Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (1:24)

28 months. So I've done 29 years. So I got you beat on that. And I know.

Todd Chrisley (1:28)

Listen, you're an overachiever. I mean, I. I get it. So tell me. 28 years. Right?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (1:34)

28. Gone on my 29th. Yep.

Todd Chrisley (1:36)

28 years. President Trump implemented the First Step act in 2018. So that means you were there during the time that it was implemented, and it wasn't followed through on under the Biden administration.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (1:51)

So in 2018, just remember, I wasn't in that role. So in 2018, I had just started my position as Associate warden, and I was actually Associate Warden at the United States Penitentiary in Kentucky, Pinewood, Kentucky. So, as you can imagine, in that role as Associate warden for a high security facility, first Step back. Even though it was in its fledgling stage, it wasn't something that was certainly paramount. It wasn't something that I was overseeing. We were worrying about keeping inmates safe, keeping the staff safe. So FSA was there, but it was just in its infancy stages at that point.

Todd Chrisley (2:31)

Okay, so then in 2018, when it was implemented, we're now 2024. You are now in a position to where you're having to deal with FSA every day. Can you at this point, now that you're in the role that you're in currently, can you acknowledge that the First Step act has not been implemented correctly?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (2:53)

I can acknowledge that there were mistakes made along the way for sure. It is A, it's 180 plus pages of statute. Right. There's a lot to that. It impacts, it's. It made a tremendous impact on the difference of what, how we do things on a day to day basis within the Bureau of Prisons. Anything that big is. There's going to be some growing pains. We had our growing pains. We're moving forward under Director Marshall's leadership and I think we have a good, good handle on things now still. Changes need to be made, improvements need to be made. We'll talk probably talk about that during this conversation, but we're certainly in a better position now than we were back then.

Todd Chrisley (3:33)

You know, when I was at Pensacola, you know, the Everyone's Hope was First Step Act. Sure. Stacking Second Chance act. On top of that. Then they got their 15% off the top of their good time credit. And the calculations was what was so, was so problematic because no one could get the calculations correct. You know, you had one memo that said this, one memo that said that you're now stating that these memos. I'm not worried about what was said then. We're going off of what's being done right now, my understanding of it and this is how it's going to be going forward. Is that a fair statement?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (4:14)

It's fair. You, you sounds like you know a little bit of what you're talking about.

Todd Chrisley (4:18)

I know just enough to be dangerous.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (4:20)

Well, because you reference some important aspects. The Good Conduct Time, the GCT commonly referred to. I know a lot of your listeners are familiar with it. That's essentially the 85%. That's the 54 days off per year. So if you were sentenced in a certain procedure, most of what we call modern time or new law, that's what every inmate gets. And we, contrary to what you might hear in other podcasts and whatnot, we do front load that, that's automatically calculated at the front end.

Todd Chrisley (4:46)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (4:47)

Then you have the Second Chance Act. It's been around for a long, long time. So now on top of that, that Second Chance act, what that allowed was ESS 12 months. It changed the statute that the inmates could get 12 months into the community at the end of their sentence. There were some stipulations in there. Six months or 10% whichever is less, they could actually be placed on home confinement. But 12 months in general right now here we are, 2018 as you, as you correctly referenced with FSA in the First Step Back, monumental change.

Todd Chrisley (5:19)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (5:20)

Much, much different than gct. Much, much different than sca. A lot more to the First Step Back. So the First Step act, there's, there's many, many layers to this. But basic the basics of the First Step Act, I've heard you say it basically inmates are between 48% and 52%. What it essentially means is inmates will earn up to 15 days for every 30 days served. So I do the math. Yeah. That's about half of the time. So calculate that over a short sentence, be a little bit of time off, calculate that over a long sentence and that's what we're seeing. The longer that we go beyond the FSA's implement limitation, the longer that we're going to see ideally in the future you're going to see nonviolent inmates who meet all of the statutory definitions for the FSAA eligibility. They will serve roughly half of their time on home confinement and or in the community as a result of the application of the FSA credits.

