Bad Leadership in the Bureau of Prisons

We have bad leadership in the Bureau of Prisons! The Second Chance Act of 2007 provided federal prison administrators with the authority to release prisoners to halfway houses one year before their sentences expired. That Act also urged administrators to expand programs that would help prisoners build stronger family and community ties while the prisoners […]

Senator Jim Webb Brings a Voice to Prison Reform

Please support this effort by contacting your Congressional representatives!  Tell them to support Sentator Webb and embrace prison reform. Find your representatives here:  http://www.vote-smart.org. America has too many people languishing in prisons for too many years, causing social and financial consequences that are destructive and wasteful.  ****** Read Senator Webb’s Message to American Citizens******  http://webb.senate.gov/email/criminaljusticereform.html The […]

My Wife Opposes Funding Prisons in Economic Stimulus

I feel very proud of my wife for the active efforts she makes to live as an integral part of my life. In late January of this year, Carole told me that she had contacted the offices of both California senators to express her outrage that Republicans were trying to squeeze a billion dollars into […]

Prison Administrators Can Lower Recidivism Rates by Offering Incentives

As I watched political news shows this past Sunday morning, I heard many Republican pundits assailing President Obama’s economic stimulus package with accusations that it lacks incentives for success. I wish those conservatives would support the use of incentives when deliberating over strategies for prison reform. For more than 21 years I’ve served time in various […]

Prison Reform Like Foreign Policy Reform

As a prisoner in the midst of my 22nd year in continuous confinement, I have had a first-hand look at this system. I’ve served virtually my entire adult life within prison boundaries of every security level. This perspective has given me unique opportunities and experiences from which I have learned. They convince me that prisons […]

Should Prisoners Request Specific Prison Camp Placements?

Eric wrote me asking whether it was beneficial to request the court to recommend a specific prison where the defendant could serve his sentence. He wanted to know whether the Bureau of Prisons would honor such requests. If the BOP did honor judicial recommendations, Eric wanted to know whether any Federal Prison Camps were worth […]

Federal Prisoners Serve More Than 85% of Their Time

I recently received a question from a reader who asked whether it was really true that federal inmates had to serve 85 percent of their sentences. The sad truth is that inmates who are sentenced to federal prison today must serve more than 85 percent of their time. Many prisoners mistakenly believe that they will […]

Expanding The Broken Glass Theory for Prison Reform

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , the author wrote about The Broken Glass Theory. I had read about the study before, as many law-and-order types extolled its merits. The Broken Glass Theory held that when society allowed the most trivial offenses to go unpunished, more […]

Dan is Getting Out of Prison

After 14 years of imprisonment, Dan is going home. Dan has been incarcerated since the summer of 1994. At the time of his arrest he was a 25-year-old without much more of a formal education than the GED he earned in night school. He had been working in an Arizona gas station when friends who […]

We need President Obama to appoint a new Director in the Bureau of Prisons

The President appoints Director of the Bureau of Prisons. The  Director presides over an agency that employs more than 25,000 people and incarcerates more than 200,000 people. The Director sets the policy for the Bureau of Prisons. All employees of the BOP carry out the Director’s mission, and the prisoners must live within the rules […]

How Conservative Policies Influence Privileges in Prison

I received a question from a reader who wanted my opinion on the ways that conservative court policies influenced privileges in prison. My experience as a long-term prisoner has convinced me that federal judges rarely intervene in prison matters. They generally defer to prison administrators to make the rules. When courts do intervene in prison […]

About the Bureau of Prisons

My wife sent me an article from BOP.gov that is titled About the Bureau of Prisons. The article states that the BOP “helps reduce the potential for future criminal activity by encouraging inmates to participate in a range of programs that have been proven to reduce recidivism. My experience of having been locked within various […]