What to expect in federal prison # What to carry in your head You cannot look any of this up once you are inside. This section is short because it is meant to be memorized. Week one ## The first moves **Do the intake assessments immediately.** There is a needs assessment and a risk assessment (the risk score affecting your credits), and together they determine whether you are earning time credits. Nobody will chase you to complete them. Every week you wait is time you do not get back. **Get enrolled in programming.** Time credits accrue through participation in assigned programs and productive activities. Ask what you have been assigned, ask how to enroll, and enroll. **Get on a job list.** Work assignments count, and the good ones are taken by people who asked first. **Find out when your first team meeting is.** This is where your unit team (the staff who run your daily life) reviews your case. It is the meeting where things get decided. Who these people are and how to deal with them is covered in [the staff section of the while-you're-in guide](/going-in/while-youre-in/working-with-staff). The math ## Understand your own release math Three things reduce your time, and they stack: - Good conduct time (days off for staying out of trouble), at 54 days per year of the sentence imposed; - earned time credits (time off earned through programming) under the First Step Act, at 10 days for every 30 days of successful participation, rising to 15 days for every 30 if you are assessed as minimum or low risk on two consecutive assessments; - and pre-release placement in a halfway house (the halfway house before release) or on home confinement (finishing a sentence at home under monitoring). Earned time credits toward early release to supervised release (post-prison supervision; not parole) are capped at 365 days. Credits beyond that cap do not evaporate — they are applied toward pre-release custody. Which is precisely why the next section matters. Check your sentence computation when you get it. Errors are common, and nobody will find them for you. Run the math yourself before you go: [the time calculator](/resources/time-calculator) and [the PATTERN calculator](/resources/pattern-calculator). The push ## The halfway house push This is the section that changes outcomes, and it is the reason you wrote the handoff document. Policy contemplates that your unit team makes a pre-release placement referral roughly seventeen to nineteen months before your projected release date, at a scheduled program review, with the warden signing off. Statute permits up to twelve months in a halfway house, and separately permits home confinement for the shorter of ten percent of the term or six months. What actually happens is that nothing happens until someone makes it happen. Case managers (the staffer who controls your release date) carry large caseloads, there are no meaningful metrics on this, and the practical consequence of a late referral falls entirely on you. If your sentence is short, the referral window may open almost immediately upon arrival — which means you need to raise it at your very first team meeting, not your second. At that meeting: - Ask what your projected release date is and how it was calculated; - ask when your pre-release referral is scheduled; - ask what your recommended placement length is; - and ask for it in writing, or write down the date and the name of the person who told you. If nothing moves, escalate: case manager, then unit manager (the boss of your housing unit), then the formal administrative remedy process, which starts with an informal resolution attempt and proceeds to a written request to the warden. Have the person outside call the unit team as well. Two points of pressure work better than one. Be polite. Politeness is a tactic, not a strategy. I did not push, and it cost me the better part of a year in home confinement I was eligible for. That is the single most expensive mistake I made, and it was entirely avoidable. Program Statement 7310.04, Community Corrections Center Utilization and Transfer Procedure. Paper trail ## Keep a record Dates, names, and what was said. Every conversation about your release date, your programming, your medical care. It takes two minutes and it is the only leverage you will ever have in an administrative remedy. One last thing ## What it is actually like The dominant experience is not danger. It is boredom, repetition, and waiting on people who are not in a hurry. Most of what you are afraid of right now will not happen. Most of what will actually frustrate you is administrative. How the place works socially — who talks to whom, what gets asked on day one, what not to say — is [a separate guide](/going-in/while-youre-in), and it deserves the same read. That's this guide — the next one starts at the door ### [While you're in](/going-in/while-youre-in) This guide ends at the door. The next one covers what is on the other side of it: cars, debt, the unwritten rules, and how the days actually run. For your people ## 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](/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](/resources/facilities) with [email alerts when visiting stops](/lockdown-alerts/subscribe), the [support group directory](/resources/support-groups), calculators for your release math, and [free answers](/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. [josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Going-in%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.