Federal Sentencing Reduction: Compassionate Release and First Step Act

Federal Sentencing Reduction: Compassionate Release and First Step Act

Congress passed the First Step Act in 2018 to give federal prisoners a pathway to earlier release through earned time credits and expanded compassionate release. The promise was simple: if you rehabilitate yourself in prison or face extraordinary circumstances like terminal illness, you can petition for release. Seven years later, the Bureau of Prisons denies 84% of compassionate release motions - and that 16% approval rate is being celebrated as progress.

The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed.

Mr. Mahoney wanted to die at home. Prison medical staff supported his compassionate release request. The warden supported it. His family supported it. The federal judge who originally sentenced him - the person who PUT him in prison - reached out to the BOP Director to support the motion. The BOP Director never responded. Mr. Mahoney died days later, handcuffed to a hospital bed, with an armed correctional officer standing guard while he took his last breath. That's not a broken system. That's a system showing you what it actually values.

At Spodek Law Group, we represent people navigating federal sentencing reduction motions, and we've seen the gap between what the law promises and what the Bureau of Prisons actually delivers. The gap isn't an accident. If your facing a federal sentence or trying to secure early release for someone incarcerated, understanding how the system actually works - not how its supposed to work - can mean the difference between freedom and dying in custody while your motion sits in bureaucratic limbo. Todd Spodek and our team have spent years fighting these battles, and what we've learned is this: the pathways to freedom exist on paper, but the BOP has spent years building gates across every single one.

What The Law Says vs What Actually Happens

The First Step Act and 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A) create two main pathways to early release: compassionate release for extraordinary and compelling reasons, and earned time credits for completing rehabilitative programs. On paper, these look like real opportunities. In practice, there designed to preserve the original sentence.

Heres the compassionate release process the statute describes: you file a request with your warden, the BOP has 30 days to respond, and if they deny it or dont respond, you can file a motion in federal court. Simple, right? The statute even says you've "exhausted administrative remedies" after 30 days. But here's what actualy happens - wardens figured out they can deny your request immediately, which forces you to appeal through the BOP's Regional Office, then Central Office, before you can file in court. That 30-day pathway the statute created? Its a trap. By the time you finish appealing through BOP hierarchy, four to six months have passed, your medical condition has worsened, and the "extraordinary and compelling" reason you had six months ago might not even matter anymore because your dead.

The numbers prove the system isn't designed to grant release. In fiscal year 2024, federal courts decided 2,901 compassionate release motions. Only 467 were granted. That's a 16.1% approval rate - or an 84% denial rate, depending on weather you want to sound optimistic. In fiscal year 2025 through the second quarter, courts decided 1,381 motions: 210 grants, 1,171 denials. The denial rate held at 84.8%. When your dealing with terminal illness, family emergencies, and people who've served decades beyond what similar offenders serve today, an 84% denial rate isn't bureaucracy - its policy.

The BOP itself denies 85-90% of compassionate release petitions before they even reach a judge. Between 2014 and 2017, the BOP approved only 6% of 5,400 applications. During that same period, 266 applicants died while waiting for a decision. Let that sink in: 266 people died in federal custody while the BOP decided weather they were sick enough to die at home.

OK so you might be thinking, "but the First Step Act changed that in 2018, right? Now prisoners can file directly in court." True. And the denial rate is still 84%. The only thing that changed is WHO does the denying. Before 2018, the BOP denied almost everyone. After 2018, federal judges deny almost everyone. The pathway to freedom opened just wide enough to let hope in, but not wide enough to let people out.

The Documentation Trap Nobody Mentions

To prove your too sick for prison, you need medical records from prison doctors. But the Bureau of Prisons controls which tests your allowed to have, which specialists you can see, and weather prison medical staff will document the severity of your condition accurately. Your asking your jailer to prove you should be released. How do you think that goes?

At Federal Medical Center Carswell in Texas - a prison hospital specifically for women with serious medical conditions - 349 women filed compassionate release requests in early 2020 as COVID spread through the facility. The warden denied or ignored 346 of those requests. That's a 98.9% denial rate at a facility literally designed to house medically vulnerable prisoners. Marie Neba was 56 years old and dying of cancer. She fit the statutory criteria for compassionate release: terminal illness, not a danger to the community. The warden denied her petition.

Heres were the documentation trap gets worse. Even when prison doctors document that your terminally ill, the BOP can bring in there own medical reviewers to dispute the prognosis. In one documented case, prison doctors said the inmate had less than six months to live. The BOP's reviewers disagreed - they claimed he had more than 18 months. The BOP issued a denial based on that disputed timeline. The inmate died two days later. Two days. The BOP's medical reviewers were off by 18 months and 28 days, and that man died in custody becuase of it.

