BOP Expands First Step Act Time Credits After Courts Told It To

For years, the Bureau of Prisons told federal inmates they could not start earning First Step Act time credits until the day they arrived at the prison where they would serve their sentence. Courts kept ruling that the law says no such thing. On August 31, the BOP gave in.

The Bureau published an interim final rule rewriting two sections of its time credits regulation. It takes effect September 30, and public comments are due the same day.

The first change deletes a clause in 28 CFR 523.42(a) that defined the start of a sentence as “the date the inmate arrives or voluntarily surrenders at the designated Bureau facility.” That one clause did real damage. Sentencing happens in a courthouse. Designation, the process where the BOP decides where a person serves their time, happens later. The Bureau’s own numbers put the average gap at 66 days. Under the old rule, those were dead days for anyone ready to work. No credits accrued during them, no matter what a person did.

The courts saw it plainly. In April 2026, the First Circuit held in Miles v. Bowers that the BOP’s reading “plainly conflicts with the text of the FSA.” District courts in Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, and elsewhere had already said the same. One judge wrote that the regulation “adds a layer of eligibility not found in the statute.” The BOP lost enough of these cases that it rewrote the rule instead of continuing to fight.

The second change opens time credits to people serving foreign sentences in U.S. custody. Treaty transfers allow American citizens and nationals sentenced abroad to serve their time in federal prisons. Under the new language in 28 CFR 523.44(a)(3), those inmates can apply time credits once the U.S. Parole Commission has determined an equivalent U.S. Code sentence, as required under 18 U.S.C. 4106A. The Fifth Circuit had already reached that conclusion in Martinez v. Rosalez in 2024.

The trigger here was not goodwill. It was Executive Order 14219, President Trump’s February 2025 deregulation directive, which ordered agencies to hunt for regulations to revise or repeal. The BOP went looking and came back with a change that helps inmates. The Bureau projects the expansion will save roughly $54.1 million a year because people will move to halfway houses, home confinement, and supervised release sooner. Its own estimate says thousands of inmates will benefit each year.

That number is worth sitting on. In a regulatory filing, the Bureau admits that letting people earn credits earlier saves tens of millions of dollars. For years, the standard answer to every First Step Act proposal has been that programming is a cost the system cannot absorb. The BOP just put a price tag on the other side of that ledger.

The rule does not touch the underlying problem. Time credits are earned by completing programs, and this site has documented how the Bureau treats the First Step Act as an administrative burden rather than a mandate. This rule changes the clock. It adds no programs. An inmate with nothing available to complete earns nothing, whether the clock starts at sentencing or at arrival.

The timing is awkward too. The same administration is defending the rollback of First Step Act compassionate release in court, and thirteen people released under it now face being sent back. The Supreme Court will hear Maxwell v. Dinis next term, a case about how early a prisoner can move to prerelease custody. That is the same pathway time credits feed into. One hand is expanding what Congress wrote. The other is trying to narrow it in litigation.

Comments on the rule close September 30 through regulations.gov, docket BOP-1183-I. The Bureau accepts anonymous comments. Anyone who thinks the BOP should be required to provide the programming that makes these credits earnable can say so in writing while the window is open.