The Second Chance Act

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

What is the Second Chance Act?

The Second Chance Act of 2007, signed 9 April 2008, amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c) to authorize the Bureau of Prisons to place a federal prisoner in prerelease custody — a halfway house or home confinement — for up to 12 months at the end of a sentence. It also created a home-detention pilot for elderly and terminally ill prisoners and a set of reentry grant programs.

Key takeaways on the Second Chance Act

• The Act’s core effect for a federal prisoner is the 12-month prerelease custody authorisation at § 3624(c)(1). Before it, the statute allowed “not to exceed six months, of the last 10 per centum of the term.”
• Twelve months is a ceiling on BOP’s authority, not an entitlement. What the Bureau actually grants turns on bed capacity, risk level, the release plan, and its own discretion.
• The Second Chance Act of 2007 added § 3624(c)(6), and the Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2018 — Title V of the First Step Act — amended it to set a new rulemaking deadline, requiring that placement be “determined on an individual basis” and “of sufficient duration to provide the greatest likelihood of successful reintegration.”
• Second Chance Act time and First Step Act credits stack. BOP policy directs that the referral include the Five Factor Review days “plus the remaining number of FTC days not applied to supervised release.”
• Second Chance Act placement guidance has not been rescinded. A 31 March 2025 memorandum capping placements at 60 days was itself rescinded on 10 April 2025, and since August 2025 BOP has been issuing conditional placement dates that combine both authorities.
• The elderly and terminally ill home-detention pilot is at 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g) — and its statutory period reads “fiscal years 2019 through 2023,” a discrepancy we flag rather than paper over.

What the Second Chance Act actually did

The Second Chance Act of 2007 was signed into law on 9 April 2008, as BOP’s own account of the anniversary records. Its stated aims were “to reduce recidivism, increase public safety and improve the outcome and quality of life of individuals reentering society after incarceration,” through “support and resources in four areas: jobs, housing, substance abuse/mental health treatment and families.”

For a person serving a federal sentence, one change matters more than all the rest.

The prerelease custody expansion

Before the Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c) read — as it is still quoted, verbatim, inside two of BOP’s own operative program statements — as follows:

“The Bureau of Prisons shall, to the extent practicable, assure that a prisoner serving a term of imprisonment spends a reasonable part, not to exceed six months, of the last ten per centum of the term to be served under conditions that will afford the prisoner a reasonable opportunity to adjust to and prepare for the prisoner’s reentry into the community.”

Six months, and only within the last 10 percent of the term — so a two-year sentence produced a ceiling of roughly two and a half months, not six.

The Second Chance Act replaced that with the text in force today:

“The Director of the Bureau of Prisons shall, to the extent practicable, ensure that a prisoner serving a term of imprisonment spends a portion of the final months of that term (not to exceed 12 months), under conditions that will afford that prisoner a reasonable opportunity to adjust to and prepare for the reentry of that prisoner into the community. Such conditions may include a community correctional facility.”

Two changes, both large. The ceiling doubled to twelve months. And the 10-percent limitation vanished from the halfway-house authority, surviving only in § 3624(c)(2) as the separate cap on home confinement: “the shorter of 10 percent of the term of imprisonment of that prisoner or 6 months.”

That split is the source of most confusion about this Act. The Second Chance Act expanded the halfway-house authority to twelve months. It left the home confinement authority where it was: 180 days or 10 percent of the sentence, whichever is shorter — the statute writes those 180 days as “6 months,” and they are the same figure, not two rules. First Step Act credits can lift both, under § 3624(g). Our residential reentry center and federal home confinement pages each cover one side of that line.

The regulation implementing it is 28 C.F.R. § 570.21(a): “Inmates may be designated to community confinement as a condition of pre-release custody and programming during the final months of the inmate’s term of imprisonment, not to exceed twelve months.”

The individualized-determination requirement

The Act also required the determination to be individual rather than categorical. 28 C.F.R. § 570.22: “Inmates will be considered for pre-release community confinement in a manner consistent with 18 U.S.C. section 3621(b), determined on an individual basis, and of sufficient duration to provide the greatest likelihood of successful reintegration into the community, within the time-frames set forth in this part.”

The factors are the five in 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b): the resources of the facility contemplated; the nature and circumstances of the offense; the history and characteristics of the prisoner; any statement by the sentencing court about the purposes of the sentence or recommending a type of facility; and any pertinent Sentencing Commission policy statement. Bureau staff call this the Five Factor Review, and PS 5410.01 CN-2 — agency policy, not law — describes it as “required under the Second Chance Act.”

The fourth factor is worth pausing on. A judicial recommendation about prerelease placement is a factor the Bureau must consider — which makes it worth asking for at sentencing, well before it can matter. That is a federal sentencing point, not a reentry one, and it is routinely missed.