Todd Chrisley (6:16)

Right. Do you at. At this point because you know, you and I have communicated quite a bit, quite a bit over my me advocating for various, you know, INMA that who I believe that their calculation was incorrect and whatever. And you have found that there have been some. That some of it was not correct, some errors. Yes. So is it tell me or tell my listeners what is it that you're doing to correct the case managers that have these files? Who is doing the calculations now? Is there going to be a streamlined process that the calculations are going to come from within the Bureau to where a case manager can just look at it and say okay, this is your date.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (7:05)

Yeah. And admittedly there's been some confusion confusion early on with the rollout of fsa, particularly when it comes to time credits. Keep in mind, the time credit policy didn't even come into effect until 2022. There were a couple of what we call change notices to the policy. Ultimately, 2023 was, is when it was finalized and that was the first time that we actually started applying the credits and earned and how it actually took the statute went into the federal rules and then we in turn came. It became our program statements or policies. There is a calculation that occurs the calculation. Back in the day we had. We got a lot of flack for it and I think probably deservedly so. And because what we were doing is we were going by the letter of the law of the statute. So what were we doing? We were giving inmates on a monthly basis, time credit calculations. The time credit calculations were based, again, based on what the statute said. And the statute said you had to earn them, actually program and earn the credits before we, the Bureau of Prisons, could apply them. So we would then hand the case managers, who in turn would hand the inmates these time credit calculations, and they would see it was met with a. That's it, because it would show them, as of today, what programs have I completed, what credits have I earned. And we did ourselves a disservice by doing that because what we were essentially saying was, it's going to be very, very difficult for us to predict your future. And because of that, I can't predict, Todd, that you are going to continue to stay in this vocation class. I can't predict that you're going to continue to be in this GED class.

Todd Chrisley (8:42)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (8:43)

So we stayed away from projecting.

Todd Chrisley (8:47)

Mm.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (8:48)

We do project on gct.

Todd Chrisley (8:50)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (8:50)

Don't at that time, didn't project on fsa. All right, so fast forward to this year. So under this administration, what we've done is we've said that doesn't make a lot of sense. Even though the statute hasn't changed, the way that we look at the statute has changed. Right now the way that we look at the statute is essentially say, all right, what we're going to do is we're going to give you the benefit of the doubt. We're going to assume that you're going to do the right thing. You're going to go and you're going to get enrolled in these programs that you're supposed to be.

Todd Chrisley (9:20)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (9:20)

With that, we're going to calculate what we call conditional release dates.

Todd Chrisley (9:24)

Right?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (9:24)

Now, these conditional dates are not, as we. As we say all the time, they're not guaranteed, they're not promised in. Right. But they are tools that both the inmate can use, the inmate's family can use, our staff can use in making these realistic expectations of what the release dates will be. Now, that has only been probably in existence for less than 12 months now.

Todd Chrisley (9:48)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (9:49)

So. So with that, there's been some growing pains. A lot. A lot of folks are on case managers maybe didn't understand it as best we could. Some of that was our fault. We probably had put information out where we had. It was doing one thing. Maybe the training itself came a little bit after the fact that maybe they too weren't marrying up together. Whatever the Case may be water under the bridge.

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Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (13:02)

Right now I think I can say with confidence that we have, we have a good product. It's not without fail, I'm not, we're not going to get it right every time. Some of the cases that you have provided to me, I've looked at them myself or have had staff look at them and say, yeah, there are some issues here right there. There are anomalies sometimes that we see. There are calculations that aren't running correctly. But I can tell you since June, and that's an important, important time because June, June 17 is the date of the memo. There's a memo out there. It's for public consumption, and it was from the director to all of our sites, all of our institutions out there. And it was important because that memo basically said that unlike in the past, we're not going to use an excuse of a lack of beds at our halfway houses or a lack of resources in, in the community to limit inmates from being placed in the community. That was important, right? That was important. Now what we have is this. Now, since June, we have all the inmates that are being put in for their time. It's now spelled out on their time credit worksheets. We even put in there, under our most recent version of the calculations, we put the statutory maximum home confinement eligibility date. That means, Todd, if you are otherwise appropriate, you meet all the factors, you're going to be placed directly on home confinement. There's no reason, and we highlight it, we stress it from the director, there's no reason for you to go to the halfway house and unnecessarily take up that bed.

Todd Chrisley (14:36)

That's right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (14:36)

We want those beds to be reserved for the folks that need those beds.

Todd Chrisley (14:39)

That's right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (14:40)

So someone that has the resources, someone that has family support, someone that has a stable job, potentially, they can go straight to home confinement if they're appropriate to do so. Right. And, and so what, what we're seeing, and it's probably important that, that, that I spell this out for a lot of the listeners because we are like you. I get bombarded on a daily basis with inquiries about this and the.

