Early Release Procedures Under 18 U.S.C. 3621(e)

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

Program Statement 5331.02 at a glance

Field	Value
Program Statement	5331.02, CN-3
Subject	Early Release Procedures Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)
Effective / current edition date	Change Notice CN-3, signed by Director William K. Marshall III, dated May 7, 2026. The underlying Program Statement P5331.02 is dated March 16, 2009 (rules effective 3/16/2009), issued as a “CORRECTED COPY 2/20/2009”
Change notice	Three, all still printed in the current PDF: CN-3 (May 7, 2026); CN-2 (September 27, 2017, effective October 1, 2017); CN-1 (April 25, 2016, rules effective May 26, 2016)
Supersedes / rescinds	CN-3 rescinds “5331.02, CN-2 Early Release Procedures Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) (9/27/2017).” The 2009 base Program Statement rescinded P5331.01 (9/29/03)
Governing statute	18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)(2)(B)
Governing regulation (28 C.F.R.)	§ 550.55 (eligibility for early release), within part 550, subpart F
Related BP forms	BP-A0941, Notice of RDAP Qualification; BP-A0764, Notice of § 3621(e) Date; BP-A0766, Unit Team Final Review; BP-A0767, Change in RDAP and § 3621(e) Status; BP-A0768, Request to Delay, Remove or Reinstate Early Release; BP-A0628, Notification of RRC Placement Date; BP-A0910, Transitional Drug Abuse Treatment § 3621(e) Release Date Confirmation. None is posted publicly; all are named in the Program Statement text
Official PDF	Program Statement 5331.02, CN-3 (bop.gov)

Checked against the BOP policy set · 2026-09-06.

Program Statement 5331.02 is the Bureau of Prisons’ internal instruction for deciding whether someone who completes the Residential Drug Abuse Program may have their sentence shortened under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)(2)(B), and by how much. It sets out the offense review the Bureau’s legal staff perform, the categories of people the Director has excluded from the benefit as a matter of discretion, the maximum reduction tied to sentence length, and the many ways the benefit can be lost after it has been provisionally granted.

This page is about the early-release decision only. What RDAP is, who gets admitted to treatment, how a substance use disorder is documented and diagnosed, and what the 500-hour program involves are covered on our page on Psychology Treatment Programs (PS 5330.11). If you are weighing how a § 3621(e) reduction fits into a broader effort to shorten a sentence already imposed — alongside First Step Act time credits, halfway house placement or a sentence-reduction motion — start at RDAP and federal prison early release.

One thing to be clear about before anything else. The statute is permissive in both directions. It says the period in custody after successful completion “may be reduced by the Bureau of Prisons, but such reduction may not be more than one year from the term the prisoner must otherwise serve.” The Supreme Court read that language in Lopez v. Davis, 531 U.S. 230 (2001), and held that “When an eligible prisoner successfully completes drug treatment, the Bureau thus has the authority, but not the duty, both to alter the prisoner’s conditions of confinement and to reduce his term of imprisonment.” No page, and no consultant, can tell you that a particular sentence will be reduced or by how much. That determination belongs to the Bureau in the first instance, and any number you are given before the Bureau makes it is a guess.

The rule itself: 28 C.F.R. § 550.55, and the sentence-length limits the Bureau applies

Three rule sets decide this question. The first two are the binding regulation — who is eligible, and the seven categories the Director has excluded. The third is the Bureau’s own table capping the reduction by sentence length. All three are reproduced below exactly as written.

Who is eligible — 28 C.F.R. § 550.55(a)

Paragraph	Text of the regulation
(a)	“Eligibility. Inmates may be eligible for early release by a period not to exceed twelve months if they:”
(a)(1)	“Were sentenced to a term of imprisonment under either:”
(a)(1)(i)	“18 U.S.C. Chapter 227, Subchapter D for a nonviolent offense; or”
(a)(1)(ii)	“D.C. Code § 24-403.01 for a nonviolent offense, meaning an offense other than those included within the definition of ‘crime of violence’ in D.C. Code § 23-1331(4); and”
(a)(2)	“Successfully complete a RDAP, as described in § 550.53, during their current commitment.”

Source: 28 C.F.R. § 550.55 (74 FR 1897, Jan. 14, 2009, as amended at 81 FR 24490, Apr. 26, 2016; current version effective Dec. 29, 2016), reproduced at PS 5331.02 at pp. 5–6.

Note the word “may” at the head of paragraph (a). Meeting every requirement in § 550.55(a) does not entitle anyone to anything; it makes a person eligible to be considered.

