Thousands of nonviolent federal prisoners eligible for early release under a promising Trump-era law remain locked up nearly four years later due to inadequate implementation, confusion and bureaucratic delays, prisoner advocacy groups, affected inmates and former federal prison officials say.
Even the Biden administration’s attempt to provide clarity to the First Step Act by identifying qualified inmates and then transferring them into home confinement or another form of supervised release appears to be falling short, according to prisoner advocates familiar with the law.
The Department of Justice was tasked with carrying out the law through the federal Bureau of Prisons, but the bureau director, Michael Carvajal, a Trump administration holdover, announced his retirement in January amid criticism of a crisis-filled tenure marked by agency scandals. No replacement for Carvajal has been named, and criminal justice advocates contend that for the bureau to allow even one person to be incarcerated beyond what is permitted under the First Step Act exposes ongoing failures.
“It shouldn’t be this complicated and it shouldn’t take this long,” said Kevin Ring, president of the nonprofit advocacy group FAMM, also known as Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “Here we are, four years later, and it’s maddening.”
The Justice Department published a final rule in January that implements an integral feature of the law in which inmates can earn so-called time credits, which are obtained through participation in prison and work programs and calculated as part of the process of getting out early.
The problem, advocates say: They are identifying inmates whose time credits aren’t getting applied, and in some cases, the inmates aren’t getting released as early as they should be.
Courtney Curtis, a former Missouri state lawmaker who was sentenced last year to 21 months in federal prison for wire fraud related to the misallocation of campaign funds, said in a letter shared with NBC News that his time credits have not been adequately counted after participating in programs such as “Be Successful,” “Drug Education” and “Talk to your Dr.”
Curtis, 41, who is being held in the Federal Correctional Institution Elkton in Ohio, said he hasn’t had his time credits added since January, and if they were, he believes he would have been released in early June. His current release date is Oct. 22.
“As one of the many inmates that benefit from the FSA,” he wrote, referring to the First Step Act, “I’ve made strides to take classes, work and stay productive, but the BOP and its systemic way of operating inefficiently have stymied my ability to take the most amount of classes in an orderly fashion as prescribed in the FSA or to release me as soon as I should’ve been … I can only wonder if this is by design, and what the total extent of impacted inmates is.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on Curtis’ case, citing privacy reasons.
Data provided by the Bureau of Prisons shows that as of June 18, more than 8,600 inmates have had their sentences recalculated and are slated for release with the application of their time credits. But it’s unclear how many qualified inmates are entitled to have been released early but remain incarcerated.
In a response, bureau officials said “We have no data which suggests inmates had their release dates delayed.”
But with the bureau’s own data identifying about 66,600 inmates who are eligible to earn time credits, some industry experts disagree.
“We estimate that there are thousands of inmates who will not receive the full benefit — days off of their federal prison sentence — of the First Step Act simply because the agency is uncertain how to calculate these benefits,” said Walter Pavlo, president of the consulting…
Read More: Thousands of federal inmates still await early release under Trump-era First Step Act, advocates say