District of Columbia Sentence Computation Manual

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

Program Statement	P5880.33
Subject	District of Columbia Sentence Computation Manual
Current edition	07-09-2010
Change notices	None. This edition was a 2006-era reformatting that folded the prior edition’s Change Notices into the text
Supersedes	P5880.32, D.C. Code Offenders Sentence Calculations (1/23/2001)
Governing statutes	D.C. Code § 24-101 (Revitalization Act); §§ 24-221.01 to 24-221.06 (good time credits); §§ 24-403, 24-403.01, 24-403.01a, 24-403.02 (sentencing and good time); §§ 24-406, 24-408 (parole); 18 U.S.C. §§ 4161–4166 (repealed; pre-April 1987 D.C. sentences); 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)
Governing regulation	28 C.F.R. §§ 523.30–523.34 (D.C. educational good time); 28 C.F.R. §§ 2.70–2.90 (U.S. Parole Commission rules for D.C. Code offenders)
Related BP forms	BP-380 Good Time Record · BP-S384 Notice of Release of Inmate with Criminal Fine · D.C. Educational Good Time form (now BP-A0711)
Official PDF	https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/5880_033.pdf

Checked against the BOP policy set · 2026-09-07 · How we verify

Program Statement 5880.33 is the Bureau of Prisons’ manual for computing a District of Columbia Code sentence — the sentences of people convicted in D.C. Superior Court who are held in federal prisons because the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997 closed Lorton and moved D.C.’s felony population into the Bureau. Which good-time system applies to a D.C. sentence depends entirely on the date of the offense, and there are four different systems. If your issue is education credit specifically, that has its own Program Statement and its own page: educational good time for D.C. Code offenders. If your issue is a computation you believe is wrong, start at challenging a BOP sentence computation and federal early release.

One warning before anything else. This manual is dated 9 July 2010 and it uses the pre-2001 D.C. Code section numbers throughout. Every “§ 24-428,” “§ 24-429,” “§ 24-434,” “§ 24-206” and “§ 22-3202” in it was renumbered in the 2001 recodification. Worse, at least three of the underlying statutes changed after the manual was published and the manual does not reflect the change. The renumbering table and the “What changed” section below are the parts of this page you cannot get anywhere else.

Four systems, one dividing line: the offense date

D.C. Code sentence computation is not one system. It is four, layered by offense date, and the Bureau’s own manual is organized into chapters that follow those dates. Getting the era wrong makes every downstream number wrong.

Offense date	Governing scheme	Good time available	Parole?
Before 11 April 1987	Federal old-law rules borrowed wholesale	D.C. good conduct time (DCGCT) under former § 24-405 if served in the D.C. Jail or Workhouse; otherwise federal statutory good time under 18 U.S.C. § 4161 plus extra good time under § 4162	Yes
11 April 1987 – 21 June 1994	D.C. Good Time Credits Act of 1986	D.C. institutional good time (DCIGT) under former § 24-428 plus D.C. educational good time (DCEGT); extra good time under 18 U.S.C. § 4162 until 22 June 1994	Yes
22 June 1994 – 4 August 2000	Omnibus Criminal Justice Reform Amendment Act of 1994	No DCIGT — repealed. DCEGT only (and meritorious good time, for which no program was ever established)	Yes
On or after 5 August 2000	Sentencing Reform Amendment Act (“SRAA”)	Federal good conduct time only, under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) — no DCEGT, no meritorious good time	No. Definite term plus supervised release

Compiled from the chapter structure of Program Statement 5880.33, Chapters 11, 12, 13 and 13a (at pp. 37, 42, 47 and 49). This table is our summary of the manual’s organization; the verbatim statutory text follows below.

The manual states the last rule in the plainest terms it uses anywhere: an SRAA sentence is “not entitled to a reduction from the term of imprisonment or confinement for successfully completing a substance abuse program under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)(2)(B) nor a shock incarceration program under 18 U.S.C. § 4046,” and “SRAA sentences are not eligible to earn educational or meritorious good time” (PS 5880.33 at p. 49). The statute says the same thing: a person sentenced under D.C. Code § 24-403.01 “may receive good time credit toward service of the sentence only as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b).”

