The Danger Finding: § 3142(g) in Compassionate Release

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

What the Danger Finding Is

The danger finding is a required determination that a person released early would not endanger any other person or the community. USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2) makes it a condition of any sentence reduction and measures it “as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)” — the four factors a magistrate judge uses at a pretrial detention hearing.

Key takeaways on the § 3142(g) danger finding

• It is a gate, not a weight. USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2) is one of three determinations a court must make before it may reduce a sentence. A motion that fails it never reaches the discretionary § 3553(a) weighing at all, and a court may deny on any single missing prerequisite without addressing the others (United States v. Elias, 984 F.3d 516 (6th Cir. 2021)).
• The four factors come from a pretrial statute. Section 3142 is titled “Release or detention of a defendant pending trial,” and subsection (j) says nothing in it modifies “the presumption of innocence.” Applied to a person serving year nineteen of a twenty-five-year sentence, two of the four factors do almost no work in their original sense — and understanding that is how you argue them.
• A serious record is not disqualifying. Among those granted relief in FY2025, 35.7% were in criminal history category VI and 20.7% were career offenders — shares almost identical to those denied (36.3% and 18.4%) (FY2025 Report, Table 7).
• There is no categorical bar keyed to the offense. The First Circuit vacated a denial that treated a motion as deniable as a matter of law because of how serious the crime was, holding that “no such categorical bar currently exists” (United States v. Quirós-Morales, 83 F.4th 79 (1st Cir. 2023)).
• Courts say “protection of the public” less often than families fear. It was cited 143 times among the 5,067 reasons given for FY2025 denials — 2.8% — and 47 times (2.7%) in the first half of FY2026 (FY2025 and FY2026 Q1–Q2 Reports, Table 11).
• Most of the answer is already in government paperwork. The disciplinary record, the security and custody designation, the risk score the Bureau of Prisons calculates under the First Step Act, the medical file, and the work and program transcripts are all findings the government made about this person, in writing, before anyone filed anything.
• The one part you build from nothing is the release plan — and it is the piece the statute’s own language rewards most directly.

Why the Danger Finding Is Required, Not Discretionary

A federal judge may not reduce a sentence under § 3582(c)(1)(A) without finding that the person is not dangerous. That is a condition, not a consideration.

USSG § 1B1.13(a) sets out three determinations the court must make, and the second is the one this page is about: that “the defendant is not a danger to the safety of any other person or to the community, as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g).” The other two are that extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant the reduction, and that the reduction is consistent with the policy statement. For what qualifies under the first of those, see compassionate release definition; for the categories of people the statute and regulations screen out entirely, see who is not eligible for compassionate release.

The difference between a required finding and a discretionary factor is not academic. Several circuits have held that the required findings are conjunctive — each is necessary, and a court may resolve the motion on whichever one fails first, in whatever order it chooses. The Eleventh Circuit said so in United States v. Giron, 15 F.4th 1343 (11th Cir. 2021); the Ninth Circuit reached the same conclusion in United States v. Keller, 2 F.4th 1278 (9th Cir. 2021); and the Sixth Circuit held in Elias that a district court may deny when any one prerequisite is missing and need not address the rest.

So a movant who proves a terminal diagnosis, and proves it beautifully, and says nothing about dangerousness, has handed the court a complete basis for denial that never mentions the diagnosis. The same logic runs the other way at the discretionary step: a court that denies “in sole reliance on the applicable § 3553(a) sentencing factors” need not decide whether extraordinary and compelling reasons exist at all (United States v. Keitt, 21 F.4th 67 (2d Cir. 2021)). Three doors, and the court only has to close one. How a judge moves through all of them in sequence is covered on what do judges consider when sentencing.

Section 3142(g) also appears a second time in the compassionate release statute itself, which tells you how central Congress thought it was. Under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(ii), the alternative route for a person at least 70 years old who has served 30 years on a sentence imposed under the federal three-strikes statute requires “a determination … by the Director of the Bureau of Prisons that the defendant is not a danger to the safety of any other person or the community, as provided under section 3142(g).” Same phrase, same cross-reference, different decision-maker.

One point of orientation before the factors. The Supreme Court narrowed compassionate release substantially in May 2026, but it did not touch this finding. What rutherford v united states removed was a category of argument at the eligibility step — a disparity created by a change in law Congress declined to make retroactive (slip opinion at 15–16). The danger finding sits alongside eligibility and is unaffected. If anything, narrowing the grounds available at step one makes the other two required findings matter more, because there is less room to lose one and still win.

