Where these numbers come from, and where the BOP's own guide argues with itself

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.

One PDF, reissued about once a year

Everything in this guide comes out of the First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, published by the Bureau's Reentry Services Division. The version behind these pages is the May 2026 revision, and its introduction points at program statement 5405.01, First Step Act Assessments, Programming and Incentives, which is not one of the ones annotated here yet.

Reentry Services updates it at least once a year. That cadence has a practical consequence nobody warns you about: the copy your unit team is working from may be older than the current one. Program names change, programs get added and dropped, and a staff member holding last year's printout is not lying to you, they are just out of date.

If you get told something that contradicts what is here, ask which revision they are reading from. That question is polite, it is answerable, and it settles most of these arguments in one move.

What the May 2026 revision changed

That last one is small on the page and large in practice. The Bureau changed the wording because authorized and running are not the same thing, and part four gets into what that means when you are the one on the waiting list.

Four places the document argues with itself

Not a complaint, just a heads up, because two people reading the same PDF can walk away with two different numbers and both of them can point at a page.

Where the two disagree, the detail table is the one with the facilitator lists and the institution codes, so that is the one this site follows. CLEAR appears nowhere in either table, which is consistent with it being removed.

ACE courses are the one people get wrong

Adult Continuing Education classes count toward the PATTERN program-completions item and earn no FSA credits, because they are not on the approved list. Both halves of that sentence are true at once and people keep dropping one of them.

What ACE offers is set locally, so the Education Department at your facility is the only real source on what is running.

What I know firsthand and what I do not

I did eighteen months at a men's low. Programming at that level is what I actually know: the signup, the waitlist, the callout, what "may be offered at" turns into when there is one Psychology Services staffer for the whole compound, and how much of getting into something is asking the person who runs it rather than filing the form.

The residential programs at mediums and penitentiaries are a different world. Challenge, STAGES, Mental Health Step Down, BRAVE. Those are real and I have described them off the document, not off living in one. Same goes for the women's programs, which are 30 of the 127 and which I have no business speaking to beyond what the Bureau published.

Camps I did not do either. The security levels page is honest about which levels this site can speak to firsthand.

The numbers on these pages are the Bureau's. Where I have added anything, it is about how the process runs, and it is marked.

Tell me when this goes stale

The next revision will move some of this. When it does, or when something here is simply wrong, send it in and I will fix it.

That goes double if you are inside and something here does not match what your unit team is telling you. Those mismatches are the useful ones.

If you remember one thing, make it this: get opted in fast, stay opted in, refuse nothing, and take the programs that lower your PATTERN. The credit math runs on the calendar, not on the syllabus.

← Back to the start

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.