Bad news, my friends. Many of you might recall me exuberantly declaring that I would be at a federal halfway house by November of this year. It’s a date we’ve had circled since I first arrived. (In 2007, George W. Bush signed a law that allowed for inmates to serve up to 10% of their sentences in halfway houses/home detention. My actual release date on a 288-month sentence is November 2026. March was my 20-year anniversary of incarceration. I am well over 90% done with this long journey.) Even though the halfway house is not really “home”; I’d be able to work a job for my final year, save money, spend weekends at Mom’s house, and make a smooth transition back into society.

Unfortunately, this will not be happening.

Due to “budget constraints” in the federal B.O.P. (the Bureau of Prisons), myself and thousands of others recently had our halfway house time severely slashed from 365 days down to just the final 60 days of our sentences. Barely enough time to find a job, find housing, and navigate a world that did not even have smart phones when many of us left. I’m lucky to have a strong support system and a place to go. Some of these guys will be starting from scratch. In an inflationary America with little or no work experience, the temptation to return to crime for a quick buck and a little stability will be difficult for some of these men to resist.

Is this good for society? Ninety percent of federal prisoners are returning to their communities one day. Is dropping them off with little or no transition period going to solve the problem of rampant crime? Is this a smart way to combat recidivism? Is this in the interest of public safety? Not by my calculus.

Again, the B.O.P. cites budget constraints as the reason for this head scratcher of a policy change. They use “limited resources, chronic understaffing, and deteriorating facilities” as their justification to reduce the halfway house time to 60 days. (Believe me, I know all about deteriorating facilities. I am currently housed in a mold-ridden, roach-infested prison that was built in the 1930s. This place should have been condemned a couple decades ago.) But is not allowing tens of thousands of people to go to halfway houses and home detention going to “ease” overcrowding? These same dilapidated, understaffed prisons are going to be more packed, more dangerous, and more expensive to run with a year’s worth of inmates who would have been in the halfway houses now needing to be fed, clothed, housed, and supervised.

The crazy thing is that it costs MORE to keep us here for longer. Prisons have overhead expenses that do not apply to halfway houses. And definitely not to home detention.

So to recap: This recent change lowers the offender’s chance for success by limiting the window of opportunity to transition and thereby increasing the chances of recidivism. It also increases overcrowding, makes institutions less safe, puts a greater strain on the workforce . . . And it costs more. A commonsense solution would be instead to immediately release all the Second Chance Act-eligible inmates to halfway houses and/or home detention for those with a verified address. But they won’t. Why? It makes too much sense. This is the B.O.P.—Backwards On Purpose.

—April 3, 2025

*** An update! I received some exciting news after I typed this essay. Three days after the BOP updated the policy that reduced my halfway house time down to a basically nothing―a few weeks―they rescinded the order! So now I am back to the very real possibility of being home for Thanksgiving. (Is it me or are we living in the era of thrilling highs an crushing lows? Just when I thought last week’s stock market ride was about as dizzying as things could get…)