What the First Step Act actually set up

The law passed in December 2018 and it told the Bureau to do three things: score everybody for risk, score everybody for needs, and pay people for programming. Everything else comes out of those three.

Three things Congress told the Bureau to build

The First Step Act was signed on December 21, 2018. Underneath all the coverage it got, it handed the Bureau of Prisons three instructions, and everything in this guide traces back to one of them.

Score everybody for risk. Score everybody for needs. Then build a standard menu of programs that address those needs, and pay people for doing them.

The pay comes in three currencies: phone minutes, better housing, and time. The last one is the reason anybody pays attention.

PATTERN is the risk half

PATTERN stands for Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Need. It scores how likely the Bureau thinks you are to reoffend, and it puts you in one of four buckets: high, medium, low, or minimum. You get scored when your sentence starts, and rescored regularly after that.

That score matters more than most people going in realize, because it does not work the way you would expect. You can earn credits at any risk level. You can only apply them at low or minimum. A medium score does not stop the meter running. It stops the payout.

Only four of the fifteen things PATTERN looks at move because of programming: your education score, your drug program status, your program completions, and your work programs. Part four lists exactly which programs touch which item, and it is a short list. Everything else on the instrument is either fixed, like your age and your offense history, or it moves by staying out of trouble rather than by signing up for anything.

You can score the instrument yourself if you want to see where you land. It runs in your browser and nothing you type leaves the page.

SPARC is the needs half

SPARC is the Standardized Prisoner Assessment for Reduction in Criminality. Where PATTERN asks how risky you are, SPARC asks what is actually wrong, across thirteen areas:

Staff recommend programs off the approved list based on which of those you scored into. You get reassessed through the sentence, so the recommendations shift as you go.

Every program on the list carries a "change needs" answer, which is whether finishing it can actually clear the need it addresses. Some programs address a need and never resolve it. CBT for Chronic Pain addresses the medical need and clears nothing. That is worth knowing before you put eighteen hours into something expecting your assessment to look different at the end of it.

EBRRs and productive activities

Every approved program is one of two things.

An EBRR is an evidence-based recidivism reduction program. These are the heavy ones: RDAP, BRAVE, the Bureau Literacy Program, the apprenticeships, UNICOR. The Bureau's own definition is a structured activity that addresses an identified need and that research says reduces reoffending, or probably does.

A PA is a productive activity. Lighter, supplemental, aimed mostly at people already sitting at low or minimum risk, though anyone can take one. There are 77 of these against 50 EBRRs.

Both earn FSA credits at exactly the same rate, because the rate has nothing to do with what you took. Where the difference actually shows up is the participation incentives, and those key off EBRR hours specifically. A hundred hours of EBRR gets you something a hundred hours of productive activity does not.

The short version

If you read nothing else on this guide, read this and then read part two.

Hand the rest of this site to your family

You will not be able to look things up once you're inside. They can, and this is where: everything written for the one waiting: a twelve-part guide to mail, visiting, money, and your release date, plus their own FAQ and checklist. Alongside it, a guide to every facility with email alerts when visiting stops, the support group directory, calculators for your release math, and free answers when they have questions.

Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you.

Somebody is programming hard and losing credits anyway. Send it to them.