For families

# The halfway house push

This is the section that changes outcomes. If you read one part of this guide, read this one.

The policy

## What is supposed to happen

Policy contemplates that their unit team (the staff who run your daily life) makes a pre-release placement referral roughly seventeen to nineteen months before their projected release date, at a scheduled program review, with the warden signing off.

Statute permits up to twelve months in a halfway house (the halfway house before release), and separately permits home confinement (finishing a sentence at home under monitoring) for the shorter of ten percent of the term or six months.

Program Statement 7310.04, Community Corrections Center Utilization and Transfer Procedure.

The reality

## What actually happens

Nothing happens unless someone makes it happen. Caseloads are large, there is no performance measure attached to this, and no consequence for a late referral falls on anyone but them.

If their sentence is short, that window may open almost as soon as they arrive, which means the conversation has to start at their first team meeting rather than a year in.

Your half

## What you do

- Know their projected release date and count backward to when the referral window opens;
- make sure they raise it at their first team meeting and every one after;
- call the case manager (the staffer who controls your release date) yourself and ask, politely and specifically, when the referral is scheduled and what length is being recommended;
- ask for the name and title of whoever you speak to, and write down the date;
- and follow up on a schedule rather than when you get anxious.

**Two points of pressure work better than one.** A call from outside creates the one thing staff reliably respond to, which is the sense that someone is paying attention.

Push without being hostile. Your person is the one who lives there, and a family member who screams at a case manager creates a problem that lands on them, not on you.

Their half of the push is covered in [what to carry in your head](/going-in/before-you-go/what-to-carry-in-your-head). Make sure they have read it.

Keep reading — part 9 of 12

### [Working the system](/for-families/guide/working-the-system)

The Bureau responds to specific questions, politely asked, by people who write things down. Everything in this section is a version of that sentence.

**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.

[josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Family%20question)

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.