DOJ Drops 23,000 Cases To Nab a Kid in a Bunny Hat – Update for April 11, 2026

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RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME

It turns out that a lot of people now doing federal prison time were just caught at the wrong time.

Their cases should have been referred to the DOJ last spring. The odds of not being prosecuted would have been much better.

ProPublica reported last week that in the first days after Pam Bondi – who President Trump fired last week – became Attorney General last year, DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, “abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases,” according to Pro Publica.

The bulk of these cases were closed without prosecution (called “declinations”). They had been referred to DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations. While the DOJ routinely declines cases for a number of reasons, the sheer number – about a third of the total number of federal criminal cases brought in a given year – was unprecedented.

DOJ brought 32,000 immigration cases through July 2025, nearly triple the number brought by the Biden administration. It pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back 15 years.

ProPublica, Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration (March 31, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Bad Boys, Island Living, and Money – Update for April 9, 2026

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BOP IN THE NEWS

True Crime:  Sandra Barnes, Deputy Assistant Inspector General for the Office of Inspector General’s Investigations Division, said the office receives about 17,000 complaints a year and that roughly 80% of them concern the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

On Transparency Talk, Barnes described how the Investigations Division is organized into nine regions and two specialty offices, and said roughly 95% of cases open as criminal inquiries. “We’re running two investigations for every case that we have,” she said, meaning the OIG pursues both criminal allegations and parallel administrative-misconduct reviews.

Barnes said common criminal allegations include introduction of contraband, bribery, excessive use of force and staff sexual abuse.

Citizens Portal, Deputy Assistant Inspector General Sandra Barnes outlines OIG probes into BOP staff corruption and contraband (April 1, 2026)

Trump Asks Congress for Alcatraz Money:  President Trump is asking for $152 million from Congress to return Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay from a tourist attraction back into an enlarged and rebuilt maximum-security prison “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”

The New York Times said, “The plan faces immense political and practical roadblocks. It has generated enormous pushback in San Francisco, where tourism is one of the biggest industries and Alcatraz is at the top of many visitors’ itineraries.” The BOP already has a much more modern maximum-security facility in Florence, Colorado.

The island facility has not housed inmates since 1962.

The New York Times, Trump Seeks $152 Million to Begin to Turn Alcatraz Back Into a Prison (April 3, 2026)

On the Subject of Money…:  BOP Director William K. Marshall III admitted to Walter Pavlo last week that despite all of last summer’s optimism, the FY 2026 BOP budget was a disappointment. “We were very, very excited… we thought finally we’re going to be able to address some of these needs,” Pavlo reported that Marshall said. “And then we get the final bill, and it’s $8.1 billion. Significantly less than the $8.7 billion we believed was in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

The BBB gave the BOP a one-time shot of an extra $5 billion – $3 billion for staffing and training, and $2 billion for infrastructure. Marshall said of the money for improvements, “We will use all of that, but we cannot rely on it for ongoing operations.” Leadership must now decide whether to stabilize current gaps or invest in long-term change.

Marshall told Pavlo the BOP is creating a dedicated office to oversee First Step Act implementation. “Our goal is to have 15 dedicated employees that exclusively work on FSA every day,” Pavlo reported that Marshall said. “For the first time ever, the BOP received $409 million as part of our budget for FSA Rick Stover said, “We scrutinized our FSA spending plan line-by-line. In doing so, we found funds that were not directly related to FSA implementation. That money was reallocated to other areas that directly impacted FSA. We did the same thing for the FSA-allocated positions. If we could not justify a direct connection to the position improving FSA implementation, we abolished it.’

Forbes, BOP Director Marshall Plots New Direction for the Bureau of Prisons (April 2, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

First They Treat You Bad… Then They Lie – Update for April 7, 2026

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NOTE TO GOVERNMENT LAWYER – DON’T TAKE THE BOP’S WORD FOR ANYTHING

You may remember the awful case of Frederick Bardell, the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate whose colon cancer was ignored by the BOP until it was too late, and then, when the court ordered compassionate release, dumped him on the sidewalk in front of DFW Airport, expecting the wheelchair-bound man to board and change planes to get home.

Mr. Bardell made it only through the kindness of strangers. When his parents met at the Jacksonville airport, they took him straight to the hospital. Mr. Bardell died there a week later.