The 2018 reauthorization

The First Step Act of 2018 carried, as its Title V, the Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2018. BOP’s own summary: “in 2018, the First Step Act was signed reauthorizing and expanding the Second Chance Act, including many of the grant programs that were initially authorized ten years prior along with the FBOP’s pilot program to provide early release to elderly prisoners.”

For placement purposes, the reauthorization amended § 3624(c)(6) — a rulemaking directive first enacted by the Second Chance Act of 2007 — so that its 90-day deadline runs from the 2018 Act:

“Issuance of regulations.— The Director of the Bureau of Prisons shall issue regulations pursuant to this subsection not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of the Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2018, which shall ensure that placement in a community correctional facility by the Bureau of Prisons is— (A) conducted in a manner consistent with section 3621(b) of this title; (B) determined on an individual basis; and (C) of sufficient duration to provide the greatest likelihood of successful reintegration into the community.”

The Justice Department quoted subparagraph (C) in its own 2022 rulemaking, noting at 87 FR 7938 that “[s]ection 3624(c)(6)(C) of title 18 requires the Bureau to ensure that community confinement placement is ‘of sufficient duration to provide the greatest likelihood of successful reintegration into the community,'” and that the reference to § 3621(b) “further reinforces that the Bureau must make the determination of community confinement placement ‘on an individual basis.'”

That is a statutory command, in mandatory terms, that the Department has acknowledged in the Federal Register. It is the best available textual argument where a placement decision looks categorical rather than individual.

The reauthorization also required BOP to “develop policies for wardens to enter into recidivism-reducing partnerships with nonprofit and other private organizations, including faith-based and community-based organizations, to deliver programming designed to reduce recidivism.”

What the Act authorizes versus what BOP grants

This is the distinction the whole page turns on, and it is the same one drawn on the residential reentry center page.

Second Chance Act prerelease custody: authority versus practice

	The authority	What BOP actually does
Halfway house (community confinement)	Up to 12 months — 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c)(1); 28 C.F.R. § 570.21(a)	The full twelve months is available but rarely granted. What limits it is bed capacity, risk level and the release plan — not a policy cap. The 180-day referral guidance in PS 7310.04 § 9(a)(1) is a 1998 document predating this statute and is not the operative limit
Home confinement	180 days or 10% of the sentence, whichever is shorter — § 3624(c)(2); 28 C.F.R. § 570.21(b)	The same figures, unless First Step Act credits lift them under § 3624(g) — 28 C.F.R. § 570.21(c)
How the decision must be made	“determined on an individual basis” and “of sufficient duration to provide the greatest likelihood of successful reintegration” — § 3624(c)(6); 28 C.F.R. § 570.22	Five Factor Review on the § 3621(b) factors, at the 11-to-13-month team meeting, with the Warden as final approver — BOP PS 7310.04 §§ 8, 12
How the referral is written	—	As a range of at least 30 days, so the Community Corrections Manager “can match population needs with budgetary and CCC bed space resources” — PS 7310.04 § 9(a)
Which way the date can move	—	Downward only: “any adjustment only being downward if budget and/or bed space constraints are a factor” — PS 7310.04 § 9(a)
Does it stack with First Step Act credits?	Yes	The recommendation includes Five Factor Review days “plus the remaining number of FTC days not applied to supervised release” — PS 5410.01 CN-2
Review of the result	—	A designation under § 3621(b) “is not reviewable by any court”; 18 U.S.C. § 3625 removes APA review of individual determinations
The measured shortfall	—	BOP did not apply all earned time toward RRC and home confinement placement for 21,190 of 29,934 people reviewed, citing insufficient capacity among the reasons — GAO-26-107353, 11 Feb. 2026

BOP Program Statements are internal agency policy, not law.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: Families hear “twelve months under the Second Chance Act” and start planning. The number that will actually appear on the referral is a range, written by a unit team, in a system where the Community Corrections Manager can shorten it for bed-space reasons but cannot lengthen it. What changes that range is not knowing the statute — it is what is in the referral packet: a verified residence, a letter from an employer, a treatment provider’s acceptance, a resolved detainer, evidence of health-care coverage. Every one of those is producible months in advance, and every one of them is worth more than a citation.

Has BOP rescinded Second Chance Act placement guidance?

No — and the one 2025 attempt to narrow it was withdrawn by the Bureau within ten days.

Families often ask whether BOP has rescinded Second Chance Act placements, and the question deserves a straight answer.

What we can source. On 1 August 2025, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons announced “the successful launch of the updated Time Credit Application Program, a new tool that provides conditional home confinement placement dates combining both the First Step Act (FSA) and Second Chance Act (SCA).” The same message described new staff training on “how to maximize the use of home confinement under the First Step Act and Second Chance Act,” and reported that the Designation and Sentence Computation Center had been “manually calculating conditional home confinement eligibility dates for individuals currently housed in Residential Reentry Centers,” to support moving them from halfway houses to home confinement.