You cannot get the medical documentation the BOP requires using only the medical resources the BOP provides. You need outside specialists to verify what prison doctors are saying. But your in prison - you cant schedule appointments with outside oncologists or cardiologists. You cant get second opinions. You cant access the diagnostic tests that would definitively prove your condition. The BOP set up a documentation standard that's impossible to meet from custody, then denies your petition for "insufficient medical documentation."

Even judges who want to grant release face this problem. The statute requires the court to find "extraordinary and compelling reasons" for release. But what counts as extraordinary and compelling? The U.S. Sentencing Commission has guidelines, but courts interpret them differently. Some circuits say rehabilitation alone isn't enough. Some say terminal illness with less than 12 months to live qualifies. Some say terminal illness isn't enough if the BOP can provide treatment in custody - even when "treatment in custody" means letting you die slightly more comfortably behind bars. There's no uniform standard, which means your medical condition might qualify for release in one circuit but not another, depending on were you were prosecuted and incarcerated.

Think about that. Weather you get to die at home or handcuffed to a prison hospital bed depends not on how sick you are, but on which federal circuit has jurisdiction over the prison were your incarcerated. That's not a legal standard. That's a geographic lottery.

Why The Bureau of Prisons Says No (Even When Judges Say Yes)

Mr. Mahoney's case proves that even judicial support doesn't matter. He filed for compassionate release to die at home. The prison medical team supported it. The warden supported it. His family supported it. The federal judge who sentenced him - who had the authority to impose the sentence in the first place - reached out to the BOP Director's office to express support for the motion. The BOP Director never responded. Mr. Mahoney died in federal custody a few days later, still handcuffed to his hospital bed with an armed guard standing nearby. When your so sick that your physically incapable of escaping, they still keep you shackled. When the judge who put you in prison says you should be released, they ignore it. Why?

Becuase the BOP has institutional incentives to deny releases. The Bureau's budget requests to Congress are based partly on prison population numbers. More prisoners = larger budget justification. Releasing people early shrinks the population count, which makes it harder to argue for maintaining or increasing funding. Between 2006 and 2011, the BOP approved an average of only 24 compassionate release requests annually from a population exceeding 200,000 inmates. Twenty-four. Out of two hundred thousand. The institutional incentive is to keep people locked up, not let them go.

And then there's liability. Every person released early is a potential risk - what if they reoffend? What if they fail to report to supervised release? What if the public or media criticizes the BOP for releasing someone who then commits another crime? From the BOP's perspective, the safest decision is always to deny. If you die in custody, that's unfortunate but defensible. If you get released and commit a new offense, that's a scandal. The incentive structure is clear: err on the side of denial.

Irwin Schiff learned this the hard way. He was 87 years old with less than two years remaining on his sentence. His son Andrew spent more than two years trying to obtain compassionate release. Denied. When Andrew said goodbye to his father at a federal medical facility, Irwin was unconscious, on a respirator, and still handcuffed to the hospital bed. An armed correctional officer stood guard nearby. Irwin Schiff died shackled to a bed at 87 years old because the BOP's institutional incentives favored keeping him in custody over letting him die with dignity at home.

The judges who grant the 16% of compassionate release motions that succeed aren't ignoring these incentives - there overruling them. And when judges do grant release, the BOP often appeals or finds procedural ways to delay implementation. Because from the Bureau's perspective, even a judge's order is just another bureaucratic step to navigate around. The system isn't broken. Its working as designed - to keep people locked up unless the legal and public pressure becomes overwhelming.

The First Step Act's Broken Promise

In 2018, Congress passed the First Step Act with bipartisan support. The promise was clear: federal prisoners who complete rehabilitative programs - educational courses, vocational training, substance abuse treatment - would earn time credits toward earlier release. The statute uses mandatory language: prisoners who complete qualifying programs "shall" earn credits. Not "may." Shall. That's Congress telling the BOP this isn't optional.

Seven years later, the BOP still hasnt gotten the calculation right. The agency has issued multiple internal memos, changed methodologies, created a "First Step Act Task Force" in June 2025 to "speed up the process," and still - STILL - people are sitting in federal prison past there legal release dates because the BOP cant figure out how to count credits. Defense attorneys aren't exaggerating when they say the BOP treats mandatory credits as discretionary. The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit in 2025 on behalf of thousands of prisoners who should have been moved to community confinement but remain in custody because the BOP designated the credits as "discretionary" rather than mandatory.

Heres were it gets infuriating. The statute says earned time credits can be applied to earlier placement in prerelease custody or supervised release. Simple enough. But the BOP has spent years arguing about what "applied to" actually means. Can the credits shorten your prison term? Can they only be used for halfway house placement? What happens to leftover credits if you've already served enough time for prerelease? Different federal circuits have ruled differentley, creating a circuit split that might end up at the Supreme Court. The Fourth Circuit says credits can apply to supervised release. The Third Circuit says leftover credits remain unused. The Ninth Circuit sided with inmates in Gonzalez v. Herrera. The Eleventh and Fifth Circuits ruled the other way.