The Program Statement adds two conditions of its own that do not appear in the regulation’s eligibility paragraph. It states that a person must “have a diagnosis for a substance use disorder. The inmate must have a substantiated diagnosis for a substance use disorder,” and must “are Financial Responsibility Program (FRP) compliant. See 28 CFR § 545.10” (PS 5331.02 at pp. 5–6). Both reflect requirements found elsewhere in the Bureau’s rules — the diagnosis is the RDAP admission criterion at § 550.53(b)(1), and financial-responsibility compliance is a precondition of every RDAP incentive under § 550.54(b) — but they are the Bureau’s instruction for applying the rule, not the rule itself. That distinction matters when you are arguing about which requirement actually binds the agency.

The seven categories excluded by the Director — 28 C.F.R. § 550.55(b)

The regulation’s introductory sentence is doing important work: “As an exercise of the Director’s discretion, the following categories of inmates are not eligible for early release.” These exclusions are not in the statute. They are the Director’s, adopted by rulemaking.

Category	Text of the regulation
(b)(1)	“Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees;”
(b)(2)	“Pretrial inmates;”
(b)(3)	“Contractual boarders (for example, State or military inmates);”
(b)(4)	“Inmates who have a prior felony or misdemeanor conviction within the ten years prior to the date of sentencing for their current commitment for: (i) Homicide (including deaths caused by recklessness, but not including deaths caused by negligence or justifiable homicide); (ii) Forcible rape; (iii) Robbery; (iv) Aggravated assault; (v) Arson; (vi) Kidnaping; or (vii) An offense that by its nature or conduct involves sexual abuse offenses committed upon minors;”
(b)(5)	“Inmates who have a current felony conviction for: (i) An offense that has as an element, the actual, attempted, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another; (ii) An offense that involved the carrying, possession, or use of a firearm or other dangerous weapon or explosives (including any explosive material or explosive device); (iii) An offense that, by its nature or conduct, presents a serious potential risk of physical force against the person or property of another; or (iv) An offense that, by its nature or conduct, involves sexual abuse offenses committed upon minors;”
(b)(6)	“Inmates who have been convicted of an attempt, conspiracy, or solicitation to commit an underlying offense listed in paragraph (b)(4) and/or (b)(5) of this section; or”
(b)(7)	“Inmates who previously received an early release under 18 U.S.C. 3621(e).”

Source: 28 C.F.R. § 550.55(b). Bold added to the two phrases that Change Notice CN-1 inserted into the Program Statement; see “What changed” below.

Whether a particular conviction falls inside one of these categories is not something a person can settle by reading the list. Under the Program Statement, the offense review is performed by attorneys at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, working from the Judgment and Commitment order and the Presentence Investigation Report, and applying the Bureau’s Categorization of Offenses program statement to federal convictions and D.C. Code § 23-1331(4) to D.C. convictions.

How much time — the Bureau’s sentence-length table

The regulation caps the reduction at twelve months and then authorizes the Director to cap it lower. Section 550.55(c) provides:

• “(c)(1) Inmates so approved may receive early release up to twelve months prior to the expiration of the term of incarceration, except as provided in paragraphs (c)(2) and (3) of this section.”
• “(c)(2) Under the Director’s discretion allowed by 18 U.S.C. 3621(e), we may limit the time-frame of early release based upon the length of sentence imposed by the Court.”
• “(c)(3) If inmates cannot fulfill their community-based treatment obligations by the presumptive release date, we may adjust provisional release dates by the least amount of time necessary to allow inmates to fulfill their treatment obligations.”

The Program Statement then states the limit the Bureau actually applies under (c)(2):

Sentence Length	Early Release Time-Frame
30 MONTHS or LESS	No more than 6 months
31-36 MONTHS	No more than 9 months
37 MONTHS OR MORE	No more than 12 months

Source: PS 5331.02 at p. 10 (section headed “LENGTH OF SENTENCE”); 28 C.F.R. § 550.55(c).

Two operating rules travel with that table, both quoted from the same page. First: “The early release time-frame reductions shown on the table are not pro-rated by days. For example, if an inmate’s sentence is 36 months and any number of days, 9 months is the maximum sentence reduction allowed, whether the inmate’s sentence is 36 months and 0 days, or 36 months and 30 days.” Second: “Any change in current offense sentence length as imposed by order of the Court will result in a recalculation of sentence computation and provisional incentive. For example, a 36-month sentence reduced to a 24-month sentence will result in no more than a 6-month early release.”