What § 3142(g) Actually Says, Factor by Factor

Section 3142(g) is short. It directs the judicial officer, “in determining whether there are conditions of release that will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other person and the community,” to “take into account the available information concerning” four things (18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)). What follows is the statutory text of each, and what each one is really asking in a sentence-reduction posture.

§ 3142(g)(1) — the nature and circumstances of the offense

The statute asks the court to consider “the nature and circumstances of the offense charged, including whether the offense is a crime of violence, a violation of section 1591, a Federal crime of terrorism, or involves a minor victim or a controlled substance, firearm, explosive, or destructive device.”

Three of those terms carry statutory definitions worth knowing, because families often assume a category applies when it does not.

• “Crime of violence” is defined for this chapter at 18 U.S.C. § 3156(a)(4): an offense with “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another” as an element; any other felony that “by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used”; or “any felony under chapter 77, 109A, 110, or 117” — that is, trafficking in persons, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children, and transportation for illegal sexual activity.
• “A violation of section 1591” is 18 U.S.C. § 1591, sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion.
• “Federal crime of terrorism” takes its meaning from 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(A), which the Sixth Circuit has described as covering an enumerated violation that is “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct” (United States v. Stone, 608 F.3d 939 (6th Cir. 2010)).

Notice what the list does and does not do. It flags certain features as significant. It does not make any of them disqualifying, and it does not create a presumption — the presumptions in the Bail Reform Act live in § 3142(e), which the guideline does not import. A great many federal sentences involve a controlled substance or a firearm, which means this factor is “adverse” in the overwhelming majority of compassionate release motions. That is a reason to address it head-on, not a reason it defeats the motion.

This is also the only one of the four factors that is completely fixed. Nothing a person does in prison changes what the offense was.

§ 3142(g)(2) — the weight of the evidence against the person

The statute gives this factor five words and no elaboration: “the weight of the evidence against the person.”

Read literally in a post-conviction posture, it is spent. Guilt was established by plea or verdict years ago, and after Fernandez v. United States (2026) an argument that the conviction itself was wrong is not merely unpersuasive in a § 3582 motion — it belongs in a different statute entirely. The Court drew the line plainly: “When a prisoner moves for compassionate release based on a terminal illness, his motion does not suggest that his conviction is invalid. But if a prisoner moves for relief because of alleged problems with the underlying criminal investigation or trial, his motion suggests that his conviction is flawed” (slip op. at 14–15).

But the factor is not dead, because in its original setting it never asked about guilt. The Sixth Circuit put it directly in Stone: “This factor goes to the weight of the evidence of dangerousness, not the weight of the evidence of the defendant’s guilt” (608 F.3d 939 (6th Cir. 2010)). Read that way, (g)(2) transfers cleanly. The question becomes: how strong is the government’s evidence that this person, today, is dangerous? And in a motion filed fifteen years after sentencing, the government’s evidence of present dangerousness is usually the indictment and nothing else.

That is an argument, and it is one almost nobody makes.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: We brief § 3142(g)(2) rather than skipping it, and we brief it as Stone frames it. The government’s opposition in these cases is frequently a recitation of the offense conduct from the presentence report and a sentence asserting that the person remains dangerous. That is evidence of what happened in 2009. It is not evidence of what is true in 2026, and the statute asks the court to weigh what the record actually contains. When the only current evidence in the file was generated by the Bureau of Prisons and all of it points one way — no incident reports in eleven years, a custody reduction, completed programming — saying so under the heading the statute supplies is worth more than saying it in a paragraph about rehabilitation.

§ 3142(g)(3)(A) — history and characteristics of the person

This is the longest factor and the one a record can actually move. The statute directs the court to consider “the history and characteristics of the person, including … the person’s character, physical and mental condition, family ties, employment, financial resources, length of residence in the community, community ties, past conduct, history relating to drug or alcohol abuse, criminal history, and record concerning appearance at court proceedings.”

Eleven named items. Read them slowly, because the list is a checklist for what a compassionate release motion should attach:

Statutory phrase	What it asks for in this posture
character	Staff letters, work evaluations, unit team reports
physical and mental condition	The medical record, functional assessments, the Care Level designation
family ties	Who is waiting, and what they have committed to in writing
employment	Institutional work history and any job offer on release
financial resources	Benefits, pension, family support, restitution payment history
length of residence in the community	How long the family has been at the proposed address
community ties	Church, treating physician, veterans’ organization, sponsor
past conduct	The prison disciplinary record, not just the offense
history relating to drug or alcohol abuse	Treatment completed, including residential programming
criminal history	The category, and what it looks like against the data
record concerning appearance at court proceedings	Largely inert post-conviction — see the next section

“Physical and mental condition” appearing inside the danger factor is the single most useful drafting fact on this page. It means the same medical evidence that establishes eligibility also answers dangerousness, in the statute’s own words, without any analogy required.