So weather you get to use the time credits you earned depends on which circuit has jurisdiction. Not on weather you completed the programs. Not on weather you rehabilitated yourself. On geography. Your sitting in a federal prison in Alabama (Eleventh Circuit), and you've earned 400 days of credits - but those credits might not apply the same way they would if you were incarcerated in California (Ninth Circuit). The law is supposedly uniform, but the application varies by 500% depending on were your locked up.

And then there's the immigration detainer loophole. In January 2025, the BOP issued an internal memo categorically denying prerelease placement to anyone with an active immigration detainer - even if they've earned two or more years of First Step Act credits. The statute doesn't exclude non-citizens. Congress didn't write that exception into the law. The BOP created it anyway through internal policy, and now thousands of people who did everything the statute required - completed the programs, earned the credits, qualified for release - are still sitting in custody because the BOP decided to add restrictions Congress never authorized.

The First Step Act isn't broken. The BOP's implementation of it is sabotage disguised as bureaucracy.

The Geographic Lottery: Where You're Incarcerated Matters More Than Why

The Second Circuit grants compassionate release motions at a 48.5% approval rate. The Eighth Circuit grants them at 9.0%. Same statute. Same legal standard. Same "extraordinary and compelling reasons" requirement. But if your incarcerated in New York or Connecticut (Second Circuit), your motion has a nearly 50-50 chance. If your incarcerated in Missouri or Arkansas (Eighth Circuit), your chance drops to 1 in 11. That's a 500% difference in approval rates based solely on geography.

This isn't a small variation. This is a completely different legal reality depending on which federal district and circuit has jurisdiction over the prison were your incarcerated. Judges are supposed to apply the same statute uniformly - but "extraordinary and compelling" means something very different in the Second Circuit than it does in the Eighth. The Sentencing Commission has tried to create guidelines, but circuits interpret those guidelines through different lenses. Some circuits give heavy weight to rehabilitation and post-sentencing conduct. Others say rehabilitation isn't enough on its own. Some circuits say terminal illness with 12 months or less to live qualifies automatically. Others say it depends on weather the BOP can provide treatment in custody.

The result? Your medical condition, your family emergency, your rehabilitative efforts - none of that matters as much as the random chance of were you were prosecuted and incarcerated. You could have identical facts to another inmate - same illness, same prognosis, same time served - and get opposite results based solely on circuit assignment. One gets released to spend final months with family. The other dies in custody. Not because they were different cases, but becuase they were in different circuits.

And it gets worse at the individual judge level. Some district judges grant 40-50% of compassionate release motions. Others grant less than 5%. Defense attorneys know this, which is why they research assigned judges before filing - checking PACER database records to see how that judge has ruled on previous compassionate release motions. If you draw a judge with a 5% grant rate, your motion is almost certainly doomed before you even file it. If you draw a judge with a 40% grant rate, you have a real chance. Same facts. Same law. Different judge. Different outcome.

Let that sink in. The "justice" in your compassionate release motion depends less on the strength of your case and more on which judge randomly gets assigned to hear it. That's not a legal system. That's a roulette wheel.

What Happens When You File (The Real Timeline)

Heres what filing a compassionate release motion actually looks like, step by step, when your dealing with a terminal diagnosis.

Your diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in federal prison. Prison doctors document it. You file a request with the warden under BOP Program Statement 5050.50. The warden reviews it and - statistically - denies it within days, citing "insufficient medical documentation" or saying the BOP can provide adequate treatment in custody. That's Week 1.

You file an administrative remedy appeal to the Regional Office. They have 20 business days to respond, but often take longer. Lets say they respond in 30 days and deny it, saying you haven't exhausted your remedies because you didn't appeal to Central Office yet. That's Week 5.

You file a second appeal to BOP Central Office in Washington, D.C. They have 40 business days to respond. Lets say they respond in 60 days and deny it, saying your condition doesn't meet the threshold for "extraordinary and compelling." That's Week 13 - over three months since your initial request. During those three months, your cancer has progressed from Stage 3 to Stage 4.

Now you can finally file a motion in federal court. You draft the motion (or hire an attorney for $15,000-$45,000 to draft it professionally). You file it. The court sends it to the Department of Justice for a response. DOJ has 21-30 days to respond. They file an opposition brief arguing that (1) your medical condition doesn't qualify, (2) the BOP can provide treatment in custody, (3) the sentencing factors under 18 USC 3553(a) don't support release because of the seriousness of your offense and the need for deterrence. That's Week 17.

