US Prison Commission publishes overview of BOP programs

The US Sentencing Commission has two interactive resources provides an summary of specific Federal Bureau of Prisons programs. These resources are for individuals who wish to learn more about how the BOP administers the Residential Drug Abuse Treatment Program and implements the earned time credit system of the First Step Act of 2018.

According to the USSC, there have been 8,474 inmates eligible to take part in RDAP in 2010, the study period. According to the BOP, RDAP is the agency’s “most intensive” drug treatment program and requires participants to receive treatment in a special unit that houses only RDAP participants. The program lasts roughly nine months while the person is incarcerated in an establishment and 4 to 6 months after the person is placed in detention facilities (halfway house and house arrest). For many who complete this system, there’s an extra incentive that reduces prison sentences by up to 1 12 months and maximizes detention facility placement.

RDAP is one in every of the BOP’s most successful programs and is touted as a way of reducing recidivism. According to the USSC study, those that accomplished RDAP had a lower recidivism rate than inmates who didn’t complete or take part in this system. Less than half of those that accomplished RDAP (48.2%) reoffended throughout the eight-year commentary period of this study, in comparison with 68% of RDAP-eligible nonparticipants. The BOP’s eligibility criteria for this system are documentation from the 12 months before arrest from a probation officer, parole officer, or social employee confirming the defendant’s drug problem, and a physician or drug treatment provider diagnosing the offender with a drug addiction. The individual could also qualify in the event that they had two or more convictions for driving under the influence or driving while intoxicated within the five years before arrest.

Stephanie Forrest, who retired from the BOP and worked as a case manager in an RDAP program at FCI Edgefield, is now an authority at Prisonology [the firm I manage]said that it just isn’t at all times easy to get into this system. “I believe the program is successful because it makes productive use of the time in prison,” said Forrest. “I have seen a big difference in the way the program participants evaluate their behavior after the program.” The statistics reflect this.

According to the Government Accountability Office, a part of the USSC’s interactive report, in 2021, the BOP released over 35,000 people from federal prison after they accomplished their sentence. Approximately 45 percent of individuals released from federal prison are rearrested or return to a federal prison inside 3 years of their release. On December 21, 2018, the First Step Act was enacted, which incorporates certain requirements for the Department of Justice and the BOP to scale back the recidivism rate amongst people incarcerated in federal prisons. It also provided an incentive for prisoners to earn time without work their sentence by participating in productive activities or certain programs. Many of the beneficiaries of the First Step Act are nonviolent offenders, who’re the least prone to reoffend. The BOP assigns a risk factor for future recidivism and violence probabilities. To qualify for First Step Act credits, the prisoner must reveal a minimal or low likelihood of recidivism or violence, as determined by a PATTERN Score.

The BOP had problems implementing the First Step Act and NBC News As recently reported, many persons are staying in prison longer than they need to, either on account of errors or the BOP’s own interpretation of the law. Although improvements have been made, the BOP continues to have some problems implementing this system. According to its 2024 Report on the First Step Actthe effectiveness of this system in reducing recidivism shall be highlighted in next 12 months’s report in order that more data might be collected. In next 12 months’s review and revalidation report, the study sample will include a cohort of people released between October 1, 2019, and September 30, 2020. This period is critical for 2 reasons. First, the review and revalidation analyses conducted so far have all been conducted on pre-deployment cohorts of people, which was mandatory to acquire three-year follow-up periods in relation to recidivism.

The USSC is anticipated to offer further guidance on using reintegration services reminiscent of halfway houses and residential detention in its upcoming 2024 recommendations.