§ 3142(g)(3)(B) — status at the time of the offense

The second half of the third factor asks “whether, at the time of the current offense or arrest, the person was on probation, on parole, or on other release pending trial, sentencing, appeal, or completion of sentence for an offense under Federal, State, or local law.”

This is binary and permanently fixed. It happened or it did not, and no conduct in prison alters it. If it applies, the honest approach is to state it and pivot to the length of time since — a person who was on state parole when the offense occurred in 2007 is not the same evidentiary problem in 2026 that he was at arraignment. If it does not apply, say so affirmatively rather than leaving the court to notice.

§ 3142(g)(4) — the nature and seriousness of the danger posed by release

The fourth factor is the forward-looking one: “the nature and seriousness of the danger to any person or the community that would be posed by the person’s release.”

Two words in that clause do most of the work. “Would be posed” makes this a prediction, not a description — the question is about future risk, not past conduct, and past conduct is evidence of it rather than a substitute for it. And “the person’s release” means release on the terms actually proposed. A motion that asks for outright release and a motion that asks the court to convert the remaining eleven years to supervised release with home detention, location monitoring, a named treating physician, and no-contact conditions are asking the court to predict the consequences of two different events.

That is why the proposed conditions belong in the motion, not in a reply brief. Section 3582(c)(1)(A) itself authorizes the court to reduce the prison term “and may impose a term of probation or supervised release with or without conditions that does not exceed the unserved portion of the original term of imprisonment” (18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)). Home detention with electronic monitoring is among the discretionary conditions available under 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(19), which permits a condition that the person “remain at his place of residence during nonworking hours” with compliance “monitored by telephonic or electronic signaling devices” — subject to the statute’s own limit that it “may be imposed only as an alternative to incarceration.” For how the Bureau’s separate placement authority differs from a court-ordered condition, see federal home confinement.

The Awkward Fit: A Pretrial Statute Applied Twenty Years Later

Section 3142 was not written for people in prison. Its title is “Release or detention of a defendant pending trial.” Everything around subsection (g) is built for a hearing that happens within days of arrest, about a person presumed innocent, on a record the government has barely developed. Section 1B1.13(a)(2) reaches into that structure, takes subsection (g), and leaves the rest behind.

Being precise about what was and was not imported matters, because both sides get it wrong.

What the guideline imports: subsection (g), and only subsection (g). The cross-reference is to “18 U.S.C. § 3142(g),” not to § 3142 generally.

What it does not import: the rebuttable presumptions of dangerousness in § 3142(e)(2) and (e)(3), which attach at a detention hearing to certain drug, firearm, terrorism, and minor-victim charges; the detention-hearing procedures in § 3142(f), including the requirement that a dangerousness finding under subsection (e) “be supported by clear and convincing evidence”; and the “least restrictive further condition” instruction in § 3142(c)(1)(B). A government brief that argues a § 3142(e)(3) presumption applies to a compassionate release motion is arguing from a subsection the guideline did not adopt. A defense brief that claims the government must prove dangerousness by clear and convincing evidence is doing the mirror image — that standard lives in § 3142(f), and the movant, not the government, bears the burden of establishing entitlement to a sentence reduction.

Where the mismatch shows on the face of the statute. Section 3142(j) provides that “[n]othing in this section shall be construed as modifying or limiting the presumption of innocence” — a sentence with no possible application to someone serving a sentence. Subsection (g)(1) speaks of “the offense charged,” but there is no charge anymore; there is a judgment. And subsection (g)(4) ends with a sentence instructing the judicial officer to “conduct an inquiry into the source of the property to be designated for potential forfeiture or offered as collateral to secure a bond.” There is no bond in a § 3582 motion. Roughly a fifth of the fourth factor’s text is inoperative in this posture.

How to argue inside the mismatch. Three moves do the work:

1. Translate (g)(2) rather than conceding it. Use Stone‘s framing — the weight of the evidence of dangerousness — and then point at what the current record actually contains.
2. Read “record concerning appearance at court proceedings” for what it can still show. A person in Bureau of Prisons custody is produced by the marshals; there is no voluntary appearance to credit. But the phrase is the statute’s proxy for compliance with court obligations, and there are real analogues: restitution payments made on schedule, participation in the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, appearance at every disciplinary and program proceeding without incident. Say what the analogue is and why it is the closest available evidence, rather than pretending the phrase reads on nothing.
3. Insist on the individualized inquiry. Stone holds that “the dangerousness inquiry must be an individualized one,” and notes that “courts have never required a prior criminal record before ordering detention” — a rule that cuts both ways, and its converse is the point: a criminal record is not a substitute for an individualized finding either. The Fourth Circuit frames the compassionate release inquiry the same way, as a totality of the circumstances rather than a test of any condition in isolation (United States v. Hargrove, 30 F.4th 189 (4th Cir. 2022)).