The rule itself — the D.C. institutional good time rate schedule

For offenses committed between 11 April 1987 and 21 June 1994, institutional good time is the largest single credit on the sentence. The Bureau reproduces the statute in full; this is that text, exactly as the manual prints it.

“(a) Every person who is convicted of a violation of a District of Columbia (“District”) criminal law by a court in the District of Columbia and whose conduct is in conformity with all applicable institutional rules is entitled to institutional good time credits in accordance with the provisions of this section. Application of good time credits shall commence on the 1st Day of the person’s commitment, as follows:

(1) Five days for each month, if the sentence is not less than 30 days and not more than 1 year.

(2) Six days for each month, if the sentence is more than 1 year and less than 3 years.

(3) Seven days for each month, if the sentence is not less than 3 years and less than 5 years.

(4) Eight days for each month, if the sentence is not less than 5 years and less than 10 years.

(5) Ten days for each month, if the sentence is 10 years or more.

(6) When 2 or more consecutive sentences are to be served, the aggregate of the several sentences shall be the basis upon which the good time credits shall be applied.

(b) Good time credits . . . shall be applied to the person’s minimum term of imprisonment to determine the date of eligibility for release on parole and to the person’s maximum term of imprisonment to determine the date when release on parole becomes mandatory.

(c) Good time credits applied to the minimum term of imprisonment shall be computed solely on the basis of the minimum term of imprisonment. Good time credits applied to the maximum term of imprisonment shall be computed solely on the basis of the maximum term of imprisonment.

(d) Institutional good time credits under this section shall be applied without regard to the person’s award of educational good time credits under § 24-429.”

Reproduced verbatim from Program Statement 5880.33 at pp. 42–43 (Chapter 12, Pages 1–2), quoting former D.C. Code § 24-428, repealed effective 22 June 1994. Bold added to the rate schedule for reading; the statutory text is unchanged.

Three things in that text do real work and are routinely missed:

• Subsection (b) applies the credit to the minimum term as well as the maximum. DCIGT is not just a release-date credit. It advances parole eligibility. That is the single biggest structural difference between the D.C. system and the federal old-law system, where good time never touches the parole date.
• Subsection (c) requires the minimum and maximum computations to be run separately, each “solely on the basis of” its own term. A ten-year minimum inside a thirty-year maximum earns at the ten-days-per-month rate on the minimum and at the ten-days rate on the maximum, computed as two independent calculations.
• Subsection (d) makes DCIGT and educational good time cumulative, not alternative. The manual works the point through: DCIGT comes off the minimum-term date first, then educational and meritorious credits come off the DCIGT date “to establish an even earlier parole eligibility date” (PS 5880.33 at p. 74).

The manual notes that the formula for computing DCIGT “is the same as for SGT and DCGCT as previously discussed” (PS 5880.33 at p. 43) — that is, months times rate, with partial months at days × rate ÷ 30 and fractions dropped. Those formulas live in the old-law sentence computation manual, which is where D.C. computations for pre-April-1987 offenses are worked from.

The predecessor rate schedule — D.C. good conduct time under former § 24-405

For offenses before 11 April 1987 served in the D.C. Jail or the Workhouse, the credit was D.C. good conduct time at rates that will look familiar:

“All persons sentenced to and imprisoned in the Jail or in the Workhouse of the District of Columbia, and confined there for a term of 1 month or longer who conduct themselves that no charge of misconduct shall be sustained against them shall have a deduction upon a sentence of not more than 1 year of 5 days for each month; upon a sentence of more than 1 year and less than 3 years, 6 days for each month; upon a sentence of not less than 3 years and less than 5 years, 7 days for each month; upon a sentence of 5 years and less than 10 years, 8 days for each month; and upon a sentence of 10 years or more, 10 days for each month, and shall be entitled to their discharge so much the earlier upon the certificate of the Superintendent of the Workhouse for those confined in the Workhouse, of their good conduct during their imprisonment. When a prisoner has 2 or more sentences the aggregate of his several sentences shall be the basis upon which his deduction shall be estimated.”

