If the trial is federal (and I believe it is) there’s no deal that gets you out of federal prison faster than 90% of time served I believe, and that’s for good behavior. Feds don’t have a parole system otherwise
Edit: it’s 54 days per year, not 90%
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
Federal sentences come with a maximum of 54 days per year [1] of good time credit, and there is no parole when serving federal time. This all but guarantees that a 10 year sentence will result in 102 months of incarceration and release no earlier than that.
The federal government doesn't have a parole system, and the minimum amount of time you have to serve of your sentence is 85% regardless of good behavior credits.
> Federal sentences come with a maximum of 54 days per year [1] of good time credit, and there is no parole when serving federal time.
Right, to the extent a federal convict has supervised release time, its not “I got out early from my prison sentence” but “I was sentenced to supervised release on top of my prison sentence.”
Unlike many state systems, in the federal system the sentence is close to the actual time you’ll serve, short of a Presidential commutation or some other special intervention. Other than up to 54 days/year good conduct time, there's not systematic early release.
tl;dr: federal prisoners get almost two months per year for good behavior.
> Under United States federal law, prisoners serving more than one year in prison get 54 days a year of good time on the anniversary of each year they serve plus the pro rata good time applied to a partial year served at the end of their sentence, at the rate of 54 days per year.
> Federal law allows a credit of 54 days for every 365 days (or one year) of good behavior. To be eligible for early release, a person must be sentenced to more than one year in prison. ...
> The maximum number of days that can be awarded for good conduct is 54. The Bureau of Prisons has discretion to award any number of days less than 54 based on its evaluation of the inmate’s conduct.
If sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, you'd be serving 85% of that time -- a bit over 26 years (after 26 years, 1404 days will be credited which is 3.8 years).
This is a federal sentence, so there is no parole. The most time off you can get in the federal system for good behavior is 54 days per year of sentence, so less than 4 years off for SBF's 25-year sentence.
It's hard to say. Historically federal convictions were very strict, requiring you to serve at least 85% of your sentence. The First Step Act passed in 2018 significantly relaxed that down to 50%. I don't know if there is enough data yet to determine how common or easy it will be for convicts get that much time off.
You're usually a very accurate poster on legal matters, but this contradicts the linked article:
SBF may serve as little as 12.5 years, if he gets all of the jailhouse credit available to him," Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor, told CNN.
Federal prisoners generally can earn up to 54 days of time credit a year for good behavior, which could result in an approximately 15% reduction.
Since 2018, however, nonviolent federal inmates can reduce their sentence by as much as 50% under prison reform legislation known as the First Step Act.
Are you saying the article is wrong, or did you maybe not consider this possibility?
> For persons convicted under civilian federal law after November 1, 1987, federal parole has been abolished, but the parole statutes continue to apply to prisoners who were grandfathered in.
However, there are other options for early release, namely the First Step Act.
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
This is why you see a lot of 1 year and 1 day sentences. Any federal sentence 1 year or less must be served 100% in full. If it’s 1 year and 1 day it’s eligible for the time reduction credit and you can serve less than 1 year.
Nothing was reduced here. The BOP lists your estimated release date which includes good time that you have not lost.
You serve 85 percent of your sentence in the Feds if you don't lose goodtime. The numbers listed work out to 85% (there is a little bit of wonk in how they BOP calculates this number. It recently got changed as the BOP used math that reduced good time calculations and had to be told how to do math in the First Step act).
There have also been reductions via the First Step act but I don't know how that ended up. You got reductions for working at the Federal slave labor sweatshop (UNICOR) and for 'Programming' (taking their classes) but the BOP was fighting these pretty hard back when I was paying attention to these things a few years ago.
Edit: it’s 54 days per year, not 90%
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
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