Todd Chrisley (15:03)

And then I bombard you with my inquiries. Yeah, you get it twice.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (15:06)

So I'm double bombarded with this. So what we, what we see is a common theme. And the theme is, hey, either my case manager is not listening to the information that's being put out by the director's office, right? Or I'm not getting these dates that I was promised or that I was led to believe that I was going to get. So let me speak to that a little bit because it's, because this is an important part. So as far as the, the case managers go under the Second Chance act, which still exists, there is some subjectivity there, right? There's a five factor review. And I'm sure most of the folks out there know what those five factor reviews are. They include resources, availability of the, of the place that you're trying to go to, I. E, Are the beds available at the halfway house. There's talk about there about the behavior of the inmate. All these are part of it that still exists. There is still subjectivity that exists there. All of this fsa, all the changes with the fsa, we never change, we never touch the Second Chance Act. The Second Chance act was still in existence. Folks are under the misnomer that they are entitled to the full 12 months of the Second Chance Act. It's just not true. They still have to have individual decisions that are made on a case by case basis. So that's first. It's anywhere from zero. May not need any Second Chance act at all all the way up to 12 months. The other part of that, that becomes a little confusing for a lot of the inmates out there and their families is that Second Chance act, remember, by statute is limited to six months or 10%, which is ever less, right? So do quick math. If you have a 60 month sentence, that's roughly six months, right? So anything above five years, you are at the most statutorily eligible for six months. Six months, right. A lot of times we get these requests and inmates or the families are claiming, hey, I'm not getting the full 12 months of home confinement. No, no, no, no. You can't get the full 12 months of home confinement. That's not a BOP thing, that's a, that's a statutory thing, right? So that, that's, that's the first part of it. The second part that's probably more important to your listeners is what are we doing now with the fsa and why is it that I'm sitting there at Pensacola or Morgantown or Duluth or wherever you're at out there, right? Your FSAL is what, FTC eligible to get those credits, Right. Why am I not getting the date that it says on the worksheet?

Todd Chrisley (17:37)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (17:37)

Matter of fact, they're going back to the case manager saying here, what's going on? Why am I Not getting this right. And the case managers are coming back saying, I don't know, I, I put you in, I put you in for, for whatever the, the RM just said that.

Todd Chrisley (17:50)

Right?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (17:51)

All right, that's a problem. That's a problem. So we probably, about, about a month or so ago we developed a triage team, an FSA triage team.

Todd Chrisley (18:03)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (18:03)

So one of my main position before I got into this was I oversee the designations and sentence computation center. So when I talk to the folks in reentry, I asked them, hey, we keep getting these, these claims that inmates are getting what I'm going to call shortchanged on time in the community, right? Not overstaying their sentence. Because I know there was a conversation with, when you and the director were talking, not overstaying the sentence, but not necessarily getting the full benefit of how much time they could get out of prison, basically. So when I talked to the folks in reentry who are now, remember, they oversee all of the RM officers out there, they said, yeah, we know that it's a problem. We just don't. Right now we're just so short staffed, it's hard for us to keep up with the referrals that are coming in from the institutions, the placement dates, the putting folks on home confined. It's just difficult for us to do that. We're basically just, just staying afloat. So what we did on the, from the triage team is we said, okay, we get that, but we can't use that as an excuse. Let's get this right. How do we get it right?

Todd Chrisley (19:08)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (19:08)

We're going to get back with the DSCC. I got the, I have the manpower at the DCC. So we have a team, 30 or 40 people. And essentially what we did is we took all of the inmates who are in the community now sitting in halfway houses, right. And we basically did manual calculations. I don't remember what the amount was at the time. There was over 6,000 inmates at the time. And we basically tried to figure out, okay, how many of these have passed the eligibility date that they could be, not necessarily should be, but could be on home confinement. And we found the number was sizable and we took that information and farmed it back out to the RM offices around the country. And then we gave them marching orders. And the marching orders were, all right, here's what you got. We've done the work for you. Now you have to take the Todd's of the world and you have to make a determination, okay, pull the individual in and make a determination whether or not they're appropriate for home confinement. And the ones that are get a map slap on a bracelet on home confinement. And that does a lot of, a lot of things. Number one, what that does is it gets somebody that doesn't need that halfway house into home confinement. Right. And number two, maybe more importantly, it opens up that, that, that bed in the RRC for folks that need it that are sitting at institutions that are being told that they can't get those beds because of a lack of. Lack of beds. So here we are. It's taken us several weeks to get to the point where we've moved. And I heard, and I think you've heard too, I'm hearing it, that inmates are moving out, moving out of the rcs. And I'm glad, I'm glad to hear that that's happening. Yes. So we know that that's happening. So as they transition and as they put those bracelets on those individuals, now here we are. And now we're getting some more biz at the end, so to speak. So now the next thing that the triage team is going to do, and we're sitting here having this conversation in D.C. but I'm going to be going back to Texas tomorrow. When I go back, we're going to get that same triage team together. And at that point, we're going to then start focusing on the inmates that are at the institutions now that become.