Reproduced verbatim from Program Statement 5880.33 at p. 37 (Chapter 11, Page 1), quoting former D.C. Code § 24-405, repealed 11 April 1987.

The manual is emphatic about the limit on that section: DCGCT “could be applied only to persons sentenced to and imprisoned in the Jail or in the Workhouse of the District of Columbia. It could not be applied to prisoners committed to the non-workhouse facilities at Lorton” (PS 5880.33 at p. 40). For everyone at Lorton’s non-workhouse facilities, and for D.C. Code offenders transferred to the Bureau, the Bureau applied 18 U.S.C. §§ 4161–4166 instead — federal statutory good time, at federal rates, on a D.C. sentence.

Parole eligibility, minimum terms, and the 85%/15% ceiling

A D.C. felony sentence for an offense before 5 August 2000 is an indeterminate sentence: a minimum term that sets parole eligibility and a maximum term that sets the outer limit. The court sets the minimum, and D.C. Code § 24-403(a) caps it at “a minimum period not exceeding one-third of the maximum sentence imposed,” with a fifteen-year ceiling on the minimum where the maximum is life. Because of that structure, the manual tells staff that “any sentence which includes a minimum and a maximum term is for a felony conviction. Sentences with no minimum term are for misdemeanors” (PS 5880.33 at p. 71).

Two statutes cap how far good time can move that parole eligibility date, and both are reproduced here verbatim because the arithmetic turns on their exact words.

Offenses on or after 22 June 1994 — the 85% floor and the 15% ceiling

“Under the provisions of § 24-208(b), A person convicted of a crime of violence as defined by § 22-3201, shall not be paroled prior to serving 85% of the minimum sentence imposed; provided, that any mandatory minimum sentence shall be served in its entirety.”

“Under the provisions of § 24-429.2, Educational and meritorious good time credits shall not reduce the minimum sentence of any inmate convicted of a crime of violence as defined by § 22-3201, by more than 15%.”

Reproduced verbatim from Program Statement 5880.33 at p. 76 (Chapter 16, Page 8). Former § 24-208(b) is now D.C. Code § 24-408(b); former § 24-429.2 is now D.C. Code § 24-221.01b, which currently reads “as defined by § 22-4501.”

Offenses on or after 11 April 1987 — the six offense exceptions

“Under the provisions of § 24-434, Exceptions, Institutional and educational good time credits shall not be applied to the minimum terms of persons sentenced under § 22-3202, § 33-501, § 33-541, § 22-2404(b), § 22-2903, or § 22-3204(b).”

Reproduced verbatim from Program Statement 5880.33 at p. 74 (Chapter 16, Page 6). Former § 24-434 is now D.C. Code § 24-221.06, which today reads: “Institutional and educational good time credits shall not be applied to the minimum terms of persons sentenced under § 22-4502, § 48-901.02, § 48-904.01, § 22-2104(b), § 22-2803, or § 22-4504(b).” Same six offenses, renumbered.

The manual then records an interpretive gloss that matters enormously in practice: “The language of § 24-434 appears to apply to the entire minimum term of all the sections mentioned without regard to the mandatory minimum portion of the sentences. The DCDC, however, has interpreted this section as applying only to the mandatory-minimum portion of the minimum term imposed” (PS 5880.33 at p. 75). That is the D.C. Department of Corrections’ reading, adopted by the Bureau — not the plain text of the statute. If the exception is applied to a whole minimum term rather than only its mandatory-minimum portion, the manual’s own words are the argument.

The general mandatory-minimum rule is stated at PS 5880.33 at p. 73: a minimum term equal to the mandatory minimum receives no good time credits; a minimum term that exceeds the mandatory minimum “may receive good time credits for the difference between the date the mandatory minimum term expires and the date the total minimum term expires,” and the final parole eligibility date “may never be reduced to a date that is earlier than the date that would be established based only on the mandatory minimum term.” That rule was changed by statute in 2021 for offenses committed before 5 August 2000 — see “What changed” below.

