How Older Federal Prisoners Could Ask for Home Detention: The 2019 BOP Memo

In March 2019, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) told its staff that eligible older prisoners could ask right away to be moved to home detention under the Elderly Offender pilot program. They did not have to wait for the BOP to finish writing new policies.

Update (October 2026): This post describes a 2019 memo. The law, 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g), authorized the pilot for fiscal years 2019 through 2023. Ask your case manager whether the BOP is still taking requests before you rely on it.

We got the memo through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which makes a federal agency release its records. After the First Step Act became law, we filed a number of FOIA requests with the BOP to hold decision-makers accountable. In March 2019, we received internal BOP documents describing how the BOP would carry out the Elderly Offender Home Detention program.

March 2019 Elderly Offender Program Memorandum

What the program is

The First Step Act of 2018 renewed and expanded the Elderly Offender Home Detention pilot. It lets some older federal prisoners serve the rest of their sentence at home instead of in prison.

Before this memo, it was not clear how a prisoner could apply.

We believe public records should be public. That's why we're sharing the BOP's March 15, 2019 memo here, so people can read it for themselves.

What the memo says

The memo gives the BOP's "Guidance" on the program. You can read the full memo here: March 2019 Elderly Offender Program Memorandum.

The key line is that inmates "may [today] request consideration for the Elderly Home Confinement Pilot." In other words, you did not have to wait for the BOP to finish writing its policies.

Who is eligible

Section 603(a) of the First Step Act made the program much easier to qualify for. The earlier version was meant to give early release to older prisoners, but it was so limited that most of them could never use it. After the First Step Act, the program was available nationwide. The memo, signed by R.L. Rhodes, Acting Assistant Director of the Reentry Services Division, lists these rules. You must:

• Be at least 60 years old;
• Have served at least two-thirds of your sentence;
• Not be serving a life sentence;
• Not be convicted of a crime of violence (as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 16), a sex offense (as defined in 34 U.S.C. § 20911(5)), an offense described in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B), or an offense under chapter 37 of Title 18;
• Not have any past state or federal conviction for those same kinds of crimes;
• Not have been found by the BOP, in its sole discretion, to have a history of violence or sex-offense conduct;
• Never have escaped or tried to escape from a BOP institution; and
• Be found by the BOP to pose no substantial risk of committing crimes or endangering anyone if released to home detention.

The statute also requires the BOP to find that home detention will result in a substantial net reduction of costs to the federal government.

What this meant in 2019

First, eligible prisoners could apply right away. That was a big change.

Second, the memo said more policy was still coming. It had been sent out only 12 days before we published this post.

Third, the memo's "policy" mostly repeated the law in 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g). It did not add new requirements.

If the BOP granted a request, the person moved to home confinement for the rest of their prison term. It was not clear how fast the process would be or how many people the BOP would approve. Still, the changes greatly increased the number of people who could apply and possibly get out early.

When we published this post, no other reliable news source seemed to have shared this update with people who are actually locked up. We wanted to get it into our readers' hands quickly so that anyone who could benefit knew what was going on.

If your family member is 60 or older

Requests go through the person's case manager and unit team. Before asking, it helps to have the judgment (the court's final order listing the conviction and sentence) and the BOP's sentence computation, which shows how much of the sentence has been served. If the person has serious health problems, compassionate release, a court-ordered sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), may also be worth looking at.

Facing a federal sentence? Book a consultation to talk it through with Brandon Sample.