On 21 October 2025, BOP announced that staff would use the FSA Conditional Placement Date — the time credit worksheet — “as the anchor for key inmate management decisions.”

And BOP’s current First Step Act FAQ, read on 2 September 2026, still describes the Second Chance Act Home Confinement Pilot program, sets out its eligibility criteria, and gives instructions for applying.

The one narrowing attempt, and its withdrawal. On 31 March 2025 BOP issued a memorandum limiting Second Chance Act RRC placements to 60 days. On 10 April 2025 it withdrew it. The Bureau’s own notice, Second Chance Act (SCA) Placements, states: “Based on concerns about how these limitations impact the population, BOP will not proceed with the planned changes to limit SCA placement to 60 days. A new memo was issued today, April 10, 2025, rescinding the previous guidance.” That is the whole episode, from the agency, dated. Anyone still quoting a 60-day Second Chance Act cap is quoting a rescinded memorandum.

What that adds up to. The Second Chance Act itself has not been repealed or narrowed by Congress. Its implementing regulations at 28 C.F.R. Part 570, Subpart B remain in force. BOP is publicly combining Second Chance Act time with First Step Act credits, not choosing between them. What has changed is emphasis: the Bureau’s stated operational direction since mid-2025 is toward home confinement and away from long halfway-house stays, against a documented shortage of halfway-house beds. That is a change in where the time is served, not in whether the authority exists.

How Second Chance Act time works with First Step Act credits

They are additive, and BOP policy says so in one sentence.

PS 5410.01 CN-2: “The RRC and/or HC recommendation will include the total number of days recommended based on the Five Factor Review (see 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b)), required under the Second Chance Act, plus the remaining number of FTC days not applied to supervised release at the time of the referral.”

Unpacking that:

Second Chance Act days come from the individualized Five Factor Review, subject to the 12-month statutory ceiling in § 3624(c)(1) — and to the Bureau’s discretion within it.

First Step Act days are the earned time credits left over after up to 365 days have gone toward early transfer to supervised release. Under 28 C.F.R. § 523.44(d), that 365-day figure caps only the supervised-release use; the rest goes to prerelease custody.

The bridge is 28 C.F.R. § 570.21(c): the Part 570 time-frames “may be exceeded when separate statutory authority allows greater periods of community confinement as a condition of pre-release custody.” Section 3624(g) is that separate authority.

And the practical consequence, from the same policy: “When determining the FTC days available to be applied toward RRC/HC placement, the Bureau will assume that the inmate will remain in earning status from the referral date until the transfer to prerelease custody.”

So a person with no First Step Act eligibility gets Second Chance Act days alone. A person earning and able to apply credits gets both. Which is why first step act time credits and the pattern risk assessment that gates their application matter to a question that on its face is about the Second Chance Act.

The elderly and terminally ill home-detention pilot

The Second Chance Act created, and the First Step Act reauthorised, a pilot at 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g) under which the Attorney General may place eligible elderly and terminally ill prisoners “on home detention until the expiration of the prison term to which the offender was sentenced.”

This is a different route from § 3624(c) prerelease custody: it is not limited by the 10-percent-or-six-months home confinement cap, and it runs to the end of the sentence.

An eligible elderly offender must be at least 60; serving a non-life term for offenses including no crime of violence, sex offense, terrorism offense under 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B), or espionage offense under chapter 37; and must have served two-thirds of the term of imprisonment to which the offender was sentenced. There are five further conditions — no qualifying prior conviction, no BOP-determined history of violence or sex offending, no escape or attempted escape, a Bureau finding that release “will result in a substantial net reduction of costs to the Federal Government,” and a finding of “no substantial risk of engaging in criminal conduct or of endangering any person or the public.”

An eligible terminally ill offender must meet the same offense and history criteria and be “determined by a medical doctor approved by the Bureau of Prisons to be — (I) in need of care at a nursing home, intermediate care facility, or assisted living facility… or (II) diagnosed with a terminal illness.”

Three practical points from BOP’s First Step Act FAQ. The two-thirds calculation excludes good conduct time: “This is calculation does not include the application of Good Conduct Time.” The placement can be direct — approved participants “may be transferred directly from the institution to home confinement. They do not need to release first to an RRC.” And the timing is specific: apply “when they are within six months of eligibility (i.e. have served two-thirds of their sentence). Applications made earlier than that date will be returned.”

The caveat we are not going to hide. Section 60541(g)(3) provides that the pilot “shall be carried out during fiscal years 2019 through 2023.” On the face of the statute that period has passed. As of 2 September 2026 BOP’s public FAQ still describes the program as available and tells people how to apply. Both of those are true, and we do not know how a court would resolve the tension. Anyone whose plan depends on this route should raise the question with counsel rather than treat it as settled. More on the mechanics is on our federal home confinement page.