Every figure in that table is a ceiling — “no more than.” It is not an entitlement, and it is not a prediction. The Program Statement also fixes the eligibility date to the sentence the court imposed, so a successful sentence-reduction motion can shrink the available reduction at the same time as it shortens the sentence.

When the decision is made, and when it can be taken away

The § 3621(e) date is provisional for a long time before it is real. The Program Statement’s sequence, with the timing it specifies:

Stage	What happens	Timing stated in the Program Statement
Initial review	The Drug Abuse Program Coordinator checks SENTRY for a prior § 3621(e) release, contract-boarder or pretrial status, a detainer that would prevent community treatment, a federal offense before November 1, 1987, or a D.C. offense before August 5, 2000. Any one of these ends the inquiry	On qualification for RDAP
Offense review	DSCC legal staff review the current offense and prior convictions for both U.S. Code and D.C. Code felony offenders; signature authority “may not be delegated below the attorney level”	“ordinarily have 30 working days”
Notification	The person signs the Notice of RDAP Qualification form (BP-A0941); the eligibility code goes into SENTRY	On receipt of the signed offense review
Provisional date set	The Coordinator forwards a Notice of § 3621(e) Date form (BP-A0764) to DSCC; computation staff enter the date and recalculate	“within 15 working days” at each step
Final review	The Unit Team completes the Unit Team Final Review form (BP-A0766), confirming the unit-based program was completed “in a unit set apart from the general population for no less than nine months” and follow-up treatment is complete	“Ordinarily, this will occur 30 days before the inmate’s RRC transfer”
Certification	After community treatment, the Transitional Drug Abuse Treatment Coordinator certifies completion to DSCC on the § 3621(e) Release Date Confirmation form (BP-A0910)	On completion of community treatment

Source: PS 5331.02 at pp. 8–16.

The benefit can be removed at any point in that sequence. The Program Statement states that a person “may require changes to, or lose, his or her early release eligibility at any time as a result of: information that renders the inmate ineligible … or identification of a previous error,” and it lists the triggers throughout: expulsion or withdrawal from RDAP, “significant failure to meet treatment goals, significant program disruption, receives an incident report for misconduct related to drugs, alcohol, and/or act(s) of violence,” failure or withdrawal from follow-up treatment, a detainer newly lodged, non-compliance with financial responsibility obligations, escape from a Residential Reentry Center, halfway house failure, and disallowance of good conduct time by the Discipline Hearing Officer. The Unit Team Final Review is blunt about the consequence: “If any SENTRY codes have been replaced with fail or ineligible codes, the inmate is not eligible for an early release.”

It also runs the other way. If a person is expelled over an incident report and “is later found not guilty by the DHO,” the Program Statement directs the Coordinator to convene treatment staff to decide whether reinstatement is clinically appropriate, and if so to reinstate the person, restore the eligible assignment, and request the corresponding correction to the release date. The same restoration procedure applies where a halfway house incident report is later expunged.

What § 3621(e) early release means for you

If you are the person inside: get the offense review in writing

Get the offense review in writing, and get it early. The single decision that most often ends a § 3621(e) hope is the DSCC legal review of the current and prior offenses, and it happens on paper in Texas without you present. Ask the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator, in writing on an Inmate Request to Staff (BP-A0148), when the Request for § 3621(e) Offense Review was submitted, when it came back, and what the result was. Keep the signed Notice of RDAP Qualification form you are given.

Read your SENTRY assignments, not the rumors on the compound. The Program Statement runs on SENTRY codes: eligible, ineligible, participating, completed, failed. Every change to your early-release status is supposed to be documented, and a discharge note entered in the Psychology Data System. If someone tells you your date changed, the answer is in the codes and in the forms — the Notice of § 3621(e) Date, the Change in RDAP and § 3621(e) Status, the Notification of RRC Placement Date — not in what a staff member said in passing.

Protect the halfway house placement as if the reduction depended on it, because it does. Community treatment is a required component of RDAP, and the Bureau’s own position is that it “cannot be completed in less than 120 days.” A short placement, a detainer, or a disciplinary finding that costs you the transfer takes the benefit with it. Halfway house placement and the § 3621(e) reduction are one problem, not two.

If you are a family member: why not to put a date on the calendar

Do not put a date on the calendar. The provisional § 3621(e) date that appears on a sentence computation is exactly that — provisional — and the Program Statement lists at least a dozen events that can move or erase it, most of them outside your loved one’s control. Plan around the statutory release date and treat any reduction as something that may or may not happen.