Todd Chrisley (21:13)

Eligible for halfway house. Correct.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (21:15)

That not only that become eligible, but may already have a halfway house date now.

Todd Chrisley (21:20)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (21:20)

That are going back and they're looking at their date and they're looking at their time credit worksheet, and the two aren't lining up and we're going to have an additional review of those cases to say, all right, how many of these can we either extend the halfway house date if they already have one, or the folks that are sitting there with they don't yet have a halfway house date, how many of those are we going to be able to place in halfway house? Now that matches what the time credit worksheet says. So the thought is, as we move forward, and I've used this analogy before, it is a big ship. This is going to take some time, but we're moving rather quickly through these endeavors. And as we do this, and you know this from your time, every inmate's going to come up the team every six months or so.

Todd Chrisley (22:09)

Yes.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (22:09)

As they come up for those teams, what we don't want to do is we don't want to have the inmates bombard our case managers right now because they quite simply are not going to have the time to do it. The SEC is good. We're going to do our part. We're going to notify the institutions and we're going to ask that they review each of those cases. But if there's inmates out there that are releasing in 2027 or 2028 or 2030, be patient. Because we're trying to prioritize the folks that need to be considered to go home now. But we want to focus right now with the resources that we have on those that are coming up for release sooner rather than layer all right, let's be real.

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Todd Chrisley (25:23)

That. That all sounds great from this level up here.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (25:27)

Yeah.

Todd Chrisley (25:28)

What happens when you have case managers that are defiant of putting this stuff through? How are you preparing for that? Because you already know that that's happening.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (25:38)

We all address that. Pensacola is a good example. You know, I had the pleasure of going to Pensacola for your. For your. The. The graduation remarks that you made. And it was their. Their last. Their last graduation ceremony. They had there, that class. And by the way, great program that they offered. I think it was 45 minutes. It was like a talent show. It was. There's a. There was a lot of talent at Pensacola. I think there's a lot of talent, A lot of the. A lot of the institutions across our country. So it's good seeing those guys take advantage of that time.

Todd Chrisley (26:08)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (26:09)

So after we had the graduation ceremony, I. I went with some. Some other members of the. Of the BOP and we went and walked some of the remaining housing units at Pensacola. And of course, you know, there's not too many left. I think at the time, it's probably less than 75 inmates left. So. And so we go into the housing unit where all of the inmates are now. D dorm. D dorm. And. And when we were at D dorm, I had asked some of the unit team there just some questions, just some general FSA type questions. And the, the comment that I got was essentially, yeah, you know, it sure would be nice if maybe if they heard from you. And I said, great, let's take advantage of this opportunity. So we. I immediately called a town hall for the, for all the. All the guys in D. Dorn, and had them all outside their cubicles at the bunk area and talked to them just about what I'm talking to you about now. Told them, hey, this is what we're doing with. This is what we're currently doing with the guys in the halfway house. Be patient, because the next group is. Is your group. That's the one coming. But Please don't inundate the folks here at Pensacola. Now, it was interesting in that the response that I got from the staff at Pensacola was, was actually very positive response. And I know that wasn't necessarily your experience, but this.

Todd Chrisley (27:27)

But the response there was no one's experience at Pensacola.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (27:31)

The response that I got, and again, different vantage point was, Mr. Silver, we're going to get right on that and we're going to reach out. As a matter of fact, I'm going to make a list of inmates right now and we're going to reach out to the respective RM officers. We're going to send an email out and we're going to basically say, based on your visit, we want you to revisit those dates. And I think you and I talked about that.

Todd Chrisley (27:52)

I got a copy of the email.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (27:54)

That was sent out, and I'm not sure how you got a copy of that, but you got to copy that nonetheless. That did show that in this, at least in this scenario, the staff were doing the right thing. Now, maybe, you know, it's going to be difficult. I can't go out to 121 institutions. I can't fix it that way. So. But to your question, the expectation is, yes, the case managers have a job to do, but we're making this job very easy. The only subjectivity that still remains is that factor, the five factor review under the sca.

