Notable data on BOP resistance to compassionate release requests from federal prisoners

As regular readers likely surmise, I have been quite pleased that federal courts have seized their new authority under the FIRST STEP Act to directly reduce sentences under the (so-called compassionate release) statutory provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) without awaiting a motion by the Bureau of Prisons.  This BOP "First Step Act" page reports that there have been a total of 3,414 "Compassionate Releases / Reduction in Sentences" approved by courts since passage of the FIRST STEP Act, but the BOP has not reported on how many of such motions have been support by the BOP.  But this week, a letter from the BOP to members of Congress (which was apparently written in mid April and can be downloaded below) provides more details on how many compassionate release requests have been made and how few have been endorsed by the BOP.

Specifically, the letter to members of Congress authored by Ken Hyle, BOP's General Counsel, reports that since March 1, 2020, a little over 30,000 compassionate release requests were made by federal prisoners,  Of that number, only 374 of these requests were recommended for approval by prison wardens and then only 36 were approved by the BOP's Director.  In other works, during global pandemic, only about 1 out of 83 requests for compassionate release got approved by a federal warden, and then less than one out of every 10 requests approved by a warden was approved by the BOP Director.

Thankfully, federal judges had a much more fulsome view of compassionate release during a pandemics.  Specifically, given that around 3250 motions for compassionate release were granted by judges during the pandemic, it seems that for every compassionate release motion found satisfactory by the BOP Director, there were an additional 90 motions that federal judges concluded were satisfactory to  justify a sentence reduction under the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A).

Download Response from BOP re. compassionate release during COVID 4.16.21