The § 3142(g) Evidence Table: What Answers Each Factor, and What You Can Change

This is the practical core of the page. Every row names the statutory factor, the specific evidence that speaks to it, where that evidence comes from, and — the column that matters most to someone in prison — whether anything can still be done about it.

§ 3142(g) factor	Evidence that speaks to it	Where it comes from	Can the movant change it?
(g)(1) Nature and circumstances of the offense charged, including crime of violence, § 1591, federal crime of terrorism, minor victim, controlled substance, firearm, explosive, destructive device	Judgment and commitment order; presentence report offense conduct; whether a weapon enhancement or firearms mandatory minimum applied; statutory definitions at § 3156(a)(4)	The criminal case file, already in the district court’s record	No. Fixed at conviction. The only available work is accuracy — correcting a mischaracterization in the government’s opposition, and pointing to the FY2025 data showing every one of these offense categories among the grants
(g)(2) The weight of the evidence against the person	Under Stone, the weight of the evidence of dangerousness: current incident reports, current threat assessments, anything in the file generated in the last five years	SENTRY disciplinary printout; unit team reports; the government’s own opposition brief	Partly. You cannot change the trial record. You can change what the current record shows, and the absence of recent adverse evidence is itself the argument
(g)(3)(A) History and characteristics — character, physical and mental condition, family ties, employment, financial resources, length of residence, community ties, past conduct, drug or alcohol history, criminal history, record of court appearances	Disciplinary history with incident report numbers and dates and their severity level under 28 C.F.R. § 541.3; security level and custody classification history; PATTERN general and violent scores over time; education and vocational transcripts with completion dates; work evaluations; residential drug treatment completion; medical records and functional assessments; letters from staff who supervise the person daily; age at the offense against age now	Bureau of Prisons records, obtained through the unit team, FOIA/Privacy Act request, or counsel’s records request; BOP medical file	Substantially yes. Criminal history category and age at the offense are fixed. Disciplinary conduct, program completion, work history, treatment, custody classification, and PATTERN scoring items are all live — and BOP’s own PATTERN instrument assigns negative point values to education, drug-program completion, programs completed, and work programs
(g)(3)(B) Whether the person was on probation, parole, or other release at the time of the current offense or arrest	Presentence report; state and federal supervision records	The criminal case file	No. Binary and historical. The only available argument is elapsed time and intervening conduct
(g)(4) The nature and seriousness of the danger to any person or the community that would be posed by the person’s release	The release plan: named residence with a letter from whoever controls it; confirmed medical provider and intake appointment; documented coverage or payment source; identified income or family support; transportation from the facility. Plus the specific conditions proposed — home detention, location monitoring, treatment, no-contact, third-party custodian	Built by the family and counsel. 28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a)(2) already requires proposed release plans in the request to the warden	Yes — this is the most controllable evidence in the case. The statute asks about danger posed by the release, so the terms of the release are part of the answer. See compassionate release plan

Two things the table is not. It is not a scoring system — no court adds the rows up. And it is not a promise; a fully answered (g)(4) does not guarantee a finding, because the court weighs all four together and then still has the § 3553(a) analysis in front of it.

The Institutional Record: Discipline, Classification, and PATTERN

The government has been writing evidence about your loved one for years. Most of it is favorable, and most compassionate release motions attach almost none of it.

The disciplinary record and how severity is coded

The Bureau of Prisons classifies prohibited acts by severity, and the severity level is what a judge is really reading. Under 28 C.F.R. § 541.3, “[t]he list of prohibited acts are divided into four separate categories based on severity: Greatest; High; Moderate; and Low,” described in the regulation’s Table 1 along with the sanctions available for each. That matters because “he has three incident reports” and “he has three Low-severity incident reports, the most recent in 2017” are different sentences, and only the second one is evidence.

Ask for the printout rather than a summary, with incident report numbers, dates, the code charged, and the disposition. If a report was expunged or the finding was overturned, that appears too, and it is worth showing. For how the disciplinary process works from the incident report through the Discipline Hearing Officer, see what is a shot in prison; for the remedy process that can expunge a bad finding, see the bop administrative remedy program.