Understand that the ceiling depends on the sentence the judge imposed, not on time served or good behavior. A thirty-month sentence carries a maximum of six months, a thirty-six-month sentence nine months, and only sentences of thirty-seven months or more reach the full twelve. And it is a maximum in every case.

The most useful thing you can do is documentary. If there is an argument that a prior conviction falls outside a § 550.55(b)(4) category — a negligent rather than reckless homicide, a conviction older than ten years before the sentencing date, a disposition that was not a conviction at all — the certified court records that show it are civilian documents you can obtain and counsel can put in front of the Bureau. That is a records problem with a records solution.

If you are counsel: a § 3621(e) reduction

The ten-year lookback in § 550.55(b)(4) is a date computation, and it is measured “within the ten years prior to the date of sentencing for their current commitment” — not ten years before the offense, and not ten years before the RDAP application. Where a prior conviction sits near that line, the certified judgment and the sentencing date are worth pulling before the DSCC review rather than after.

Lopez v. Davis is the governing frame and it should be cited precisely. The Court upheld a categorical firearm exclusion, but the regulation before it was 28 C.F.R. § 550.58(a)(1)(vi)(B) — the 1997 predecessor rule — not § 550.55. The Court held that “the regulation is a permissible exercise of the Bureau’s discretion under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)(2)(B),” that the Bureau “may consider aspects of the conduct of conviction, even though the conviction is a criterion of statutory eligibility,” and that the agency was not required to proceed case by case: “even if a statutory scheme requires individualized determinations, which this scheme does not, the decisionmaker has the authority to rely on rulemaking to resolve certain issues of general applicability unless Congress clearly expresses an intent to withhold that authority.” Lopez forecloses the frontal attack on categorical exclusion. It does not decide whether a particular conviction falls inside a particular category, which is where the live arguments are.

Exhaust before you litigate. Program-operation complaints run through 28 C.F.R. § 550.57, which directs inmates to “administrative remedy procedures in 28 CFR part 542,” and the deadlines are short: a BP-9 within 20 calendar days of the event under § 542.14, a BP-10 within 20 calendar days of the Warden’s signed response and a BP-11 within 30 calendar days of the Regional Director’s signed response under § 542.15. If no response arrives within the time allowed including extension, § 542.18 permits the absence of a response to be treated as a denial at that level.

What changed across the PS 5331.02 change notices

This is one of the few Program Statements in the Bureau’s inmate-facing set that was touched in 2026, and the currency is worth knowing about — most published summaries of § 3621(e) still describe the 2017 document.

CN-3, May 7, 2026. Signed by Director William K. Marshall III. Its stated summary of changes is narrow: it rescinds “5331.02, CN-2 Early Release Procedures Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) (9/27/2017),” and “A new reference to the Program Statement Categorization of Offenses and D.C. Code is marked with a highlight and inserted into the policy.” The inserted text makes explicit what the offense review looks at: “The DSCC legal staff will review current and prior offenses for both U.S. Code and D.C. Code felony offenders. For current U.S. Code offenses, DSCC legal staff will refer to the Program Statement Categorization of Offenses to determine whether an offense precludes early release under § 3621(e). For current D.C. Code offenses, DSCC legal staff will refer to D.C. Code § 23-1331(4).” Practically, that elevates the Categorization of Offenses manual from background reading to the named instrument of the exclusion decision.

CN-2, September 27, 2017, effective October 1, 2017. A single change to the monitoring section, directing the Unit Team to notify the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator by e-mail immediately when an eligible person’s status requires change — the examples given are “detainers removed/added, noncompliance with FRP.”

CN-1, April 25, 2016, with a printed rules effective date of May 26, 2016. This is the substantive one, and it fixed two errors in the 2009 text that still circulate. The 2009 body reproduced § 550.55(b)(4) as “Inmates who have a prior felony or misdemeanor conviction for:” — with no time limit at all — and § 550.55(b)(6) as “an attempt, conspiracy, or other offense which involved an underlying offense.” CN-1 replaced both with the current regulatory language: the prior conviction must be “within the ten years prior to the date of sentencing for their current commitment,” and (b)(6) reaches “an attempt, conspiracy, or solicitation to commit an underlying offense.” Those are not cosmetic. The ten-year window removes an entire class of ancient priors from the exclusion, and “solicitation to commit” is narrower than “other offense which involved.”

