Inmate Financial Responsibility Program: Procedures

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <SUBAGY>Bureau of Prisons</SUBAGY> <CFR>28 CFR Part 545</CFR> <DEPDOC>[BOP-1178]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1120-AB78</RIN> <SUBJECT>Inmate Financial Responsibility Program: Procedures</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Prisons, Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking would update and streamline regulations regarding the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be postmarked and electronic comments must be submitted on or before February 18, 2025. Commenters should be aware that the electronic Federal Docket Management System will not accept comments after Midnight Eastern Time on the last day of the comment period. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> If you wish to provide comment regarding this rulemaking, you must submit comments, identified by the agency name and reference Docket No. BOP 1178, by one of the two methods below. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the website instructions for submitting comments. The electronic Federal Docket Management System at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> will accept electronic comments until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the comment due date. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Paper comments that duplicate an electronic submission are unnecessary. If you wish to submit a paper comment in lieu of electronic submission, please direct the mail/shipment to: Rules Administrator, Legislative and Correctional Issues Branch, Office of General Counsel, Bureau of Prisons, 320 First Street NW, Washington, DC 20534. To ensure proper handling, please reference the agency name and Docket No. BOP 1178 on your correspondence. Mailed items must be postmarked or otherwise indicate a shipping date on or before the submission deadline. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Daniel J. Crooks III, Assistant General Counsel/Rules Administrator, Federal Bureau of Prisons, at the address above or at (202) 353-4885. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Please note that all comments received are considered part of the public record and generally will be made available for public inspection online at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . If you want to submit personal identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also locate all the personal identifying information you do not want posted online in the first paragraph of your comment and identify what information you want redacted. If you want to submit confidential business information as part of your comment but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also prominently identify confidential business information to be redacted within the comment. If a comment contains so much confidential business information that it cannot be effectively redacted, all or part of that comment may not be posted <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Personal identifying information identified and located as set forth above will be placed in the agency's public docket file, but not posted online. Confidential business information identified and located as set forth above will not be placed in the public docket file. If you wish to inspect the agency's public docket file in person by appointment, please see the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> paragraph. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The purpose of the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (Program or IFRP), operated by the Bureau of Prisons (Bureau) since 1987, is twofold: to encourage federal inmates in Bureau facilities to pay financial obligations; and to support federal inmates in developing financial planning skills. Inmate participation in the IFRP is non-compulsory. Subject to certain exemptions listed in 28 CFR 545.10, all sentenced federal inmates are eligible to participate. During an inmate's initial classification, current Bureau policy requires staff to review the inmate's financial obligations—by consulting the inmate's presentence investigation report, judgment and commitment order(s) and other court documents, and any other available information—and encourage inmates to satisfy any court-ordered obligations either at the time of this initial review or throughout the inmate's term of imprisonment. The Bureau strongly recommends that all inmates with financial obligations participate in the IFRP, along with other programs and activities designed to reduce recidivism, such as work, education, and drug rehabilitation programs. If an inmate chooses to participate in the IFRP, Bureau staff will work with the inmate to develop a financial plan, which is documented and signed by the inmate and includes financial obligations paid in the following order of priority: 1. Special assessments imposed by the court under 18 U.S.C. 3013; 2. Court-ordered restitution, including assessments related to bodily injury to victims occurring as a result of the offense, loss or destruction of victim property, or other assessments as indicated by the court; 3. Fines and court costs; 4. State or local court obligations (such as child support or alimony, as documented by a court order or letter from the relevant state authority); 5. Other federal government obligations (including fees imposed under 18 U.S.C. 4001 for Cost of Incarceration, other judgments in favor of the United States, student loans, Veterans Administration claims, tax liabilities, and Freedom of Information or Privacy Act fees). Given the importance of satisfying outstanding financial obligations and reducing the amount of debt upon release, there are effects of non-participation. Documented refusal by inmates to participate in the IFRP, or to comply with the provisions of their agreed-upon financial plan, results in the specific consequences currently listed in 28 CFR 545.11(d), including notification to the Parole Commission, preclusion of furlough eligibility (other than emergency or medical furlough), preclusion of certain pay benefits or increases, preclusion of eligibility for premium work opportunities and/or removal from a UNICOR work assignment, commissary spending restrictions, loss of release gratuity (unless approved by the warden), and loss of incentives (such as early release and financial awards) otherwise available to an inmate who participates in residential drug treatment programs. As the IFRP is currently operated, Bureau staff review and reassess each inmate's financial plan and IFRP payments during the inmate's regularly scheduled program review meeting; these meetings generally occur every 180 days, although the interval becomes 90 days when the inmate is within 12 months of release. As part of that review, Bureau staff first review the total funds deposited into the inmate's commissary account over the previous six-month period from any source. As stated in 28 CFR 506.1, individual inmate commissary accounts allow the Bureau to maintain inmate monies while the inmate is incarcerated. Funds in inmate accounts can come from a number of sources: the inmate may earn pay from work assignments (including compensation earned through UNICOR); family members or friends may send funds to the inmate; the inmate may receive tax refunds or other government-related issuances; or the inmate may receive other types of income (such as stock dividends, state benefits, litigation settlements, and inheritance). All money earned by the inmate from the Bureau is automatically deposited into the inmate's commissary account. Next, to determine whether future payments under the IFRP plan should be adjusted based on the inmate's financial activity over the previous six-month period under review, staff subtract the total amount of any payments an inmate has made during the previous six-month period under the IFRP plan (payments made toward the inmate's financial obligations) from the amount deposited into the account over that same time period. Under current regulations in 28 CFR 545.11(b), when performing this calculation to determine the amount an inmate has available for payment of financial obligations, staff must also subtract a $75 per month allowance for telephone communication (a total of $450 for each six-month period). That amount is not included in the calculation of the total amount an inmate has available for payments under the IFRP. Then, based on the foregoing information, staff estimate the amount the inmate is likely to have remaining at the end of that six-month period. Based on that amount, staff determine whether to adjust the inmate's financial plan and IFRP payments. Under the current regulation, the minimum payment for inmates who do not have a UNICOR work assignment, or who have a UNICOR grade 5 work assignment, is ordinarily $25 per quarter. For inmates assigned a UNICOR work assignment with a grade between 1 and 4, the minimum payment is ordinarily expected to be 50 percent of the inmate's pay. On January 10, 2023, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Bureau) published a notice of proposed rulemaking (the “January 2023 NPRM”) in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> relating to the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP). 88 FR 1331 (Jan. 10, 2023). In the January 2023 NPRM, the Bureau detailed its proposed changes to the IFRP regulation. Among the most significant changes were a requirement that all inmates participating in IFRP contribute a percentage of their pay towards the IFRP payment process; ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 66k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━