You file a reply brief. The judge takes it under advisement. Some judges rule quickly. Some take months. Lets say the judge rules in 60 days. That's Week 25 - almost six months since your initial diagnosis. Your cancer is now Stage 4 with metastasis. The judge denies your motion, citing 3553(a) factors: yes, your medical condition is serious, but releasing you wouldn't adequately reflect the seriousness of the offense or promote respect for the law. The court acknowledges your dying, but says the sentencing considerations outweigh the medical ones.

You die eight months after the initial diagnosis. Your family never got to say goodbye outside of a prison visiting room. Your kids never got to hold your hand without a correctional officer standing three feet away. You died in custody while the earned time credits you accumulated - 547 days worth - sat unused because the BOP classified them as "discretionary" instead of mandatory.

That's not a hypothetical. That's the documented timeline from actual cases were prisoners filed compassionate release motions for terminal illness and died before the process finished. The system isn't designed to grant release. Its designed to run out the clock.

Your Actual Options Right Now

If your incarcerated or have a loved one in federal prison, heres what you need to know about actually pursuing sentencing reduction.

First, understand the two separate pathways: compassionate release under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A) and First Step Act earned time credits. There different statutory provisions with different requirements. Compassionate release requires "extraordinary and compelling reasons" plus favorable sentencing factors. Earned time credits require completing qualifying rehabilitative programs and meeting eligibility criteria (no disqualifying convictions on the 68-provision exclusion list). You might qualify for one, both, or neither. Don't assume. Have someone review your case specifics.

Second, research your assigned circuit and judge. This sounds cynical, but the data proves it matters. If your in the Second, Fourth, or Ninth Circuits, you have a much better statistical chance than if your in the Eighth or Fifth. If you can identify which judge would hear your motion (usually the sentencing judge), search PACER for that judge's previous compassionate release decisions. Look at grant rates, common reasons for denials, types of cases that succeeded. This isn't gaming the system - its understanding the reality that judicial discretion varies wildly.

Third, don't wait for your condition to worsen thinking "stronger evidence" will help. The documentation trap works both ways: if your too sick, courts sometimes deny saying you'll die anyway so release won't provide meaningful benefit. If your not sick enough, they deny saying the condition isn't severe enough yet. Theres a narrow window were your sick enough to qualify but healthy enough that release would provide real benefit. If you wait too long, you miss that window.

Fourth, consider hiring counsel - but understand what your paying for. The national average for attorney representation on a compassionate release motion is $15,000-$45,000 depending on case complexity. That gets you a professionally drafted motion, supporting exhibits, medical expert declarations, and reply briefs. Courts grant attorney-filed motions at slightly higher rates than pro se motions (roughly 16% vs 12-14%), but that difference might not justify the cost if funds are limited. If you cant afford an attorney, organizations like FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) maintain lists of pro bono attorneys who take these cases. The waitlists are long, but its an option.

Fifth, document everything in writing. When you request medical tests, document it. When the BOP denies tests or specialist appointments, document it. When prison medical staff downplay your symptoms or refuse to document severity, document it through administrative remedies. Courts weigh the strength of medical documentation heavily, and the BOP controls what documentation gets created. If you dont create a paper trail showing the BOP refused to provide adequate medical evaluation, the court assumes the BOP's records are complete and accurate.

If you have First Step Act earned time credits that haven't been applied correctly, file a federal habeas petition. Don't just file administrative remedies - the BOP will deny those forever. Williams v. FCI Berlin shows that federal courts CAN order immediate placement when the BOP miscalculates or improperly denies credits. In August 2025, a New Hampshire federal court granted Everett Williams's habeas petition and ordered his immediate placement in prerelease custody, rejecting the BOP's claim that they had discretion to deny based on an immigration detainer. The court held that the First Step Act's language is mandatory - the BOP "shall" apply earned credits, not "may."

At Spodek Law Group, we handle federal sentencing reduction cases and post-conviction relief. We've seen what works and what doesn't. The system is designed to say no, which means you need to understand the specific reasons judges in your circuit grant the small percentage of motions that succeed. If your dealing with a terminal diagnosis, a family emergency, or earned time credits the BOP wont apply, call us at 212-300-5196. The consultation will tell you weather your case has a realistic chance in your specific circuit with your specific facts. We don't take cases we don't think we can win, because in this area, losing doesn't just mean staying in prison - it often means dying there.

The pathways to freedom exist. But the BOP has spent seven years building gates across every one of them. Getting through requires understanding exactly were those gates are, how judges in your circuit have ruled on cases like yours, and what documentation will actually move the needle. The 16% who succeed aren't lucky - there the ones who understood the system as it actually operates, not as its described in the statute. That's the difference between filing a motion and filing a motion that works.