Todd Chrisley (28:25)

And I think that we're going to have to. We're going to have to revisit that through legislation. We're going to have to revisit that through Congress. Sure. Because again, it places individuals in a position of a godlike power. And based on my experience, all I have is Pensacola. It's easy for a staff member to say to you, yes, sir, Mr. Stover, we're going to take care of that. I've seen that happen for 28 months and it wasn't taken care of. I have seen these same case managers that you're talking about refuse to put people in. So it is coming now from you. It took you going to this facility to restore hope in these 75 men, roughly, that was left there. Because the feedback that I got was, oh, my God, thank you so much. You brought this guy. It's Stover. I said, I know who it is. What? No, he talked to all of us, and it was great. I mean, he told us the real stuff. He gave us the real details. I mean, he was straight up with it. That's all anyone wants. That's all you want from Director Marshall Sure. That's all inmates want from the people. That's, that's, that's holding them in custody right now. Tell them the truth. So I want to make sure that, that, that you're already implementing everything that needs to be implemented. But you can implement up here, but if it's not implemented down here, this doesn't work.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (29:54)

Sure. To that point, we, one of the complaints that we get from the field a lot of times, probably a lot of those same case managers is that, hey, I, I don't, I don't, I've never trained on this. I, I don't, I don't.

Todd Chrisley (30:03)

That's all I hear from every facility.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (30:05)

Yeah. And so I, I would tell you, I think it's probably been about two weeks or so. We, we put a train, some training materials together. We put on our BOP internal website. It's basically 60 or so slides, but we go into the details, we pull back the layers and we really get into the weeds of it. It's designed specifically for the case managers. The wardens can look at it, AWS can look at it, CMC's, but really it's designed for the case managers. And so for someone to come back to me or to you and say, well, the case managers just don't understand this stuff. Well, hold on. You know, I can lead a horse to water, but you got to read the material. You got it. We even went through AI and got it narrated, for goodness sake.

Todd Chrisley (30:49)

So in other words, you're telling me that at your level you're implementing a five factor review on the case managers. Well, so they're not going to be allowed to say, I didn't know they.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (31:01)

Can, I wouldn't necessarily call it a five factor review, but we are, we are providing it to them they cannot use as an excuse. And I'm happy to say, and I didn't even share this with the director yet, we just got, we just got word just prior to this interview that, that a version of that training is, is now available on our public's website. So I, we've been working on that for a little bit. We had to work out some of the details because we couldn't disclose certain computer type functions on that. Right. But we have that. I, I just got confirmation just before this interview that that's on there. So I'm hoping that a lot of the inquiries that are coming your way.

Todd Chrisley (31:34)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (31:35)

And they're coming my way for the.

Todd Chrisley (31:36)

Folks, if they come my way, they ultimately go his way.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (31:40)

That's, that's right. And we do have a standard response for those, as you know?

Todd Chrisley (31:43)

Yes, we do.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (31:45)

Yeah. I mean, my public service announcement about that is, you know, this, there's, there's talk out there about this task force, this task force, the BOP task force. Well, what we're doing right now is not really the task force. This is the triage team. Right. And so I wanted folks to know that because I get, I can imagine how many you get. I get so many inquiries when, where folks are saying, hey, as leader of the task force, would you mind looking at this case? I'm one person, right. And what I don't want to do is I don't want to. And you know, I'm a former warden and I used to hate when staff would do this to inmates. I do not spin folks. I don't want to spin folks. So if I get like, I heard the director talking, he tries to answer all those emails. Look, the director can't answer all those emails. I can't answer all those emails. So what I end up doing is I want to ensure that someone looks at it. So I will farm those out, I'll form those out generally to the warden at the facility where it came from or, and, or I included on both, and the regional office of the facility where the inmates located. Inmates come back and I've seen some of the follow up messages where they say, well, he's just spitting me. He sent this back to the institution. Well, yes, because I want the institution to do their homework on this before you come straight to me with a problem. Right. There's only so much I can do, one person. So I would ask, just be patient, but utilize the resources that are out there.

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Todd Chrisley (37:08)

Yeah, let's, let's touch on that. You know you're sending it back to the institution again. We're going to go off of what my experience is. I was involved in filing complaints. I was involved in reporting things. That was sent directly to your regional office, that was sent to our warden, who wrote up a bullshit excuse or response and nothing was ever done. It wasn't done until it hit the press. So to make sure that doesn't happen going forward, there's going to have to be some kind of accountability. When you send this back, if, if, if it, when it goes back to that warden and you now get a blanket response or a staple response and the problem is still there, how do you address it?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (37:59)

Well, the good news is, and I've explained this to, to the wards because we, we had all the wards and the regional directors and we, they've all been part of these discussions. You can, you can imagine FSA is, is everybody's world, right? It's front page material. It should be functional.

