act reduces costs for the BOP on two fronts; 1) it reduces sentences by up to a year for thousands of inmates and 2) it increases the amount of time minimum security inmates spend in the community and away from expensive institutions. The CARES Act, also enacted under Trump during COVID, allowed many older and sicker prisoners to serve their time in the community. The program was such a success that Joe Biden issued clemencies to over 1,500 prisoners who were on home confinement under the CARES Act.
Trump will likely be frustrated that more has not been done on the First Step Act since his first term in office but in order to implement it further, he will need to add more case managers in the BOP. Some case managers I speak to tell me that they have case loads of over 100 prisoners, stretching their time that could be used on focusing on reentry plans and the transition back to the community. The purpose of the First Step Act was to put more minimum security offenders back home sooner but that has not occurred to the level it could. More prisoners in the community means less reliance on aging facilities that Congress seems unwilling to fund to bring up to acceptable standards.
Once more case managers are focused on working with prisoners on a return to the community, attention must shift to places to put them. The BOP has stated that they are near capacity on the approximately 11,000 halfway house beds they currently have under contract. Halfway houses provide shelter and beds for those returning to the community but they also provide monitoring services for those on home confinement. The BOP has acknowledged that expanding halfway house space is a priority, they also acknowledge that the time to bring these facilities on line is lengthy, sometimes taking years.
One solution to this is to use existing halfway house facilities managed by private corrections companies. The Biden administration stopped the use of private prisons but it continued to use private prisons for halfway house placement. While there are non-profits that also run BOP halfway houses, commercial companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group have the ability to quickly expand monitoring of those on home confinement. This would move more people out of expensive prison camps and into prerelease custody, a much lower cost option.
The BOP’s current security classification system may also warrant reform. The agency categorizes inmates as minimum, low, medium, or high security, with additional Public Safety Factors (PSFs) influencing placement. For instance:
- Non-U.S. citizens are often excluded from minimum-security camps, even if they pose no security risk.
- Sex offenders, including those convicted of non-contact offenses like possession of illegal materials, are similarly pushed to higher-security facilities.
Revisiting these classifications could allow low-risk inmates, such as elderly offenders or those planning to return to their home countries, to serve their sentences in less restrictive environments.
Under current BOP policy, FSA credits—which can reduce sentences by up to a year—are only awarded once inmates reach their designated institutions. This delay, often spanning weeks or months, deprives inmates of time credits they could earn during pre-designation custody. Courts have begun intervening, awarding credits from the date of sentencing, but the BOP has yet to adopt this practice nationwide. Updating this policy would align with judicial precedent and incentivize participation in programming earlier.
The DOJ should provide clearer guidance to the BOP on maximizing prerelease custody under both the First Step Act and the Second Chance Act. The latter, signed into law by President George W. Bush, allows inmates to spend up to a year in prerelease custody. While the BOP claims to “stack” FSA credits with Second Chance Act eligibility, halfway house capacity issues have prevented full implementation. Addressing this bottleneck is essential for realizing the cost-saving and rehabilitative potential of these laws.
Trump could work with Congress to broaden the First Step Act’s applicability. Currently, the law excludes 68 categories of offenses, including:
- Sex offenses
- Terrorism charges
- Threats against government officials
- Certain gun charges, such as those under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)
While some may argue that this group should not get a benefit of programming under the First Step Act, it is this group of offenders that most need programming prior to returning to society. Additionally, prosecutors’ broad use of § 924(c) charges has rendered many inmates ineligible for FSA incentives or programming, such as the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP). Allowing the BOP more discretion to include certain excluded offenses could save taxpayers millions while encouraging broader participation in programs that reduce recidivism.
The RDAP program, which offers up to a year off an inmate’s sentence, has proven effective in reducing recidivism. However, eligibility restrictions—such as the requirement for a documented substance abuse issue—exclude many who could benefit. Expanding RDAP to a broader pool of inmates would enhance its rehabilitative impact and generate additional cost savings.
The BOP’s challenges are unlikely to be solved through increased funding alone. Instead, the focus should be on fully implementing existing programs like the First Step Act and RDAP, revising outdated policies that hinder efficiency and working with Congress to make targeted legislative adjustments.