Educational good time — covered by a separate policy

D.C. educational good time (“DCEGT”) is authorized by D.C. Code § 24-221.01 at “no less than 3 days a month and not more than 5 days a month,” is applied to both the minimum and the maximum term, and — unlike institutional good time — was never repealed. Within that statutory range the Bureau’s own binding regulation fixes the figure at the top: 28 C.F.R. § 523.32 provides that “[y]ou can earn 5 days DCEGT for each month you were enrolled in a designated program,” subject to a ceiling set by program type. So the rate a computation should show is five days per month, not three, and the “3 to 5 days” range PS 5880.33 prints is the statutory floor-and-ceiling rather than the operative award. It survived the 1994 Omnibus Act and is the only good-time credit available for D.C. offenses committed between 22 June 1994 and 4 August 2000.

This manual gives it a short chapter and then refers staff out: “For full implementation instructions, see Program Statement Educational Good Time Sentence Credit for D.C. Code Offenders” (PS 5880.33 at p. 45). We do the same. The rate table, the maximum credit by program type, the withdrawal rules, and the form that triggers an award are all on our page for educational good time for D.C. Code offenders, which covers the current Program Statement 5885.01 (7 May 2026) and the 28 C.F.R. §§ 523.30–523.34 regulations that bind the Bureau.

The five rules from this manual worth carrying across, because they set the boundaries the education page works inside:

• A prisoner whose offense occurs on or after 5 August 2000 is not entitled to earn DCEGT (PS 5880.33 at p. 45).
• Prisoners already in DCEGT earning status on and after 5 August 2000 continue to earn it (p. 45).
• Prisoners sentenced on or after 5 August 2000 whose offenses occurred between 11 April 1987 and 5 August 2000 are entitled to earn DCEGT (p. 45) — sentencing date does not control.
• No DCEGT is applied to a minimum mandatory sentence, or to any minimum term for an offense listed in the exceptions section (p. 46).
• After transfer to the Bureau, “enrollment in a BOP approved program for any portion of a calendar month (one day or more) equals one full month’s worth (3 to 5 days) of EGT” (p. 45).

What the D.C. sentence computation manual means for you

If you are the person inside: everything turns on the offense date

Everything turns on the offense date on your judgment and commitment order, and on whether your sentence has a minimum term. Pull your sentence computation and check three things. First, does the credit shown match the era? A DCIGT figure on a 1996 offense is wrong — institutional good time was repealed for offenses on and after 22 June 1994. A 54-days-per-year federal good conduct time figure on a 1992 offense is wrong for the opposite reason. Second, are the minimum and maximum computed separately, as subsection (c) requires? Third, if you are within a crime-of-violence category, has an 85%/15% date been established, and is it being used as a floor rather than as the parole eligibility date itself?

The sentence monitoring computation sheet is the document that shows this. Request it through a BP-A0148 Inmate Request to Staff before you file anything, because a remedy filed without the printout is a remedy filed blind.

If you are the family: the two facts that decide everything

The two facts that determine everything are the offense date and whether the sentence was imposed by D.C. Superior Court or a U.S. District Court. Both courts can impose D.C. Code sentences, and the manual explains why: D.C. Code offenses committed on or after 1 February 1971 are prosecuted in Superior Court, but a D.C. Code count joined with a federal count in the same indictment goes to U.S. District Court, and a D.C. Code case can be transferred to any district under Superior Court Criminal Rule 20 (PS 5880.33 at pp. 15–16). So a “federal” judgment can carry a D.C. Code sentence, and a D.C. Code sentence can carry federal supervised release.

Release decisions for D.C. Code offenders with parolable sentences are made by the U.S. Parole Commission, not by a judge and not by the Bureau. That authority transferred from the D.C. Board of Parole under the Revitalization Act, now codified at D.C. Code § 24-131 (the manual cites it as § 24-1231), and the Commission’s rules for D.C. Code offenders sit at 28 C.F.R. §§ 2.70–2.90 (PS 5880.33 at pp. 81–82). No one at the prison can grant or deny parole. Supervision after release, if the sentence came from Superior Court, is by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency — § 24-133, which the manual cites as § 24-1233 — not the U.S. Probation Office.