Todd Chrisley (38:12)

Everyone's blessing and everyone's nightmare.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (38:15)

You said it, you said it. But, but it's, it's, it is important. So we explain to all the regional directors the importance of this. So when I send these messages out and I farm them out, as I said, you know, that's not, that's not me passing the buck. That's me saying, hey, you're in a position that you need to deal with this. The regional offices are copied on each of these. So I can tell you, I don't, although I don't get copied on all of the responses coming back, the responses that I have seen coming back is, they're not boilerplate responses, okay? Each of the cases that at least that I have seen, there's some research that's been done. We research your case, your FSA credit show this you were in INOC status on this date. So I have seen those responses. So I know, at least from my vantage point so far, and it's early, right? So far, the signs are pointing to folks are doing the right thing. And they're addressing these now candidly, they're sending these to me.

Todd Chrisley (39:05)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (39:05)

So if I'm sending them out to the wardens, into the regional offices, you know, I realize that they, because it's coming from me, they're likely not going to do spin control.

Todd Chrisley (39:15)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (39:16)

Those types of responses, what's happening in the field, we're hopeful that that same type of responses are occurring, that folks are researching these. I think with the training that they've get. I think, I think it boils down to this. A lot of times when folks were spinning the inmates, I think it was because of lack of knowledge. Right. And I agree with that. And sometime it's just an embarrassment.

Todd Chrisley (39:37)

Yeah.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (39:37)

That, you know, and so they now, now maybe they may. Maybe something clicked. Maybe something clicked on, on that case manager when they saw that said, oh, they can take notes. It's always readily available. It's always on our site. They can always go back to it. So I'm hopeful. I'm a glass half full kind of guy.

Todd Chrisley (39:54)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (39:54)

I'm hopeful that our staff are actually getting it now.

Todd Chrisley (39:57)

Okay.

Podcast Advertiser/Host (39:58)

All right.

Todd Chrisley (39:58)

How hopeful are you that the home confinement aspect of the First Step act is going to be implemented on a broad range?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (40:09)

I remain equally as hopeful to that. You had made a comment before about the camps, and I think you've argued that what are we doing? What are we doing? Sending inmates to camps. Camps. And you probably understand this, statutorily, the director only has so much authority when it comes to that. We can't place an individual in home confinement until he's statutorily eligible to be placed in home confinement.

Todd Chrisley (40:35)

And I think that's a big misconception that needs to be cleared up.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (40:38)

Okay.

Todd Chrisley (40:38)

Well, because that is where men and women within this, within the bureau, within the system are confused. Sure. Because they believe that the director has the power to place them in home confinement second day of their sentence if he wants to.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (40:56)

Completely inaccurate. The director does not have that authority. This has been challenged. There's litigation that's been probably been going on for the last 20 years regarding this. The director of the BOP's statutory authority basically says that when an inmate comes into our custody, we have the authority to be placed in. I could be off on the exact language of the statute, but it essentially says a penal or correctional institution, which.

Todd Chrisley (41:20)

Is not home confinement, which is very important.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (41:24)

So if someone is serving, let's say a 24 month sentence and the court made a recommendation, because courts make recommendations all the time, they make a recommendation that this individual serve their sentence in home confinement, we politely respond back to the judge and say, sorry, we can't do that. We're not statutorily able to do that. We are only limited as far our, our statute applies to. It's limited in two situations. Number one, Second Chance Act. So it is six months or 10%, which is ever less under FSA. Home could find it becomes a little bit more interesting because now under FSA there's no distinction in pre release custody between home confinement or rrc. No distinction. So if you have a, let's say a five year sentence and you earn, let's just say for the sake of this argument, two and a half years worth of time credits, right. If you are otherwise appropriate, you can be placed for two and a half years on home confinement. There's no limit on that. The limit is basically the length of sentence that's imposed. Right?

Podcast Advertiser/Host (42:25)

Yeah.

Todd Chrisley (42:25)

Okay.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (42:26)

So hopefully, hopefully the listeners understand that, that we, the bop, do not have the authority to place an individual on home confinement in lieu of incarceration. Right. We only, we have the, our limitation is penal or correctional institution.

Todd Chrisley (42:40)

Gotcha. Okay, so do you feel confident that we're on the right path with FSA right now?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (42:47)

Completely confident. Completely confident. We, we are not, we are not there yet. We are still making mistakes. I, I see them, unfortunately, I see you bring some of those to my attention. But, but I would hope that you would, you would agree with the assessment that every time that we bring, that something is brought to our attention, we fix it.

Todd Chrisley (43:06)

You have.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (43:07)

So moving forward, we're hoping that we see less and less of those mistakes. We've had some recent IT variations of the, of the calculator, things that added the statutory home confinement date and days on there. We think that are very, very user friendly, spelled out, spelled out on the training that we're giving staff. We think ultimately that we're heading in the right direction. We are not. Without fail, we are going to continue to make some mistakes. They're going to pop up here and there. But as far as the actual calculation of time, the app is doing what the app should be doing, the program is doing what the program is doing. Inmates will continue to see on a monthly basis, those calculations, those calculations will be updated. And unless inmates are doing something that bumps them out of earning status or in OP status, then those dates, once you get them at the, at the front end of their sentences are pretty solid dates. They're pretty solid. It's really up to the individual to lose that time.