Senior US District Judge Roy Dalton was furious, holding the FCI Seagoville warden in contempt and asking the Dept of Justice Inspector General to look into it. The IG issued a Report a few months ago concluding that the BOP’s delayed scheduling of urgent medical appointments led to Mr. Bardell’s “death by treatable cancer.” Contributing to the debacle, the IG found, was the “DOJ’s reliance on the BOP’s representations without further Inquiry.”

The BOP’s inferior healthcare has reared up to bite another inmate, but unfortunately for the Bureau, the inmate had been sentenced by Judge Dalton. Justina Holland sought compassionate release for an untreated medical problem, with the Government predictably denying that there was any emergency. The Court told the BOP he would grant Justina’s compassionate release if the agency didn’t get her to a breast surgeon within a month. The BOP sent her to the wrong specialist, and when an appointment with the right one was made, so much time had elapsed that she wouldn’t get in until May. When the Judge ordered the government to produce Justina’s complete medical file (including an urgent referral to a specialist from the first week in January), he got Epstein-file treatment: a lot of pages, but the critical pages, the smoking guns – such as the doctor’s urgent referral – were missing.

Last week, Judge Dalton granted Justina’s compassionate release motion. He did not mince words:

The failure to provide inmates with urgent medical care is now a well-documented problem with the BOP. See OIG Report at 50–51. Three months ago, with lumps in both breasts and bleeding from the nipples, Ms. Holland received an urgent referral for a doctor’s appointment to check for cancer. She still has not seen a doctor. The BOP’s repeated failures—to timely provide Ms. Holland with an appointment, to get her to the right doctor, even to collect her complete medical records—self-evidently show that Ms. Holland has an extraordinary and compelling medical circumstance qualifying her for compassionate release.

The Judge blasted BOP healthcare: “Nothing seems to move the nation’s federal prison system operators to improve their response to the urgent medical needs of the federal prison population,” he wrote. “Court orders go unread or ignored. OIG reports are dismissed, recommendations unheeded. Sanctions brook no change. Outside medical referrals are like Solzhenitsyn’s sick bay in the Soviet Gulag: a coveted but nearly inaccessible refuge for which only prisoners near death qualify for admission.”

He was equally blunt about the BOP’s reputation for truthfulness: Department of DOJ attorneys must be mindful in dealing with the BOP to ensure they comply with their duty of candor to the Court. A client who repeatedly fails to comply with court orders and OIG recommendations falls into the ‘trust but verify’ category of governmental agencies. There can be no presumption of regularity. The BOP will emerge unscathed, while the Government’s lawyer—and most importantly, the inmate—will carry the scars of its misfeasance.”

The BOP’s habits of misrepresenting inmate healthcare is hardly new.  But the agency should probably avoid trying its prevarications and half-truths on the same judge more than once.  This attempt did not end well for the agency (but Justina was granted compassionate release, and is presumably getting timely healthcare once again).

So there’s one winner here…

Order (Doc 207), United States v. Holland, Case No. 6:20-cr-86 (MD Fla, March 31, 2026)

NOTUS, A Federal Judge Compared the U.S. Prison System to a ‘Soviet Gulag’ Over Inmate Health Concerns (April 3, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Courts Are Expected to Apply Supervised Release Policies, Not Create Them, 6th Circuit Says – Update for April 6, 2026

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6th CIRCUIT SAYS NO TO ARBITRARY TIME ‘POLICIES’ ON SUPERVISED RELEASE TERMINATION

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Through the Looking Glass, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

Under the supervised release statute – 18 USC § 3583 – a former prisoner on supervised release can apply to have his supervised release terminated after one year, no matter how long a period of supervised release he’s serving. Although the Sentencing Commission has said that district courts should favor early termination, there is an unfortunate history of district courts and probation officers adopting their own policies that hold the minimum time to be served on supervised release before early termination is what they say it is. No matter that § 3583(e) specifies early termination can be granted “after the expiration of one year of supervised release: to them, ‘one year’ may mean 18 months or two years or 50% or even – as one Probation Officer told me once –the judge she was working believed that everyone should serve their full supervised release term and not a day less.

The statute means what they choose it to mean. Humpty would be proud.

I have run into more than my share of probation officers and district judges who write their own blanket policies on when former prisoners can get off supervised release. It’s maddening that someone’s superlative history in prison and on supervised release means nothing stacked against their “policies.” And last week, the 6th Circuit said as much.