SENTRY, and why the printouts read the way they do

SENTRY is the Bureau’s records system, and it is where nearly all of this lives. BOP’s own policy designates it “the Bureau’s primary on-line automated information system,” which “provides for most Bureau system-wide operational and management information requirements” and “encompasses several program-specific modules” (BOP Program Statement 5890.13, Dec. 14, 1999). The same Program Statement contains a detail worth knowing before you ask for records: “SENTRY codes may not be published in Program Statements that are not classified as Limited Official Use,” and in ordinary policy documents “only the descriptive phrase of the SENTRY operation may be published.” That is why a public policy will describe a report in words rather than name the transaction code — and why the productive request asks for the report by what it contains, not by a code number you found online. Our summary of the governing policy is at SENTRY, BOP Program Statement 5890.13.

Security level and custody classification

These are two different things and families routinely conflate them. Security level describes the institution. The Bureau operates its prisons “at five different security levels,” and facilities “are designated as either minimum, low, medium, high, or administrative,” based on features including “the presence of external patrols, towers, security barriers, or detection devices; the type of housing within the institution; internal security features; and the staff-to-inmate ratio” (BOP, Federal Prisons). Custody classification is the separate designation the Bureau assigns to the person, governing supervision inside the institution.

A documented move from a penitentiary to a low-security facility over a decade, or a reduction in custody level, is a risk judgment the government made about this person using its own criteria. That is a materially different exhibit from a family member’s letter saying he has changed. Our plain-language explanation of the institution side is at prison security levels, and our summary of the designation and classification policy is at bop classification point system.

The PATTERN risk score — what it is, and what a court does with it

The First Step Act of 2018 — the same law that let people in prison file these motions themselves, covered at compassionate release first step act — required the Attorney General to build a risk and needs assessment system that would “determine the recidivism risk of each prisoner as part of the intake process, and classify each prisoner as having minimum, low, medium, or high risk for recidivism,” “assess and determine, to the extent practicable, the risk of violent or serious misconduct of each prisoner,” and “reassess the recidivism risk of each prisoner periodically, based on factors including indicators of progress, and of regression, that are dynamic and that can reasonably be expected to change while in prison” (18 U.S.C. § 3632(a)). Prisoners who participate in programming receive risk reassessments “not less often than annually” (§ 3632(d)(5)).

The instrument BOP built is PATTERN — the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs — and the Bureau states that “PATTERN version 1.3 is being used,” with separate male and female instruments (BOP, PATTERN Risk Assessment). BOP publishes both the scoring forms and the cut points. For the male general instrument, the published thresholds are Minimum = 5 or less, Low = 6 to 39, Medium = 40 to 54, High = 55 or more; for the male violent instrument, Minimum = 7 or less, Low = 8 to 24, Medium = 25 to 31, High = 32 or more (BOP, Cut Points Used for PATTERN v. 1.3).

The published male scoring form makes the fixed-versus-changeable distinction concrete — which is exactly the question the last column of the table above asks.

PATTERN item on the published male form	Fixed or changeable	What the form shows
Current age	Changes only with time	Scores from 35 points (under 26) down to 0 (over 60) on the general instrument
Violent offense; Walsh Act conviction; criminal history points; history of escapes; history of violence	Fixed	All scored on historical facts; history of violence and escapes are scored by recency, so the point value falls as time passes
Education score	Changeable	−1 for enrollment in GED, −2 for a high school degree or GED
Drug program status	Changeable	−2 for non-residential completion, −4 for residential completion
All incident reports and serious incident reports in the last 120 months	Changeable over time	0 points for none; up to 3 points each
Time since last incident report	Changeable	3 points if under 3 months, down to 0 points at 12 or more months or no incidents
Financial Responsibility Program refusal	Changeable	2 points for refusal, 0 otherwise
Programs completed	Changeable	0 for none, down to −12 for more than ten
Work programs	Changeable	0 for none, −1 for one, −2 for more than one

Source: BOP Male PATTERN Risk Scoring form, v. 1.3. Point values are those printed on the form.

Two cautions. First, PATTERN measures statutory recidivism risk for First Step Act purposes; it is not the § 3142(g) test, and no court is bound by it. Second, the earned-time-credit consequences of a PATTERN level are a separate subject with their own eligibility rules — see first step act time credits, and for the residential program that carries a −4 on the general instrument, rdap federal prison.