The grant programs, briefly

Much of the Second Chance Act has nothing to do with any individual’s release date, and that is why searching the name returns so much state and non-profit material.

The Act authorized — and the 2018 reauthorization renewed — a substantial set of federal reentry grants supporting employment, housing, substance abuse and mental health treatment, and family reunification, administered largely through the Department of Justice to states, localities, tribes, and non-profits. BOP describes the four areas as “jobs, housing, substance abuse/mental health treatment and families.”

Those grants fund the services that may be waiting on the other side. They do not shorten a federal sentence, they are not something an individual applies to from prison, and a case manager cannot grant one. If a search result about the Second Chance Act is talking about a county reentry initiative or a grant solicitation, it is talking about this part of the Act — not about prerelease custody.

Who qualifies, and what to actually do

Eligibility, honestly stated

There is no application for Second Chance Act prerelease custody. Every sentenced federal prisoner approaching release is considered for it as a matter of course, and the question is how much, not whether.

What limits it is PS 7310.04 § 10‘s exclusion list — a sex offender or deportable alien Public Safety Factor, inpatient treatment needs, refusal of the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, refusal or failure of the Drug Abuse Education Course, unresolved detainers or pending charges, sentences of six months or less, refusal of the Institution Release Preparation Program, a significant threat to the community, and pretrial or holdover status. Several of those are choices, and choices can be unmade.

The five things worth doing

Ask for the FCPD. Since October 2025 the FSA Conditional Placement Date has been the number BOP steers by, and it now reflects both authorities. It appears on the time credit worksheet, which policy requires be provided at every regularly scheduled program review.

Know the calendar. The referral decision is made at a team meeting “no later than 11 to 13 months before an inmate’s projected release date,” and the packet goes to the Residential Reentry Management office at least 60 days before the maximum recommended date. Bureau policy adds that “[t]here is no expectation the RRC/HC placement date will be modified once the referral has been submitted.”

Document the release plan. A verified address, employment, a treatment provider, and — where the release district differs from the sentencing district — a relocation acceptance letter from the U.S. Probation Office. These are facts a Community Corrections Manager can act on.

Clear the reversible exclusions. IFRP participation, the Drug Abuse Education Course, and the Release Preparation Program.

Resolve detainers. A detainer blocks placement and blocks the application of First Step Act credits, while doing nothing to stop those credits accruing. It is often the single largest recoverable item in a file.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: If a Second Chance Act placement is challenged, the argument has to be legal rather than evaluative. Section 3621(b) says a designation “is not reviewable by any court,” and § 3625 removes the Administrative Procedure Act. What is left, and what is genuinely available, is § 3624(c)(6): Congress required that placement be “determined on an individual basis.” Where the record shows a categorical rule applied without any individual consideration — a blanket number, an offense-based cut-off with no Five Factor discussion — that is a failure to do what the statute requires, not a disagreement about how much time was appropriate. It has to be raised through the administrative remedy process first, and the twenty-day clock in 28 C.F.R. § 542.14 starts running when the decision is communicated.

If a placement decision needs to be challenged

The route is the administrative remedy program at 28 C.F.R. Part 542: informal resolution and a BP-9 to the Warden within 20 calendar days of the event; a BP-10 to the Regional Director within 20 days of the Warden’s signed response; a BP-11 to the General Counsel within 30 days of the Regional Director’s. If the response times pass — 20 days at the institution, 30 at the region, 40 at Central Office, each extendable once with written notice — § 542.18 allows treating the silence as a denial and moving up.

After exhaustion, the vehicle is a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the district of confinement. Our bop sentence computation page sets out the whole sequence and the traps in it.

Timing is everything here, because the remedy expires with the release date. A placement claim resolved after release is worth nothing.

Working with a federal prison early release lawyer

We work on prerelease custody in every federal district: reviewing the referral before it goes out, correcting the credit and risk inputs that drive it, resolving detainers, building release plans that survive verification, and pursuing administrative remedies where a decision rests on something the statute or regulations do not support.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, with offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, serving clients nationwide on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best 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 handled more than 330 federal proceedings. Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, leads the firm’s federal prison consulting work and is the author of the Federal Prison Handbook.

We will not promise a number of days, and a page that does is not telling you the truth about how this system works.

Schedule a consultation

If a prerelease placement is much shorter than the authorities support, or a referral has not been made when policy says it should have been, we can review the file.

Schedule a consultation with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. Our practice is nationwide.

For the full map, start at our federal prison early release lawyer hub. For the two placements this Act authorizes, see residential reentry center and federal home confinement. For the other credit streams, good conduct time and rdap eligibility. And for the last stage, early termination of supervised release.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Second Chance Act

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