Guy Collins was sentenced to 240 months in 2010 for a methamphetamine offense. After the First Step Act passed, Guy’s sentence was cut to 180 months, with his judge finding that Guy’s “post-sentencing rehabilitation has been extensive, as evidenced by his [prison programming] report and the letter appended to his motion.” Guy was 56 years old at the time and “ha[d] by all accounts turned his life around,” the Court said.

After his release, Guy began an 8-year supervised release term. After a year, Guy moved for early termination of supervised release under 18 USC § 3583(e)(1). The district court denied the first motion despite holding that further supervision appeared “unnecessary.” Nonetheless, the court denied the motion, holding that “the seriousness of [Guy’s] offense—trafficking crack cocaine — and his extensive criminal history,” argued against early termination, and “noted that Congress had mandated a minimum supervision term of eight years for defendants similarly situated” to Guy.

Sixteen months later, Guy tried again. The Court denied him again, applauding Guy’s good conduct but noting that he“has still not completed half of his term of supervision. As Defendant’s counsel is aware, the Court, as a matter of custom, will not consider a defendant’s request for early termination until he has completed at least half of his term of supervision.”

Guy appealed, but then filed a third motion for early termination, which he called a “renewed” motion. He asked the District Court to rule it would grant his renewed motion for early termination of supervised release if it had jurisdiction to do so, that is, if the denial of the prior one wasn’t on appeal. The District Court refused the motions but emphasized that its 50% custom “is precisely that—a custom, not an unbending rule—and the Court applies it with deference and adherence to the individualized inquiry that must accompany any analysis under § 3553(a)’s factors.”

The 6th Circuit reversed the District Court’s denial of Guy’s motion, ruling that “district courts cannot employ a blanket rule requiring defendants to complete a certain proportion of their supervised-release term without conducting an individualized assessment of the relevant § 3553(a) factors,’ and that the district court therefore abused its discretion by failing to consider the relevant § 3553(a) factors in Guy’s case. The Circuit held that the District Court did ‘not explain how, if at all, the proportion of his supervised-release term that Guy has completed pertains to any relevant § 3553(a) consideration. Indeed, it gives no indication that the district court considered the relevant § 3553(a) sentencing factors.”

The 6th held that the

amount of time a defendant has served cannot be the sole animating force behind a court’s early-termination decision—the statute mandates that such decisions flow from individualized inquiries based on the relevant § 3553(a) factors. A blanket rule, or custom, is not individualized. But assuming arguendo that the proportion completed can be considered for its bearing on some relevant § 3553(a) factor(s), a district court would need to be explicit in drawing that connection for a particular defendant: The proportion standing alone is not a relevant consideration… Congress imposed a minimum time requirement of one year, and a court may not add to that time requirement without tying its decision to the relevant statutory factors.

In its last order, the District Court concluded that “the need to adequately deter criminal conduct and protect the public from further crimes” counseled against giving Guy early termination. The Circuit rejected this makeweight: “[T]his finding… directly contradicts the court’s earlier statement in the First Order [that further supervised release was unnecessary]… The district court never explained why it changed its mind. Nor did it offer any other § 3553(a) factor to which the proportion of the term completed is relevant.”

United States v. Collins, Case No. 25-5395, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 9438 (6th Cir. April 1, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Dublin Déjà Vu? – Update for April 3, 2026

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IS THE BOP TEEING UP THE NEXT INMATE SEX ABUSE SCANDAL?

The FCI Dublin “rape club” may not be a ‘one-off’.

You may recall that the BOP finally had to close FCI Dublin, a federal women’s prison in Dublin, California (28 miles east southeast of San Francisco), in 2024. The closure came not only because staff-on-inmate sexual abuse was rampant, but because prison management systematically punished female inmates who dared to complain about the harassment.

Lesson: When the warden gets convicted of criminal sexual abuse, you can figure you might have a systemic problem.

Then-BOP director Colette Peters made all the right noises that the agency would not tolerate such abuse, would fully investigate such allegations, and would not immediately disbelieve inmates just because they were inmates.

Last week, a joint NBC News-The Marshall Project investigation reported in detail on FPC Bryan, a Texas minimum-security women’s facility, concluding that inmates and some staff whistleblowers alike “say the minimum-security facility conceals a sinister secret: inescapable sexual misconduct, and punishments for those who try to report the abuse.”