What PATTERN is, for this motion, is a documented risk finding made by the United States about this person on a published instrument, reassessed at least annually. A score history showing High in 2016 and Minimum in 2025 is the government’s own answer to (g)(4), and the government has to explain it away rather than the other way around.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: Ask for the record as a chronology, not a snapshot. A current PATTERN score tells a judge one thing; a score history across five annual reassessments tells the judge whether the line is going the right way, and the statute expressly contemplates factors “that are dynamic and that can reasonably be expected to change while in prison.” The same goes for custody classification and for the disciplinary record — the 120-month window on the PATTERN incident-report items is the same decade a judge is intuitively looking at, so a printout that ends before that window opens leaves the most persuasive stretch out of the exhibit. Request the full disciplinary history with numbers, dates, severity codes, and dispositions; the custody classification history; the PATTERN score history for every assessment on file; the education and work transcripts with completion dates; and the unit team’s progress reports. Retrieving those records and reading them the way a warden reads them is our side of the work. The motion, the § 3142(g) argument, and any appeal are handled by Elizabeth and the firm’s attorneys.

Medical Incapacity, Age, and the Release Plan

Three more categories of evidence answer the danger finding, and each works differently.

When a medical condition is itself the danger argument

The phrase “physical and mental condition” sits inside § 3142(g)(3)(A), which means medical evidence is danger evidence by the statute’s own terms. For a person who cannot walk, cannot leave a bed without assistance, or has documented cognitive impairment, incapacity is direct evidence on § 3142(g)(4): whatever the danger once was, the capacity to carry it out has changed. The same records that establish the eligibility ground — the functional assessment, the Care Level designation, the activities-of-daily-living evaluation — do double duty here. The evidentiary build for the medical ground itself is on compassionate release medical condition, and the Bureau’s care-level system that generates those records is explained at medical care levels in prisons.

There is a limit, and a published 2026 decision states it memorably. In United States v. White, No. 25-1857 (6th Cir. June 15, 2026), the movant was paralyzed and partially blind. The district court accepted that his condition was extraordinary and compelling and that the disability “lessens the threat he poses to the public” — and still denied, because he had run a drug operation by telephone, recruited others to commit violence, and threatened witnesses. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, with a line worth reading before any motion rests on physical incapacity: “He didn’t use his legs or eyes to commit these crimes. He used only his voice.”

The rule that comes out of White is narrow and usable. Incapacity answers dangerousness to the extent the offense conduct depended on the capacity that has been lost. A person whose offense was a violent robbery and who now cannot stand unassisted has a strong (g)(4) argument. A person whose offense was directing others by phone has almost none, and needs the argument to come from somewhere else.

Age at the offense against age now

Age appears in the statutory scheme in two places and in BOP’s instrument in a third, and the honest way to use it is descriptive.

What the national data shows is this: among motions decided in FY2025, the average age at the original sentencing was 38 for those granted and 38 for those denied, while the average age at the time the motion was decided was 51 for those granted and 47 for those denied (FY2025 Report, Table 6). The same two figures in the first half of FY2026 were 40 and 39 at sentencing, and 51 and 47 at decision (FY2026 Q1–Q2 Report, Table 6). BOP’s published PATTERN form scores current age on a sliding scale, with the highest point value assigned to the youngest group and zero points over 60.

Those are observations about a population, not a rule about your case, and no court applies them. Where age is the center of the motion rather than context for it, the dedicated guideline ground has its own requirements — see compassionate release for elderly inmates.

The release plan, and why it is danger evidence rather than logistics

A release plan is not paperwork attached at the end. It is the evidence that answers § 3142(g)(4)’s question about “the danger … that would be posed by the person’s release,” and it is the only major category of danger evidence a family can build from nothing.

The Bureau’s regulation already requires it at the front end: a request to the warden must contain, at a minimum, “[p]roposed release plans, including where the inmate will reside, how the inmate will support himself/herself, and, if the basis for the request involves the inmate’s health, information on where the inmate will receive medical treatment, and how the inmate will pay for such treatment” (28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a)(2)). Note that the same subsection still carries the pre-First Step Act limitation that a request may be initiated “only when there are particularly extraordinary or compelling circumstances which could not reasonably have been foreseen by the court at the time of sentencing” — a limitation USSG § 1B1.13(e) expressly rejects for court motions. The regulation is BOP’s internal screen, not the court’s test. For how that request is built and timed, see compassionate release request to warden; for how long the sequence usually runs from request to ruling, how long does compassionate release take; and for the plan itself, element by element, compassionate release plan.