Todd Chrisley (44:08)

And the unknown is what's so hard for an individual to, to grasp. You know, if you give that if you give them a date.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (44:14)

Absolutely.

Todd Chrisley (44:15)

Then for the most part the guys are like, okay, this is, this is what it is. This is what we got to work with.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (44:22)

Yeah.

Todd Chrisley (44:23)

But then they go back in and now that dates moved, it's even longer. So when, again, that's your old calculations, the way things were being done prior to what you're doing right now.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (44:33)

Correct.

Todd Chrisley (44:34)

But you know, you have to be able to give someone factual information and that's what I'm, that's what I hope is going to be coming from this, you know, with what you're doing right now. Because I am getting information every day, you know that.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (44:48)

Yeah.

Todd Chrisley (44:50)

And the information that I'm getting now is that people are leaving these halfway houses, people are being sent out of the halfway house to home confinement, people are leaving facilities now and being dumped into the halfway houses. So I am getting that information. So whatever it is that you're doing, it's starting to have that trickle down effect.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (45:06)

That's good to hear. I, I would say this. The, the future is bright and the, and the future is going to change the way that the bop, particularly in the non violent offenders is. It's going to affect incredibly different down the road.

Todd Chrisley (45:17)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (45:17)

If you took a snapshot of us say 10 years from now, barring some statutory changes, our population is going to look very, very different. Because the way that things are going to work is the majority of our non violent offenders, all things being equal, will serve almost half their time in the community. And so you talk about camps and whatnot and as the director mentioned when you had spoke with him, there's some things that we might be able to consider when we're talking about these minimum security camps out there. Maybe thinking outside the box things that we're not doing right now. Right. Maybe if we run out of halfway house bed capacity, you know, who knows what the future may hold. But I would tell you as the more time that passes that the FSA is kind of in our rear view mirror.

Todd Chrisley (46:01)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (46:02)

The more time inmates will be placed in community for these long sentences. We're not there statutorily that we have the ability to just snap our fingers and place them in home confinement. But as these sentences get longer and longer or the time gets further and further away, inmates will get more and more time in home confinement and under, under the CARES act, for instance. We found out we did it the right way.

Todd Chrisley (46:26)

Yeah, you did. It's, you know, you know that I hate to give y' all credit for anything to screw up, but the cares act is the only program y' all have had that you've ever had that level of success with.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (46:39)

Yeah. And so what we did under the CARES act, and, and it was. It was based on the statute, the CARES act statute. We were essentially allowed to review inmates for home confinement quicker than we ever did before.

Todd Chrisley (46:50)

Yes.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (46:51)

And they could be placed. And you've seen it. They. We had. We had inmates that were placed in home confinement for five, six years.

Todd Chrisley (46:56)

Yes. Yes.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (46:57)

And so that really is what the entire nonviolent population is going to look like. It's going to look like what we did during, during the CARES Act. We're going to have longer sentences that the inmates are going to be in pre release custody in some form or fashion, home confinement or.

Todd Chrisley (47:13)

Rc.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (47:13)

Right.

Todd Chrisley (47:14)

And the beautiful part about that is, is that is. It is bipartisan. I mean, that is. That is a bipartisan effect of. Of the First Step Act.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (47:26)

Absolutely. You know, Jared Kushner was behind this. You know, it was. It was interesting in leading up to the. To the position that I'm in now, I had a chance to talk to some of the folks that were really instrumental in FSA and people that I never had the ability to talk with before. And under the current administration, it's kind of fascinating. We're probably in the crosshairs more than we've ever been. We're certainly in the media more than we've ever been. But with that comes a certain amount of, hey, we also get to talk with folks from the White House more than we've ever been. We get to talk with folks from the DOJ more than we've ever been.

Todd Chrisley (48:00)

Because you didn't have that in the Biden administration.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (48:02)

We didn't. We didn't. And so we find that we can effectuate change probably quicker.

Todd Chrisley (48:08)

Yes.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (48:08)

We ever could in the past.