In all, the women interviewed by NBC/TMP reporters accused five staff members of sexual misconduct. Two of the accused still work at Bryan. Three others are no longer BOP employees, including a chaplain accused of sexual abuse against one of the accusers. Reporters reviewed sexual misconduct reports, court records, emails and memos to BOP officials – obtained through Freedom of Information requests – and spoke with staff members and other inmates to corroborate the women’s accounts. Several of the accusers say they have been retaliated against. One was transferred from the camp to Houston FDC. Others say that they fear retaliation.

None of the sexual abuse reports, even by staff members turning in other staff members, has resulted in action.

The warden at Bryan refused to speak to reporters but sent an email saying that the BOP has a zero-tolerance policy on sexual abuse: “We take seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted to our care as well as maintain the safety of correctional employees and the community,” she wrote.

Uh-huh.  Heard that one before.

BOP spokesman Donald Murphy said in an email that he could not discuss individual allegations or any related investigations, but the bureau “thoroughly investigates all credible allegations to ensure the safety of inmates.”

Uh-huh.  Heard that one before, too.

These general denials and blandishments should sound familiar to anyone who remembers BOP statements made in response to media reports of the FCI Dublin “rape club” and the $116 million in damages the agency agreed to pay inmate sexual abuse victims there. And the latest accusations from Bryan should not surprise anyone who recalls the Trump Administration’s attempt to renege on the settlement, an effort U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (E.D. Cal.) promptly and unceremoniously shut down.

It is unlikely that we have heard the last of sexual abuse at Bryan.

NBC, A women’s prison conceals a sinister secret: Staff sexual misconduct, accusers say (March 27, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

FSA Credits Not Redeemable for Supervised Release, 2nd Circuit Says – Update for April 2, 2026

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TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

More often than I like, prisoners seeking full use of their First Step Act time credits awarded under 18 USC § 3632(d) insist that if they can’t use them for halfway house/home confinement because there’s not enough time left on their sentence, they can apply them to shorten their time on supervised release.

Lately, they all point me to Rivera-Perez v. Stover, an unpublished District of Connecticut case in which the judge did exactly that: shortened a prisoner’s supervised release term because the Federal Bureau of Prisons had not allowed the inmate to use all of his FSA credits due to space limitations at the halfway house.

My granddaughter Helen loves unicorns. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t wish them into existence. Last week, the 2nd Circuit said the same is true of using FSA credits to shorten supervised release.

Raul Rivera-Perez filed a 28 USC § 2241 petition for habeas corpus, arguing that the BOP miscalculated his FSA time credits and illegally prevented his transfer from prison to a halfway house. However, while his petition was pending, Raul was transferred to a halfway house, and the BOP thus argued that his petition was moot. The district court, on its own motion, decided that the FSA requires application of credits to reduce a prisoner’s term of supervised release, and it did so.

The BOP appealed.

The 2nd examined “the two critical sentences of § 3632(d)(4)(C): ‘Time credits earned . . . by prisoners… shall be applied toward time in prerelease custody or supervised release. The Director of the Bureau of Prisons shall transfer eligible prisoners, as determined under section 3624(g), into prerelease custody or supervised release.’ ”

Raul claimed that the language meant that FSA credits had to be used to shorten supervised release. The BOP said it just meant that FSA credits could be applied to get Raul to supervised release more quickly by shortening his sentence.

The Circuit conceded that the statute was ambiguous. However, it ruled, “the context of the phrase ‘applied toward time in… supervised release’ resolves the ambiguity in favor of [the BOP’s] reading of the statute. Recall that the contested phrase immediately precedes the following sentence: ‘The Director of the Bureau of Prisons shall transfer eligible prisoners, as determined under § 3624(g), into prerelease custody or supervised release.’ 18 USC § 3632(d)(4)(C). We conclude that this second sentence confirms [the BOP’s] reading of the statute because it unquestionably contemplates a transfer from prison to prerelease custody or supervised release, not a reduction of time spent in prerelease custody or a term of supervised release.”

Sorry, Helen. There are no unicorns. And FSA credits can’t shorten supervised release.

Rivera-Perez v. Stover, Case No. 25-149, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 8819 (2d Cir. March 26, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Shocking News! BOP Grievance Procedure Doesn’t Work – Update for March 31, 2026

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DOG BITES MAN

In journalism, a “dog bites man” story is one about something that is so obvious as to not be newsworthy. Dogs bite people all the time. What would be newsworthy would be a story about a man biting a dog.