Map the plan onto § 3142(g)(3)(A) and it lines up item for item. Family ties: the residence letter and the caregiver declarations. Employment: the job offer or the documented reason there is none. Financial resources: the benefit award letters. Length of residence and community ties: how long the family has been at that address, the church, the physician who treated the person before prison. Physical condition: the medical record. Nothing has to be argued by analogy, because the statute names each one. Where the motion rests on family circumstances rather than medical ones — and the plan therefore has to show what the person would be going home to do — see caregiver compassionate release.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: We put the proposed conditions in the motion and attach a proposed order. Section 3142(g)(4) asks about the danger posed by the release, which means the release we are actually asking for — and a judge who is unwilling to open the door may be entirely willing to convert the remaining term to supervised release with home detention, location monitoring, a named treating physician, and no-contact conditions. A motion that offers the court a single outcome invites a single answer. A motion that specifies what supervision would look like, who is responsible for what, and what happens if a condition is violated has answered the fourth factor on its own terms rather than asking the court to imagine the answer.

No Categorical Bar by Offense — and What the National Data Shows

No offense category disqualifies a person from compassionate release as a matter of law. The First Circuit held exactly that in United States v. Quirós-Morales, 83 F.4th 79 (1st Cir. 2023), vacating a denial because, as to any implied offense-based bar, “no such categorical bar currently exists” and because it was error to treat the motion as deniable as a matter of law on that ground.

That is the legal rule. The observed outcomes are a separate question, and a family deserves both.

Offense type among those granted, FY2025 (n = 390, Table 8) against those denied (n = 2,386, Table 9):

Offense type	Share of grants	Share of denials
Drug trafficking	46.4%	45.6%
Robbery	16.2%	10.2%
Firearms	13.3%	15.2%
Murder	6.7%	6.0%
Fraud, theft, embezzlement	5.4%	5.0%
Sexual abuse	3.1%	4.7%
Money laundering	2.6%	3.4%
Assault	1.5%	1.8%
Child pornography	0.0%	3.4%

Source: USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Tables 8 and 9.

Read that honestly in both directions. Violent offenses are plainly not disqualifying — murder was 6.7% of grants and 6.0% of denials, essentially the same share, and robbery was granted at a higher share than it was denied. But child pornography was a zero in FY2025, and no amount of framing changes that. In the first half of FY2026 the same line was 2 of 123 grants, 1.6%, against 3.4% of denials (FY2026 Q1–Q2 Report, Tables 8 and 9). Two motions is not a trend and should not be sold as one. It is enough to say the category is not empty.

Criminal history is not the barrier families expect. Among FY2025 grants, 35.7% were in criminal history category VI — the highest — and 20.7% were career offenders under USSG § 4B1.1, against 36.3% and 18.4% among denials (Table 7). Table 7 also reports that a weapon was involved in 48.8% of granted cases and 44.4% of denied, and that a firearms mandatory minimum applied in 37.6% of granted cases and 27.0% of denied. The Commission notes that this section of Table 7 is limited to the 2,664 cases with complete guideline application information.

Those figures do not mean a weapon helps. They mean that the presence of a firearm — one of the features § 3142(g)(1) singles out by name — was true of nearly half the people who were granted relief. Whatever work the offense factor does, it plainly does not end the inquiry.

And dangerousness is rarely the stated reason for a denial. In FY2025, “protection of the public” was cited 143 times among the 5,067 reasons courts gave across 2,401 denials — 2.8% — and “post-sentencing/post-conviction conduct” 55 times, 1.1% (Table 11). The first half of FY2026 tracks the same shape: protection of the public 47 citations (2.7% of 1,752 reasons), post-sentencing conduct 12 (0.7%) (FY2026 Q1–Q2 Report, Table 11). By comparison, the § 3553(a) factors were cited 1,260 times in FY2025 and 403 times in the first half of FY2026.

There are two ways to read that, and both are true. Bad institutional conduct rarely decides these motions — it decides the ones it decides, decisively. And a denial framed on § 3553(a) is often carrying a dangerousness judgment inside it without using the word, which is why the evidence in the table above belongs in the motion whether or not the government makes dangerousness an issue. For how those rates vary by court, see compassionate release grant rate.

How the Danger Finding Differs from the § 3553(a) Analysis

These are two different questions asked at two different stages, and conflating them is why a great many motions address the wrong thing.

