Highlighting the continuing challenges of calculating FIRST STEP Act earned time credits

At Forbes, Walter Pavlo has this new piece, headlined "The Bureau Of Prisons Evolving Calculation Of First Step Act," on the continuing challenges of applying a key aspect of prison reform part of the big federal criminal justice reform bill passed back in 2018.  I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

Since January 2022, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has been trying to determine how to calculate how the First Step Act (FSA), a law signed by President Donald Trump in December 2018.  As we enter March 2023, there still is no clear direction on the calculation and the frustration has grown among prisoners and families who are anxiously waiting on a determination of when a federal prison term will end....

The premise of FSA is to reward federal prisoners’ participation in meaningful classes meant to return a better citizen to society and, hopefully, reduce the chances of them returning to prison.... The BOP initially calculated the FSA credits manually beginning in January 2022 when the Federal Register published the Final Rule on FSA. The initial BOP calculations for minimum level offenders with minimum chances of recidivism was that 15 days per month started from the beginning of the prison term, something more generous than what was even stated in the FSA law. Prisoners across the country were released based on this calculation.  This initial and interim manual calculation was used through August 2022 when the BOP rolled out a new auto-calculator.  That auto-calculator had a major interpretation that was not a part of FSA either, which stopped all credits from being earned once the prisoner was 18 months from release. This was particularly hard on those prisoners with shorter sentences.

As December 2022 came to a close, the BOP’s auto-calculator interpretation came under scrutiny from U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley, the law’s biggest proponents. Suddenly, the BOP changed course and another calculation was promised and it landed with yet another interpretation that is limiting the amount of credits prisoners can earn.

The BOP is now in its third iteration of FSA calculation and this is just as confusing as its first.  Now the BOP is stating that prisoners can only earn 10 credits per month for the first year of incarceration....

Prisoners across the country are taking their cases to federal court asking for relief and for federal judges to get involved in determining the duration of the prison sentence.  In a case in the District of Maryland (Sreedhar Potarazu v BOP, Case No. 1:22-cv-01334) the case manager for the plaintiff gave his own interpretation of how credits were applied by the BOP, giving Mr. Potarazu 10 credits per month for nearly 3 years of his sentence.  There was no basis for the calculation which did not cite specific policy on which the calculation was based, providing even more confusion among both prisoners and staff across the BOP.  Previously, the BOP has used declarations, which were similarly not based on a specific policy, from executives at its Central Office.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the FSA will be finally determined by a federal court decision and not by what should be a simple interpretation of the law by the BOP. However, many prisoners who await the outcome from court decisions will have spent weeks or months in prison unnecessarily.