Last week, the Prison Policy Initiative published the classic canine-chomping-guy report, a revealing study that will shock no one familiar with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

PPI studied nearly 66,000 BOP inmate administrative remedy complaints (the so-called BP-9 and its appellate brothers, the BP-10 and BP-11) filed over a 10-year period ending in January 2024. The PPI limited its study to complaints addressing medical care. The results were as sobering as they were unsurprising.

Over the period, 32% of all medical complaints filed by inmates were rejected as “improperly filed” (not enough copies, filed late or raising two issues instead of one).  Another 51% of the complaints had been closed on appeal for similar “administrative reasons.” A scant 14% of all medical grievances made it past administrative procedural hurdles, only to be denied on the merits.

Only 940 cases of the 65,712 complaints PPI studied – 1.4% of the total – were granted relief.

Your odds of buying a winning “scratch-off” are ten times greater.

Complaints about mental health and dental care were the highest percentage of cases denied relief: 78% of dental and 83% of mental health grievances were tossed out for administrative reasons. Complaints about other forced medical treatment and forced psychotropic medication had zero cases that even cleared the procedural hurdles.

PPI said, “In theory, grievance procedures are an important tool for incarcerated people to pursue fair treatment and defend themselves in a system designed to disempower them. This power is particularly important in the context of medical care, where needs are widespread and urgent, and where failure to meet them can lead to injury, illness, and death. In practice, however, the grievance system is a black hole, a time-waster, and a deterrent to complaining at all. It’s a long and winding maze of rules and technicalities that must be cleared before an incarcerated person can get their complaint to a setting that might actually force a change: the courts.”

Prison Policy Initiative, In federal prisons, the grievance system is designed to reject nearly all complaints about medical care (March 24, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

On the Lam from Supervised Release Still Runs Out the Clock, SCOTUS Says – Update for March 30, 2026

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BEAT FEET

Isabel Rico has traveled a rocky road. Her federal drug trafficking sentence ended in 2018, but her 48-month supervised release term was revoked pretty quickly for some transgression not recounted in court records. She served two months in prison for that and, upon release, faced another 46 months of supervised release time.

Izzy did no better on that second supervised release stint. At some point, she decided to “beat feet,” moving without telling her Probation Officer and no longer bothering to make monthly visits to the Probation Office. Her disappearing act prompted the judge to issue a revocation warrant. But the warrant went unserved because Izzy could not be found. She thus became an “absconder.”

While wild and free, Izzy got picked up by local police for possession of drugs and fleeing the cops. When her federal Probation Officer finally caught up with her, Izzy was hauled into court for the revocation warrant.

The failure to report her new address was a mere Grade C supervised release violation, which would net her only 8 – 14 months of additional prison time. The fleeing offense likewise was just a Grade C violation. But the drug possession charge was a Grade A violation, with a Guidelines sentencing range of 33-36 months.

The rub: While Izzy was off the grid, that is, an “absconder,” her supervised release term expired. The fleeing and drug possession charges both happened after her supervised release ended. When the district court sentenced her to 16 months in prison for all three supervised release violations, Izzy argued that the fleeing and drug possession couldn’t count because they happened after her supervised release ended.

The district court disagreed. It held that while Izzy was in “absconder” status, her supervised release was tolled, that is, on hold. The clock only started running again when she was found and served with her revocation warrant.

Izzy appealed, but the 9th Circuit agreed with the district court in a terse opinion.

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed.

By an 8-1 decision, SCOTUS held that while the 9th Circuit may think absconding “tolls” supervised release, what it was really saying was that absconding automatically extended supervised release beyond the term imposed by the judge, something that Congress did not provide for in the Sentencing Reform Act’s carefully detailed scheme.

True tolling, the Supremes said, pauses the running of a term, but the 9th Circuit’s approach wants it both ways. It stops the running of supervised release but holds that the defendant is still under supervision and subject to punishment. This, Justice Gorsuch wrote for the 8-1 majority, is not a pause in the supervised release but rather an automatic extension of the term (and the defendant’s exposure to revocation).