The base Program Statement, March 16, 2009 (issued as a corrected copy dated 2/20/2009), rescinded P5331.01 of September 29, 2003. Its own summary of changes records the shift that still shapes the process: offense reviews moved from regional and institution legal offices to DSCC legal staff; the Regional Psychology Treatment Program Coordinator lost provisional-approval authority; the sentence-length caps on the reduction were introduced; arson and kidnaping were added to the prior-conviction exclusions; and D.C. Code offenders sentenced under § 24-403.01 for offenses on or after August 5, 2000 became eligible for consideration.

A cautionary note on the current regulation. The published version of § 550.55 was amended at 81 FR 24490 (April 26, 2016) and the current text is effective December 29, 2016. Where the Program Statement body and the regulation differ, the regulation controls: it is the rule that binds the Bureau, while the Program Statement is the Bureau’s internal instruction for applying it.

Where people get stuck when the offense review says ineligible

“The offense review came back ineligible”

This is where most § 3621(e) hopes end, and the reasoning is usually not explained. The exclusion decision is made by DSCC attorneys from the Judgment and Commitment order and the Presentence Investigation Report, applying the Bureau’s Categorization of Offenses manual. Ask in writing for the completed Request for § 3621(e) Offense Review form and for the specific subsection of § 550.55(b) relied on. If the answer rests on a prior conviction, check the sentencing date against the ten-year window; if it rests on the current offense, check whether the categorization actually matches the count of conviction rather than conduct described in the presentence report. Then run it through informal resolution and the BP-9 through BP-11 sequence on the § 542 deadlines above. Where the dispute is really about how the judgment reads, that is a records and sentencing question and belongs in a consult.

A detainer appeared, and the date disappeared

A detainer that forecloses transfer to a Residential Reentry Center takes community treatment with it, and community treatment is a required RDAP component. The Program Statement’s own worked example is a deportable person who is “unqualified for the RDAP because he or she cannot participate in the transitional drug abuse treatment component because he or she is not eligible for RRC placement.” It also provides the route back: where an “ineligible” person’s circumstances change — “detainer dropped, court case resolved, etc.” — the Coordinator reviews the case for other exclusions and, if none exist, replaces the ineligible assignment and asks DSCC to change the date. Resolving the underlying detainer is the work; the SENTRY code follows it. See detainers and the Interstate Agreement on Detainers.

An incident report ended it

Removal from RDAP after a Discipline Hearing Officer finding of drug, alcohol or violence-related misconduct also removes the early-release eligibility, and disallowance of good conduct time by the DHO is separately listed as a trigger for the Transitional Drug Abuse Treatment Coordinator to request removal of the date. That makes the disciplinary case itself the fight — see the Inmate Discipline Program. It is also the one place where a win reverses the loss: the Program Statement provides for reinstatement where the report is later expunged or a not-guilty finding is entered, including the paperwork chain back to DSCC to reinstate the date.

The halfway house placement is too short

Because the Bureau treats 120 days as the floor for meaningful community treatment, a placement below that threshold can defeat the benefit even for someone who finished nine months of treatment cleanly. The companion program statement instructs that for a person “who would otherwise be eligible for early release, but who are approved for less than a 120-day RRC placement, the appropriate SENTRY assignment must be changed from ELIGIBLE to INELIGIBLE,” while also directing Wardens and Community Corrections Managers to seek the maximum placement possible. If a placement recommendation is coming in short, that is a halfway house problem to raise with the unit team before the referral packet goes out, not after.

Related BOP policy on § 3621(e) early release

Page	What it covers
RDAP and federal prison early release	How a § 3621(e) reduction fits a strategy to shorten a sentence already imposed
Psychology Treatment Programs (PS 5330.11)	What RDAP is, admission criteria, the 500 hours, the incentives
The Residential Drug Abuse Program	Daily life in an RDAP unit
Categorization of Offenses (PS 5162.06)	The manual DSCC legal staff apply to decide whether an offense precludes early release
Halfway house placement procedures (PS 7310.04)	Residential Reentry Center referral and the 120-day problem
Detainers and the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (PS 5800.15)	How a detainer blocks community placement
First Step Act time credits (PS 5410.01)	The separate FSA credit system, which runs alongside § 3621(e)
Inmate Discipline Program (PS 5270.09)	Incident reports, the DHO, and expungement
Administrative Remedy Program (PS 1330.18)	BP-8 through BP-11 and the § 542 deadlines

Frequently Asked Questions About RDAP Early Release

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