If you are counsel: D.C. Code sentence computation

Four audit points. One: verify which era’s rules are being applied by checking the offense date against the four-row table above, then check whether the Bureau has aggregated sentences it may not aggregate. The manual is explicit that Sentencing Reform Act sentences cannot be aggregated with D.C. Code sentences “regardless of when the D.C. Code offense occurred” (PS 5880.33 at p. 10), and that pre-11-April-1987 § 4161 sentences cannot be aggregated with D.C. sentences for offenses on or after that date (p. 90).

Two: on a pre-5-August-2000 felony, check whether D.C. Code § 24-403.01a — enacted in 2021 and not reflected anywhere in this manual — has been applied. It is the most consequential change to D.C. sentence computation since the manual was written.

Three: on any parole revocation, check street-time credit against the current D.C. Code § 24-406(c), not against the manual’s Chapter 17. The manual describes a forfeiture rule that the D.C. Council changed in 2009.

Four: the manual’s Appendix is a fifty-page offense-and-penalty table keyed to amendment dates, and it uses pre-2001 numbering. It is useful for reconstructing what the penalty provision looked like on the offense date — which is what governs — but every citation in it needs to be translated before it goes into a filing.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: On a D.C. Code file we build a three-column worksheet before touching the computation: offense date, the statute as it read on that date, and the current section number for the same provision. It sounds clerical. It is the whole case. More D.C. computation disputes turn on someone reading a 2010 manual’s “§ 24-434” as though it were a live citation than turn on arithmetic, and a filing that cites a repealed section number by its 1981 designation invites a response that never reaches the merits.

What changed in the D.C. computation manual’s history

The manual’s own history

The published PDF opens with an unusual note. In 2006 the Office of National Policy Management began reformatting policies that had accumulated unstable Change Notice files, and this manual was one of them: “The reformatted policies are being reissued with a new number and date, but no text changes have been made; the Change Notices are simply incorporated at the correct place in the text” (PS 5880.33 at p. 1, emphasis added). The prior edition — P5880.32, D.C. Code Offenders Sentence Calculations (1/23/2001) — was rescinded and moved to archived policy, available to the public only through FOIA (PS 5880.33 at p. 2).

That note is the key to reading this document honestly. The 7 July 2010 date is a reformatting date, not a substantive revision date. The substance is 2001-vintage, with earlier Change Notices folded in. That matters because a great deal of D.C. law changed between 2001 and today, and none of it is in here.

What changed in the law after the manual, and is not in the manual

This is the section no other page carries, and the reason to read this one.

1. Every section number in the manual was renumbered in the 2001 recodification. The manual uses 1981 Edition numbering throughout. Here is the translation for the provisions it relies on most, each verified against the current D.C. Code:

Section as printed in PS 5880.33	Current D.C. Code section	Subject
§ 24-405	(repealed 11 Apr. 1987 — no successor)	D.C. good conduct deduction (DCGCT)
§ 24-428	(repealed 22 June 1994 — no successor)	Institutional good time (DCIGT)
§ 24-429	§ 24-221.01	Educational good time
§ 24-429.1	§ 24-221.01a	Meritorious good time credit
§ 24-429.2	§ 24-221.01b	Limitations (the 15% rule)
§ 24-430	§ 24-221.02	Administration of good time credits
§ 24-431	§ 24-221.03	Jail time; parole
§ 24-432	§ 24-221.04	Forfeiture
§ 24-434	§ 24-221.06	Exceptions (the six offenses)
§ 24-203	§ 24-403	Indeterminate, life and minimum sentences
§ 24-203.1	§ 24-403.01	Sentencing and good time, felonies on/after 5 Aug. 2000
§ 24-203.2	§ 24-403.02	Sentencing and good time, misdemeanors on/after 5 Aug. 2000
§ 24-206	§ 24-406	Hearing after arrest; credit for time on parole
§ 24-208	§ 24-408	Prisoners who may be paroled (the 85% rule)
§ 22-3201	§ 22-4501	Definition of “crime of violence”
§ 22-3202	§ 22-4502	Additional penalty for committing crime when armed
§ 22-3204(b)	§ 22-4504(b)	Carrying concealed weapons; weapons during crime of violence
§ 22-2404(b)	§ 22-2104(b)	Penalty for murder in the first and second degrees
§ 22-2903	§ 22-2803	Carjacking
§ 33-501	§ 48-901.02	Controlled substances — definitions
§ 33-541	§ 48-904.01	Controlled substances — prohibited acts