	Danger finding	§ 3553(a)(2)(C)
Source	USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2), importing 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)	18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(C)
What it asks	Is the person “a danger to the safety of any other person or to the community”?	Does the sentence “protect the public from further crimes of the defendant”?
Legal character	A required finding. Fail it and the motion ends	One factor among seven, weighed in the court’s discretion
When it is reached	At eligibility, alongside extraordinary and compelling reasons	At the second step, after eligibility
What happens if it fails	No reduction is available, regardless of the § 3553(a) balance	The court may still grant, if the other factors outweigh it
Evidence	The same evidence — institutional record, medical condition, release plan, offense conduct	The same evidence, doing different work

The practical consequence is sequencing. A motion has to satisfy both, and it has to satisfy the danger finding first, because a court that is not persuaded on § 1B1.13(a)(2) has no occasion to weigh anything. Briefing dangerousness only inside the § 3553(a) section — which is common — puts the argument in the wrong place in the order the court works through.

The full treatment of the discretionary step, factor by factor, is on 3553(a) factors. One caution carries across both: an argument that the original sentence was unjust because Congress has since changed the law is no longer available at the eligibility step after May 2026, though USSG § 1B1.13(c) preserves its use in setting the extent of a reduction once eligibility is established on other grounds. If that is the theory of the motion, see unusually long sentence before filing.

What Actually Sinks the Danger Finding

Five failure modes account for most of the damage, and four of them are fixable before filing.

Silence. The most common defect is a motion that never uses the words “3142(g)” and leaves the court to construct the finding from a medical narrative. The guideline requires an affirmative determination. Give the court the material to make it, organized by factor.

Summaries where printouts belong. “He has had no disciplinary issues” is an assertion. A SENTRY printout showing no incident reports since 2013, with the numbers and dates on the page, is evidence. Judges are reading a paper record — most of these motions are decided without a hearing — and the difference between the two is the whole case.

A release plan built out of intentions. “He will live with his sister” is not a plan. A signed letter from the sister, the address, how long she has lived there, who else is in the home, a confirmed medical provider with an intake appointment, and the payment source is a plan. That is also what 28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a)(2) asks for at the administrative stage, so it has to exist anyway.

Asking for one outcome. A motion that requests immediate unconditional release and nothing else asks the court to answer the hardest version of § 3142(g)(4). Proposing conditions gives the court a version it may be able to grant.

Arguing the conviction. After Fernandez, a motion that relitigates guilt is in the wrong statute, and it also damages the danger argument by putting the offense conduct back at the center of a hearing that should be about the last fifteen years. That argument belongs in a collateral attack with its own one-year clock — see compassionate release vs 2255.

If a motion has already been denied on this finding, the denial usually tells you which of these it was, and that determines whether the answer is an appeal or a renewed motion on a changed record. See compassionate release denial and can you file compassionate release twice.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best is the founder and Principal Attorney of Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., a boutique firm devoted to federal criminal appeals and post-conviction relief. Over more than 20 years she has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has appeared pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, was named South Carolina Public Defender of the Year in 2010, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023).

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, is the firm’s Managing Director and a nationally recognized federal prison expert. He is the author of the Federal Prison Handbook, Directory of Federal Prisons, Prison Education Guide, and College for Convicts, and serves as Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Defense Center. He has been quoted as a federal prison expert by outlets including CNN, the Associated Press, and The Washington Post. He earned his J.D. at the University of California, Davis School of Law after serving roughly a decade in the federal Bureau of Prisons, where he became an award-winning incarcerated journalist — a combination of formal training and firsthand knowledge that few in federal defense can offer. He leads the federal prison consultant side of the practice, including the records retrieval and institutional analysis a danger-finding argument is built on; the legal work — the motion, the briefing, and any appeal — is handled by Elizabeth Franklin-Best and the firm’s attorneys.

The firm runs a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload, from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. These motions are filed in the district that imposed the sentence, wherever in the country that is.

Talk to a federal compassionate release lawyer

If dangerousness is the obstacle in a particular case, the useful first step is looking at the actual record — the disciplinary history, the classification and PATTERN history, the medical file, the offense of conviction, and what a release plan could realistically look like.

Four documents make a first review productive, and families can usually assemble all of them:

• The judgment and commitment order, which names the sentencing judge, the district, the counts of conviction, and the term of supervised release already imposed.
• The sentence computation from the Bureau of Prisons, showing projected release date, time served, and good conduct time.
• Whatever disciplinary and classification records the family already has, plus a signed release so the complete institutional record can be requested rather than described.
• A realistic picture of the proposed residence — who lives there, who owns or rents it, and who would be responsible for care.

Call (843) 620-1100 or schedule a consultation. If you are still comparing this to other routes out — the Bureau’s own placement authority, earned time credits, clemency — start with compassionate release attorneys, and for the whole picture of how these motions work, the hub for federal compassionate release lawyers.

This page is general information about federal law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Outcomes depend on the record, the district, and the judge, and no result can be promised.

Frequently Asked Questions About the § 3142(g) Danger Finding

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026