If you are convicted, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, you will serve your sentence in a federal detention facility either operated by, or under contract to, the United States Bureau of Prisons (BOP). 

There are five different security levels--minimum, low, medium, high, or administrative--and you will be designated based on a variety of factors, including your personal and criminal history, the details of your offense, and the length of your sentence.  The Bureau of Prisons relies heavily on your presentence report in determining what security level you will be designated.  Therefore, it is important that you carefully review your presentence report and discuss with your attorney any errors, even if they may not affect your sentence, because it could affect your security designation.

Although one of the factors the Bureau of Prisons considers in designating you to a specific facility is the location where you will be released at the end of your term, prison facilities in California are overcrowded.  Therefore, even when all of your family ties are in California, there is a chance that you could be sent out of state.  Although the judge cannot guarantee a local placement, it is a good idea to ask your sentencing judge to recommend that the Bureau of Prisons designate you to a local facility.

The Bureau of Prisons website, which contain useful information and contact numbers, is http://www.bop.gov/.

You will serve almost all of your sentence.  There is no such thing as parole in the federal system for all crimes committed after November 1, 1987.  If your sentence is longer than one year, you might qualify for a small reduction for “good time” which is earned at the rate of 54 days for every year of the sentence.  Although the statute that governs good conduct time, 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b), states that prisoners may earn up to 54 days per year, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) awards a maximum of 47 days for each year of the sentence imposed.  The Federal Public Defender disagrees with the BOP’s calculation and has challenged this interpretation, but the challenges have not yet succeeded.

In addition, you may spend the last 10 % of your sentence, up to 6 months, in a community corrections center, or “half-way house.”  The recently passed Second Chance Act requires the BOP to issue regulations allowing prisoners to be placed in community corrections centers for up to twelve months, but the BOP has not yet issued such regulations.  Not all inmates are eligible for half-way house.  For example, those with immigration or other types of detainers are ineligible, as are sex offenders.

Time calculation is complicated.  You will generally receive credit for every day you spend in “official detention” after the offense for which you were convicted as long as those days were not credited toward another sentence.  Unfortunately, the definition of “official detention” is not always clear.  Time in a halfway house or in home confinement is not counted.  The basic rule is in section 3585(b) of title 18 of the United States Code, but this is an important issue to discuss with your defense attorney. 

If you are in state custody, and you are brought into federal custody pursuant to a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, whether you receive federal custody credits for the time you are in federal custody will generally depend on whether you received state custody credits for that period of time.  Thus, if you were serving a state sentence, and you continue to receive credit against your state sentence, the federal Bureau of Prisons will generally not give you credits against your federal sentence.  But, if you were in state custody and the state dropped charges in favor of a federal prosecution, you will probably receive credits against your federal sentence, even for time you spent in state custody before the federal charges were filed, as long as that time in custody occurred after the offense for which you were convicted federally, and you did not receive credit against your state sentence.  Because this issue is so complicated, it is important to discuss any possible credits issues with your attorney before you are sentenced.  In some instances, an attorney may be able to persuade a court to adjust the federal sentence to account for any potential discrepancies between the credits that the Bureau of Prisons will count, on the one hand, and the time the judge thinks should count, on the other.

Time spent in immigration custody may or may not be considered “official detention.”  It is important to discuss this issue with your individual attorney so he or she may attempt to work out a resolution that will result in the time being credited.

The initial appearance in magistrate court is not, ultimately, determinative of how your time is counted.  What is important is the question whether you were in “official detention.”

The Second Chance Act was signed into law on April 9, 2008.  It authorized federal funding for state and federal reentry programs.  Although it authorized the BOP to implement some changes that would allow people to get out of prison--and into a community corrections center--it does not require the BOP to release anyone, and it does not give anyone the right to be released earlier.

The actual affect of the Second Chance Act on federal prisoners is yet to be known.  Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) long advocated for its passage and has posted on its website regular updates regarding its implementation.  For more information, visit FAMM’s website at http://www.famm.org/