# The credits are wrong and nobody told you There is no alert when a release date is short a few months of earned credit. The number just sits there being wrong, and the person who catches it is almost always somebody on the outside with a calculator. Before anything else I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer and I have never litigated a credit dispute. What follows is the order the Bureau's own paperwork runs in, and the order that keeps a real error from turning into a missed deadline. ## Nobody tells you the number is wrong There is no alert. No letter. The release date just sits there being a few months later than it should be, and everybody involved assumes somebody else checked it. Most of the time the person who catches it is a wife with a spreadsheet, not a case manager. That is not a knock on the staff. A case manager carries a hundred and something people and the computation is not a thing they are running by hand for any of them. It comes out of the Bureau's own records system and it is treated as the answer. So the first thing to accept is that this is your job. Nobody upstream is going to raise their hand. ## Get the paper before you argue about it You cannot dispute a number you have not seen, and you will not be taken seriously trying. 1. **The sentence computation** The whole arithmetic: the sentence imposed, jail credit, good conduct time (days off for staying out of trouble), and the projected release date. Ask your unit team (the staff who run day-to-day life inside) for a current copy. This is a routine request and it is not an accusation. 2. **The FSA time credit assessment** The separate sheet showing earned credits, the assessment dates behind them, and the current PATTERN (the risk score affecting FSA credit eligibility) risk level. This is the one people never think to ask for, and it is the one that usually holds the error. 3. **The most recent PATTERN score** Item by item, not just the level. A wrong level is nearly always a wrong item, and a wrong item is usually something concrete like a stale program completion or a detainer that resolved and never came off. Get all three on the same day if you can, because they have to agree with each other and the mismatch is often the whole finding. ## Three flags produce nearly every error Before you write anything down, work out which of these it is. They fail differently and they get fixed differently. Where it goes wrong - **Eligibility to earn** a statutory question about your offense and prior record. If this is the problem, no amount of programming changes it and the fix is not an administrative remedy, it is a lawyer. - **Opt-in status** the participation flag. Days spent opted out earn nothing and are gone for good, so the dispute is usually about which days you were actually opted out and whether the record says so correctly. - **PATTERN risk level** decides whether earned credits can be applied at all. Credits sitting there unapplied is not always an error. At medium or high, that is the system working as written. [Part two](https://federalprisondude.com/first-step-act/opt-in-status) covers the seven ways opt-in status drops, including two nobody chooses. [Part three](https://federalprisondude.com/first-step-act/earning-and-applying-credits) covers who is allowed to apply credits. Read whichever one your problem lives in before you file anything, because half of what gets filed as an error is the rule working correctly and being explained badly. ## Run the arithmetic yourself Once you have the three documents, do the math independently. Do not start from their number and look for the mistake, because you will find yourself agreeing with it. The rate is 10 days for every 30 in opt-in status, 15 for every 30 once you have scored low or minimum on two assessments running. Up to 365 days move the supervised release date. Everything past that goes toward prerelease custody. Good conduct time is a separate 54 days a year and does not interact with any of it. [The release date estimator](https://federalprisondude.com/resources/federal-prison-release-date-calculator) does this in your browser and sends nothing anywhere. If your number and theirs land in the same place, you have your answer and you have saved everybody a filing. If they are months apart, you now have something specific to point at, which is the only kind of complaint that goes anywhere. ## Ask before you file The single most common way this gets fixed is a conversation at mainline (main meal service; also when staff can be flagged down), or a written request to staff (everybody calls it a cop-out) that says plainly: here is the sheet, here is my arithmetic, here is the gap. Do it in writing even when you also do it out loud. A dated request with a specific number in it is the beginning of a record, and if this ends up on the ladder, the record is what you will wish you had. Keep your copy. Two things make this go better. Be specific, because "my credits are wrong" gets filed under complaints and "my assessment sheet shows 240 days and the computation applied 180" gets looked at. And be right, which is what step three was for. ## The ladder, and the clock on it If the informal ask does not fix it, the [administrative remedy program](https://federalprisondude.com/resources/bop-program-statements/1330-18-administrative-remedy-program) is the formal path. It is a ladder and the deadlines are short. 1. **BP-8, informal resolution** The attempt you are ordinarily required to make before filing anything formal. This is the written request from step four, done on the form. 2. **BP-9 to the Warden** Twenty calendar days from the date the thing you are complaining about happened. That same twenty days has to cover finishing informal resolution, so the clock is shorter than it sounds. The Warden has twenty calendar days to answer. 3. **BP-10 to the Regional Director** Twenty calendar days from the date the Warden signed the response. The Region has thirty calendar days to answer. 4. **BP-11 to the General Counsel** Thirty calendar days from the date the Regional Director signed. Central Office has forty calendar days. This is the last administrative step, and courts usually want it finished before they will hear the complaint at all. Two rules people find out about the hard way. You cannot raise an issue on appeal that you did not raise below, so the BP-9 has to contain the whole argument, not the easy half of it. And the deadlines can be extended for a valid reason, but you generally have to get that reason verified in writing by staff, which means asking for it while it is still true. Attach the paper. Every level wants copies of what came before it. ## What this is realistically worth I did not run this ladder over credits. I am reading the Bureau's own policy and telling you what it says, and I am telling you that because you are going to be handed a lot of confident secondhand versions of it on the compound and most of them are wrong in small expensive ways. What I do know from watching it: the informal ask fixes more of these than the forms do, arithmetic errors get corrected more often than judgment calls get reversed, and the thing that kills good complaints is not the merits, it is the twenty-day clock running out while somebody works up the nerve. If the problem is a statutory eligibility question rather than a bookkeeping one, stop reading websites and get it in front of your attorney. That is not a form you can file your way out of. ### [The source](https://federalprisondude.com/first-step-act/where-the-numbers-come-from) All of it traces to one document the Bureau reissues about once a year. Worth knowing what the last revision changed, and worth knowing the document contradicts itself in four places. ## Hand the rest of this site to your family [Here is everything written for the ones waiting](https://federalprisondude.com/federal-prison-for-families): 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](https://federalprisondude.com/resources/federal-prisons) with [email alerts when visiting stops](https://federalprisondude.com/insider-tools/lockdown-alerts/subscribe), the [support group directory](https://federalprisondude.com/resources/bop-federal-prison-support-groups), calculators for your release math, and [free answers](https://federalprisondude.com/contact) when they have questions. Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you. **Need help with this? Just ask.** These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. **Answers are free** , and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer. [hello@federalprisondude.com](mailto:hello@federalprisondude.com?subject=FSA%20credits%20look%20wrong) I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.