The Court anchored its analysis in the clear statutory language of the Act. Under 18 USC 3624(e), supervised release begins “the day the person is released from imprisonment. Section 3583(b) provides that supervised releaselasts for a set term of years, depending on the underlying offense. SCOTUS found “no hint” of an abscondment-based automatic extension, observing that the risk of such a court-made rule would be to let supervised releaseterms exceed statutory maximums. What’s more, the supervised release statute provides for precisely crafted sanctions for violations. Adding an unlisted additional consequence — automatic term extension — would be an unauthorized judicial supplement, the Court ruled.

The supervised release statute allows a district court to extend a period of supervision, but only after a defendant receives a hearing. While a district court can hold a revocation hearing after the supervised release term expires, it can do so only for “matters arising before its expiration” and only if a warrant or summons was issued before expiration. Finally, the fact that the statute provides that the supervised release term “does not run” during imprisonment of 30 consecutive days or more in connection with a conviction, suggests that Congress intended to address when supervised release tolls and when it does not. “To our eyes,” Gorsuch wrote, “the absence of anything like the Ninth Circuit’s rule in all these exacting instructions is striking and strongly suggestive that the Ninth Circuit’s rule more nearly represents an adornment to Congress’s work than a permissible interpretation of it.

Rico suggests prosecutors and probation offices will need to ensure timely issuance of a warrant or summons before a term expires if they wish to preserve revocation jurisdiction for violations “arising before” expiration. That could lead to more supervised release violator warrants being issued in a post-sentencing regime that already “violates” too many people.

Rico v US, Case No. 24-1056, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 1490 (March 25, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

‘Random Compassion’ Wasting A Resource, Former DOJ Official Says – Update for March 27, 2026

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COMPASSIONATE RELEASE NEEDS SERIOUS STUDY

Jonathan Wroblewski, a former ex officio member of the US Sentencing Commission, director of Harvard Law School’s Semester in Washington Program, and longtime federal prosecutor and defense attorney, wrote in a Substack column last week that the disparities and under-utilization of compassionate release require comprehensive review by the Sentencing Commission.

Professor Mark Osler wrote a few months ago that President Trump’s use of the pardon power is like a driver who uses a “classic Jag to knock down an old house by slamming it into a wall again and again and again as a crowd gathers, aghast. It is a terrible use of a beautiful machine.”

Wroblewski suggests that compassionate release has similarly always been a beautiful machine, even as it was practiced for more than 30 years following the enactment of the Sentencing Reform Act. Its misuse prior to the First Step Act lay in the Bureau of Prisons’ chary use of the authority. Now, the misuse lies in its inconsistent implementation even as it has morphed into something much more than just a means to send dying prisoners’ home. Wroblewski writes that now, compassionate release serves a broader function,

with the Sentencing Commission authorizing sentence reductions for those suffering from a serious physical or medical condition or a serious functional or cognitive impairment, or experiencing deteriorating physical or mental health because of the aging process. Sentence reductions are authorized for the old, for those with acute challenging circumstances, victims of abuse, and those serving an unusually long sentence that would today be different on account of a change in the law. There’s even a catch-all provision for other circumstances that are “similar in gravity” to those articulated in the Guidelines. Interestingly, there’s nothing about penitence or contrition.

But compassionate release is used seldomly and inconsistently. The BOP is holding than 10,000 people aged 61 or older. The National Council on Aging reports that almost all adults in the United States age 65 or older have at least one chronic medical condition, 40% are obese, and significant numbers have COPD, diabetes, or cancer. Of course, many studies report that older adults in prison are significantly more likely to experience serious medical conditions or disabilities, with cognitive impairments, for example, being twice as prevalent compared to their peers living in community settings. There are undoubtedly many hundreds, if not thousands of federal prisoners who are, as described in the Commission’s policy statement on compassionate release, “suffering from a serious physical or medical condition, a serious functional or cognitive impairment, or experiencing deteriorating physical or mental health because of the aging process that substantially diminishes the ability of the defendant to provide self-care . . .

About one person dies in BOP custody each day. The BOP admit that deaths are due to “cancer,” “pulmonary,” “cardiac,” “blunt trauma,” “hanging,” and “drug overdose.” There almost certainly are dozens — or hundreds — of BOP prisoners “suffering from a terminal illness,” Wroblewski wrote, such as “metastatic solid-tumor cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), end-stage organ disease, and advanced dementia,” as described by the Commission in its compassionate release policy.

