At White Collar Consult we strive to stay in constant contact with our clients to get a real sense of what is going on within the prison system, and how the BOP is really implementing policy and law. Today after talking to several of our clients who are currently serving time in Federal Prison we will explain how the BOP is implementing or not implementing First Step Act time credits and what you can do to ensure you’re having your FSA time credits applied as per policy in the law.
The good news is that many inmates are starting to consistently get the FSA time credits that they earn each month. Unlike government agencies like the veterans administration or Social Security which have systems that update and pay consistently each month, the BOP has been inconsistent on the days of the month that they were credited the prisoners, sometimes not updating the dates for two months at a time. This causes a lot of confusion and questions which are often unanswered by staff at the BOP because they have still yet to be fully trained on the implementation of the credits. The way that the BOP is currently calculating FSA credits is that when the inmate enters the system, they are usually teamed by their case manager within the first month. If they have a good case manager, they will be told the risk for recidivism level and Pattern score. If you are at low or minimum, you start to earn FSA credits at a rate of 10 days for every 30 days until after your second team, which is usually six months later. That means for the first six months you should earn 60 days of FSA credits that can be applied toward your sentence or towards halfway house time if you have a shorter sentence. After your second team, you will start to earn 15 days for every 30 days that you serve, so for your second six months you would get three months off your sentence from your FSA time credits. This will continue until you earn 360 days five days off torch your sentence after that the time credits are applied towards the reduction of your halfway house or home confinement time, which would then move from BOP to probation. Now while this all sounds well and good you must make sure you stay on top of your FSA credit implementation. We have seen many of our clients have to contact their case manager to fix whatever glitch of the day BOP has with their manual system. One of our clients originally received a year off for his time served only to lose all of it the next month, then getting 10 months back the month after that after they re-calculated his time He advise that the best way to monitor what is going on so that you can challenge any issues is to ask for a first step act assessment sheet from your case manager, so you can check yourself while you are or are not receiving your time, we can also assist you with any issues that may arise and help you get your credits implemented
We do want to caution that you may not receive your FSA credits for some time if you are in transit status, at a hospital for medical care, custody outside of the BOP, or in the special housing unit for any reason, you also need to check your eligibility for FSA credits. We have found several instances where the BOP incorrectly assessed someone was ineligible for credit because their case manager interpreted the law wrong, only to have their FSA reinstated after we helped them challenge the determination. There are also going to be glitches for those that graduate from RDAP. We found that some institutions incorrectly code their graduation date, which results in the system not recognizing the FSA credits. This is an easy fix by the case manager, which we can help explain how to correct.