Todd Chrisley (48:09)

And I think that, again, that. And Director Marshall and I have talked about this. You know, you don't know until, you know. And Jared Kushner, who has the servant's heart, you know, his father went through the prison system there and at one of your facilities at Maxwell, and he knows firsthand what goes along with that. And he knows. He knows what's right and what's wrong and what's fair and what's not. So in creating the First Step Act, I try to make sure that when I'm talking about it, that people understand the involvement that Jared had in the First Step act, along with many other things that he had involvement in. I'm a huge Jared Kushner fan, but I think that when you start Talking about that 10 years down the road, what our population is going to look like as far as white collar nonviolent offenders, 50% of their time is going to be done in the community. That lowers the cost that the bureau has to sustain. You're looking at a. You're basically saying, okay, these individuals here did not commit a violent crime. What they did, they can be monitored through an ankle monitor or a watch or, you know, however you're going to do it, be at home. They're, they're covering their own expenses and they're working and they're paying tax dollars. The cost is now lower for the Bureau of Prisons and the areas that you need to concentrate more cash in. You've now freed a lot of that up because of this.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (49:43)

Yeah. I mean, the FSA with it, with all its complexities, is really designed to do two things. It was designed to reduce population. Well, reduce recidivism by providing the necessary programming, but also reduce the population, as you said, and along with that, reduce taxpayer costs.

Todd Chrisley (50:00)

That's right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (50:00)

So, you know, at our height, 2014, the Bureau of Prisons population was about 220,000.

Todd Chrisley (50:06)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (50:06)

220,000 today, having looked at the. Today's statistics, and 55,000. I was going to say 156. So. So that's a market decrease. So we are saving the taxpayer dollars. And it's, you know, the one thing about the bop, we can't control that number. It's kind of number given to us. We can't take credit for it. We can't control whether it goes up or down. It's just, it just is what it is. Right. And so a lot of that is, is. It really is up to the courts, it's up to the statutes, whatever, because we have to go by that, you know, bop. We just take what you give us.

Todd Chrisley (50:37)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (50:37)

And so if you're going to, if you're going to allow inmates to do time in the community and it takes an inmate off of our account, hey, count us in. As the director says, we have nothing to gain by keeping inmates in prison longer than they should be there. Nothing to gain.

Todd Chrisley (50:52)

Okay. Well, then it has been a pleasure having you on here. You know, in the beginning, I didn't know if I was going to like you. Well, same. I still don't.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (51:00)

I'm just kidding. No, it's a pleasure. I. I will say this, Todd, about you. The first time that you and I talked, I don't know if you remember this, it was a few Months ago. You had just gotten out. My wife was actually undergoing a medical procedure at the time, and it was Christy, our communications folks. Christy called me up and said, hey, there's some questions that Todd Chrisley has about first step back. They're over my head. Can you go ahead and deal with these? And I didn't want to say to Chrissy, well, Chrissy, I'm off today. I'm taking my wife to the hospital. And so I said, yeah, yeah, sure. So I texted you.

Todd Chrisley (51:33)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (51:33)

And I just be responsive.

Todd Chrisley (51:35)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (51:35)

Hey, I was giving your. Your name and number by Christy, and I think I said something about, I'll call you. Right, Cam? Well, immediately you called.

Todd Chrisley (51:43)

Right.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (51:44)

I was in the waiting room with my wife for this procedure. I won't. I won't tell you what the procedure is because she'll kill me. She sees this. So as we go. As we go out into the. From the waiting room into the. Into the actual surgical place, my wife is seeing me on the phone with you. And she said, would you get off that phone? And I said, it's Todd Grisley. She says, I don't care who it is. Get off that phone. So I knew then you have been. The thing about you is, yes, you are high maintenance. And I've told you that repeatedly. You are high maintenance.

Todd Chrisley (52:14)

I take pride in that.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (52:15)

Yes, I love your wife, but the thing about you is you're genuine, and you're doing this for the right reasons. And I will say that you have been persistent, like a little bulldog.

Todd Chrisley (52:25)

Right?

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (52:25)

But you do these for the right reasons, and your. Your heart's in the right place. So for. So for that, we thank you.

Todd Chrisley (52:30)

Well, I appreciate that. And I will also say to you that seeing the implementation of what you're doing and seeing men and women leaving the facilities and going to the halfway houses and those that was in the half that was locked in this whole thing of, we don't know, you know, our staff saying, we don't know what to do. Now that's clearing up. And now those people are going home to their families. And so for everyone that goes home, that if we can play just a small part to that, that helps me sleep better at night. Good. And so you're helping with that, so I greatly appreciate that.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (53:07)

You're welcome.

Todd Chrisley (53:08)

It's a pleasure having you.

Senior Deputy Assistant Director (Bureau of Prisons Official) (53:09)

Thank you. God bless you, bud.

Todd Chrisley (53:10)

Thank you.

Podcast Advertiser/Host (53:12)

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