Data show that the longer someone is in BOP custody, the more likely it is that they will be granted compassionate release. The primary reason given by judges for granting compassionate release is rehabilitation, although the Sentencing Commission reports that “[i]n all cases where the court gave rehabilitation as a reason for the granted motion, the court also gave one or more other reasons.”

Subject to a Supreme Court decision in a pending case, thousands of BOP prisoners with long sentences will also be subject to the “changes in law” provision of compassionate release, although the precise number is impossible to calculate. Many will experience changes in family circumstances during their years of incarceration.

Wroblewski wrote that from the data, “I would expect a couple of thousand compassionate release motions would meet the Commission standards each year (an educated guess, really).” Yet Sentencing Commission data for FY 2024 show only about 2,700 inmates filed for compassionate release and of those, only 391 of the motions were granted:

But when you look just a little deeper, the data are quite troubling. They show tremendous disparities in the application of compassionate release, strongly suggesting that compassionate release is not being implemented with the certainty and fairness in meeting the purposes of sentencing required by the Sentencing Reform Act. The disparities evident from the Commission data ought to be studied further by the Commission to determine whether they are indeed unwarranted and whether further adjustments need to be made to compassionate release policy.

Wroblewski noted substantial disparities in compassionate release grants. While the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida processed 11% of the total motions filed nationwide, they only had 4% of the total number of defendants sentenced nationwide that year. Eight districts that sentenced 4.5% all defendants reported zero compassionate release motions filed. These districts collectively sentenced 2,818 defendants in FY 2024 or about 4.5% of the total.

The rate at which motions are granted varies dramatically across the country as well. “Among the districts that reported more than 20 motions filed in FY 2025,” Wroblewski wrote, “the grant rate varied from zero to 56%. In the District of Maryland, for example, judges granted 31 pct of the 95 compassionate release motions filed there, while judges in the Northern District of Ohio granted just 2.5% of the 80 motions filed, and judges in the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted zero motions of the 35 filed there.”

Although the longer a prisoner has been locked up, the greater the chance a compassionate release motion will be granted, the number of motions filed by long-serving prisoners is relatively few. And while the BOP must be asked to bring the compassionate release motion before the prisoner files it himself or herself, the BOP moved for compassionate release only 19 times during the year (out of over 2,700 filed).

Wroblewski argued, “Given the number of elderly, the number of deaths in the Bureau of Prisons, the number of long sentences being served, it seems virtually impossible that the Bureau of Prisons is applying the compassionate release statute consistently as the Commission intended.”

Substack, What’s Really Going on with Compassionate Release? (March 19, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Heckler Avoids Being ‘Hecked’ – Update for March 26, 2026

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WHAT THE HECK?

Gabriel Olivier is a Mississippi street preacher whose brand of persuasion is to yell at people seeking abortions that they were “whores” and Jezebels. The City of Brandon convicted him of refusing to move his protest to a designated area (where his shaming would, apparently, have been less effective). He paid a fine as punishment for his recalcitrance.

Because he still wanted to preach near the amphitheater – where the saving of souls was more fruitful – Gabe filed suit against the City in federal court under 42 USC § 1983, a statute letting folks sue state or local governments and their employees for depriving private citizens of their civil rights.  Gabe alleged that the city ordinance violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment by consigning him and other speakers to the amphitheater’s protest area. The complaint sought a declaration that the ordinance infringes the First Amendment and an injunction preventing city officials from enforcing the ordinance in the future.

Gabe immediately ran into a 1994 decision, Heck v. Humphrey, in which the Supreme Court held that “in order to recover damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harm caused by actions whose unlawfulness would render a conviction or sentence invalid, a plaintiff must prove that the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.”

Gabe had been convicted of violating the statute, the lower courts said, so he could not pursue a § 1983 action challenging its constitutionality.

Last week, the Supreme Court threw Gabe a lifeline.  Gabe’s suit, SCOTUS held, only asked for “forward-looking relief—nothing to do with [his] prior conviction.” Therefore, the Court held, Heck v. Humphrey does not bar bars Gabe’s suit. Heck prohibits any challenge the validity of a prior conviction or sentence so as to obtain release from custody or monetary damages. That decision has no bearing on Gabe’s action seeking a purely prospective remedy.

Olivier v. City of Brandon, Case No. 24-993, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 1272 (March 20, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root