2. Street-time credit on parole revocation was reversed in 2009 — and the manual still states the old rule. Chapter 17 of this manual describes United States Parole Commission v. Noble, 711 A.2d 85 (D.C. 1998), and instructs that “a D.C. Code parole violator must serve the balance of the sentence, remaining to be served at the time of release on parole, upon revocation of parole” (PS 5880.33 at p. 79). The D.C. Council then rewrote the governing section. Effective 20 May 2009, D.C. Law 17-389 replaced the text of former § 24-206 — the provision the manual quotes for the proposition that “The time a prisoner was on parole shall not be taken into account to diminish the time for which he was sentenced” — with the opposite default. D.C. Code § 24-406(c) now provides that “Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of this subsection, a parolee shall receive credit toward completion of the sentence for all time served on parole,” with mandatory forfeiture where the parolee is convicted of a new crime punishable by more than a year, and discretionary forfeiture in the narrower situations the section describes. Subsection (d) limits the new rule to “any period of parole that is being served on or after the May 20, 2009,” and excludes parole revoked before that date. The manual predates none of this — it was published fourteen months after the amendment took effect and does not mention it.

3. Educational good time was broadened in 2009 — and the manual quotes the pre-amendment text. PS 5880.33 at p. 44 quotes former § 24-429 as requiring a person to demonstrate self-improvement “by successfully completing an academic or vocational program,” and adds “These credits shall not be awarded until completion of the academic or vocational program.” Effective 10 December 2009, the section was amended; D.C. Code § 24-221.01(a) now reads “by successfully participating in an academic or vocational program,” and the completion sentence is gone. The Bureau’s current education policy implements the amended version — see educational good time for D.C. Code offenders. This manual does not.

4. A retroactive good time credit for pre-2000 felonies was created in 2021, and post-dates the manual entirely. D.C. Code § 24-403.01a, added by D.C. Law 23-274 § 1203(a) effective 27 April 2021, provides that “Notwithstanding any other provision of law,” a defendant serving a term for an offense committed between 22 June 1994 and 4 August 2000 “shall be retroactively awarded good time credit toward the service of the defendant’s sentence of up to 54 days, or more if consistent with 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b), for each year of the defendant’s sentence imposed by the court,” subject to a Bureau determination that the conditions of § 3624(b) were met. That award “shall apply to the minimum and maximum term of incarceration, including the mandatory minimum; except, that in the event of a maximum term of life, only the minimum term shall receive good time.” A parallel subsection covers offenses committed before 22 June 1994, with the award applying “to any mandatory minimum term of incarceration” and not otherwise modifying how credit is awarded. This directly overrides the manual’s Chapter 16 rule that a mandatory minimum receives no good time. Nothing in PS 5880.33 reflects it.

5. A separate misdemeanor credit scheme was added in 2021. D.C. Code § 24-221.01c, also effective 27 April 2021, provides good time credits of up to 3 credits per calendar month for good behavior for a person sentenced for a misdemeanor, plus credits for rehabilitation programs, work details and special projects. The manual’s treatment of misdemeanors (PS 5880.33 at p. 52) predates it.

6. The office that does the work has moved. The manual assigns computation duties throughout to “ISM staff” — Inmate Systems Management, at the institution. Sentence computation for the Bureau is now centralized at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas. The current D.C. education policy makes the substitution explicit; this one does not.

