• BOP Population Explodes

    My dad always said that figures lie and liars figure. To salute that truism, let’s look at statistics to illustrate to profound impact that mandatory minimums and the sentencing guidelines have had on the federal prison population since the “war on drugs” commenced. One immutable fact is that the federal prison population has grown precipitously […]

  • Football–The Official Sport of the BOP!

    The federal grand jury in Brooklyn returned an indictment on Wednesday that makes me wonder if most BOP prison yards will have enough soccer pitches to accommodate the almost certain influx of inmates who will be sentenced out of the FIFA soccer scandal. The 47-count indictment charged 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud and money […]

  • Life Sentence Data In The Federal Bureau Of Prisons

    “Pine box parole” is an euphemism used to describe the plight of a federal criminal defendant who received a life sentence (or one so long it might as well have been life). In Fiscal Year 2013, federal judges imposed life sentences on 153 people and another 168 received sentences so long (more than 470 months) […]

  • Welcome To Supermax!

    In 1994, in response to an incident at USP Marion where two guards were killed, the BOP opened ADX Florence, its only supermax facility. There have been many mysteries swirling around life at ADX but much of that uncertainty has become public as a result of a lawsuit brought over prison conditions. It is now […]