Compassionate release after FIRST STEP: Should many thousands of ill and elderly federal inmates now be seeking reduced imprisonment in court?

In this post on Friday, I mentioned that I consider the statutory changes to the so-called compassionate release provisions in federal law to the "sleeper provisions" of the FIRST STEP Act.  This four-page FAMM document, titled "Compassionate Release and the First Step Act: Then and Now," reviews some basics of the changes made by the FIRST STEP Act, and on page 3 one finds this account of what I think is a very big deal:  "The most significant change to compassionate release is that the Act provides prisoners the power to file a motion for compassionate release if they can demonstrate they have tried and failed to convince the BOP to do so for them.  Before passage of the First Step Act a denial by the BOP was not appealable."  In other words, courts rather than the BOP are now ultimately to decide who may merit a reduced "term of imprisonment" under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

To focus on the statutory language, prior to the FIRST STEP Act, a federal judge under 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) needed to first receive a "motion of the Director of the Bureau of Prisons" in order to have authority to "reduce the term of imprisonment [based on] extraordinary and compelling reasons [that] warrant such a reduction."  The BOP was notoriously stingy about filing such motions (with only about .01% of inmates benefiting), and the program was, in the words of the Justice Department's Inspector General, "poorly managed and implemented inconsistently."  Now persons in federal prisons still need to request the support of BOP for such a motion, but courts can now consider a sentence reduction "upon motion of the defendant" based on a claim that "extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction" if BOP refuses move the court or 30 days after making the request.  Importantly, the US Sentencing Commission has set forth a (reasonably expansive) policy statement concerning criteria for compassionate release via USSG 1B1.13, but it will now be fundamentally the province of the federal courts to develop jurisprudence on what should be deemed "extraordinary and compelling reasons" warranting a sentence reduction under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

I plan to do a series of posts explaining why I think a number of different criteria ought to meet the (textually vague) requirements of "extraordinary and compelling reasons."  For this first post in this series, I will focus on suggestions by the Justice Department's Inspector General when he testified on this issue back in 2016 before the US Sentencing Commission.  Specifically, in testimony to the USSC, IG Michael Horowitz suggested that BOP make inmates eligible for consideration for compassionate release starting at age 50.  According to the latest BOP data, there are currently nearly 35,000 persons in federal prison aged 51 or older.  Of course, the IG did not call for early release of all post-50 prisoners, but he did urge:  "Within that larger pool of eligible aging inmates, we believe the BOP could further identify more aging inmates whose offenses, criminal histories, conduct in prison, and release plans make them suitable candidates for compassionate release, resulting in reduced overcrowding and cost savings to the Justice Department and the BOP."  As explained above, it would seem that it is now appropriate for the courts, and not just BOP, to take an active and ongoing role in deciding who among the 35,000 are "suitable candidates for compassionate release."

Importantly, ill prisoners as well as elderly prisoners should be ready candidates for compassionate release (and these two groups surely overlap).  The latest BOP data here on medical placement shows that more than 5000 federal prisoners are in "care level" 3 or 4 facilities, and "Care Level 4 facilities are reserved for inmates who require daily nursing care or therapy."  As the IG explained to the USSC in his testimony three years ago, beyond the humanitarian value of allowing ill persons to receive treatment outside of prison facilities, releasing ill prisoners helps "reduce overcrowding in the federal prison system" and can "result in cost savings for the BOP" and in turn the federal taxpayer.

Even if we imagine only 10 percent of elderly and ill federal inmates are "suitable candidates for compassionate release," we still could be looking at a means for releasing many thousands of federal prisoners in relatively short order.  I fear, because these provisions are unfamiliar, that courts may not start making robust use of compassionate release right away.  But I hope they will, and I especially hope that federal prisoners and their advocates will press this important new frontier for federal sentencing improvements. 

A few prior related posts:

• Sad start to what should become happier compassionate release tales after passage of FIRST STEP Act 
• New report assails (lack of) compassionate release in federal system
• DOJ review confirms government waste and mismanagement of BOP's handling of compassionate release
• Inspector General report highlights problems posed by aging federal prison population
• Another sad account of how US Bureau of Prisons administers compassionate release program
• Lamenting latest data on how federal Bureau of Prisons administers its compassionate release program