The Bureau’s mass reissue of 23 Program Statements effective 22 June 2026 did not touch 5880.33, and it was not among the 24 statements retired in that reissue. It remains the Bureau’s operative D.C. computation manual, as written, dated 9 July 2010.

Where people get stuck when the wrong era’s rules are applied

The wrong era’s good-time rules are applied. The four schemes look alike on paper and produce very different numbers. The commonest error we see is DCIGT credited on an offense committed on or after 22 June 1994, when the Omnibus Act repealed it, or DCEGT credited on an offense on or after 5 August 2000, when the SRAA foreclosed it. Both are visible on the computation sheet if you know what to look for. Route: request the sentence computation data and the good time record through a cop-out, then BP-8 informal resolution, then a BP-9 to the Warden within 20 calendar days of the event, then a BP-10 to the Regional Director within 20 calendar days of the Warden’s signature and a BP-11 to General Counsel within 30 calendar days of the Regional Director’s signature.

The mandatory-minimum rule is applied without checking the 2021 statute. This is the highest-value item on the page. The manual’s Chapter 16 rule — no good time on a mandatory minimum, and the parole eligibility date can never be reduced below the mandatory minimum date — was the law when the manual was written. For felony offenses committed before 5 August 2000, D.C. Code § 24-403.01a now says good time “shall apply to the minimum and maximum term of incarceration, including the mandatory minimum.” A computation built on the manual alone will not reflect it. Route: this is a legal question, not a records question, and it should go to counsel before it goes into a remedy. Whether and how the Bureau has implemented § 24-403.01a in a given case is a matter of the record, not of policy.

Street time is forfeited on revocation under a rule the Council changed. If a parole revocation term was computed by stripping all street time under the Noble rule, and the parole period at issue was being served on or after 20 May 2009, the governing statute is § 24-406(c) and its default is the other way. Route: counsel, and if the issue survives the administrative remedy process, a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the district of confinement — the vehicle for challenging how a sentence is being executed.

A minimum-term reduction application is filed too early. D.C. Code § 24-401c — the manual calls it § 24-201c — as implemented by the Parole Commission at 28 C.F.R. § 2.76, lets a prisoner ask the Commission to apply to the sentencing court to reduce the minimum term. The manual sets out the gate: “The Parole Commission will accept a prisoner’s application only after the service of three or more years have been served on the minimum term. If a prisoner’s request is denied, a two year waiting period is required before the Parole Commission will again consider a request” (PS 5880.33 at p. 99). A prisoner serving a sentence for a crime with a minimum prescribed under former § 24-203(b) is excluded. Route: a records check on time served against the minimum term, then the application to the Commission — not a BP-9, because the Bureau does not decide it.

Related BOP policy on D.C. Code sentences

• Educational Good Time for D.C. Code Offenders (PS 5885.01) — the current, 2026-edition policy on DCEGT, including the maximum-credit table by program type. The manual on this page refers staff there and so do we.
• Sentence Computation Manual — Old Law (PS 5880.30) — where the pre-April-1987 D.C. computations are actually worked, because they borrow 18 U.S.C. §§ 4161–4166 wholesale.
• Sentence Computation Manual — CCCA (PS 5880.28) — the federal post-1987 manual, which governs a D.C. Code offender’s federal counts.
• Good Conduct Time and good conduct time for families — the 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) system that is the only good time available on a post-5-August-2000 D.C. felony.
• Prior Custody Credit — jail credit on a D.C. sentence runs under D.C. Code § 24-221.03, not 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b); the manual makes that point at p. 22.
• Inmate Discipline Program — forfeiture, withholding and restoration of D.C. good time credits run through Bureau discipline hearings once a person is in federal custody.
• Administrative Remedy Program — the BP-8 through BP-11 route for a computation dispute.
• BOP Grand Prairie / DSCC — the office that now computes these sentences.
• Sentence Monitoring Computation Sheet and BP-A0148 Inmate Request to Staff — the two documents every computation dispute starts with.
• Challenging a BOP Sentence Computation and federal early release — what to do once you have found the error.
• What families should know about federal prison — orientation for a first call.

Frequently Asked Questions About D.C. Code Sentence Computation

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