| Program Statement | 1040.04 |
|---|---|
| Subject | Non-Discrimination Toward Inmates |
| Current edition | January 29, 1999 |
| Rules effective date | October 16, 1998 (printed on the cover of the Program Statement) |
| Change notices | Change Notice 1040.04, dated 1/29/99, issued with the Program Statement |
| Supersedes | PS 1040.03, Non-Discrimination Towards Inmates (4/18/94) — listed as “Directive Rescinded” |
| Governing regulation | 28 C.F.R. § 551.90 (part 551, subpart I) |
| Governing statute | None cited in the Program Statement |
| Related BP forms | None named in the Program Statement |
| Official PDF | https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/1040_004.pdf |
Checked against the BOP policy set · 2026-09-07 · How we verify
Program Statement 1040.04 is the Bureau of Prisons’ instruction to its own staff on one binding regulation — 28 C.F.R. § 551.90 — which forbids Bureau staff from discriminating against incarcerated people on six named grounds, and says that prohibition reaches administrative decisions and access to work, housing and programs. It is three pages long, the operative rule is a single sentence, and it has not been revised since January 1999; the broader question of what a person in federal prison can actually insist on is covered on our companion page, what rights prisoners have.
That short length is the first thing to understand about this policy. It is not a civil-rights code, it does not create a complaint process of its own, and it does not define any of its six terms. Almost everything a family thinks of as a “discrimination” problem inside a federal prison — a disability accommodation, a religious diet, a housing assignment involving gender, a sexual-abuse allegation — is governed by a different, far more detailed policy, and this page points you to each of them rather than absorbing them.
The rule itself: non-discrimination
The whole operative rule is the bracketed paragraph 1 of the Program Statement. Program Statement 1040.04 prints its own typographic key on the same page — “[Bracketed Bold – Rules] / Regular Type – Implementing Information” — so the bracketed text is the regulation itself and everything outside the brackets is the Bureau’s instruction to staff.
“1. [POLICY § 551.90. Bureau staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief. This includes the making of administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing and programs.]”
Reproduced from Program Statement 1040.04 at p. 2.
We checked that bracketed text against the regulation independently. It matches 28 C.F.R. § 551.90 word for word, and the eCFR records the section’s source as 63 FR 55774, October 16, 1998 — the same “Rules Effective Date: 10/16/98” printed on the face of the Program Statement.
The six protected grounds, and what the rule reaches
There are exactly six grounds and they are closed — the sentence does not say “including” or “such as.” These are the words the regulation uses, unchanged:
| Protected ground (verbatim) | Notes |
|---|---|
| race | Not defined in the regulation or the Program Statement |
| religion | Not defined; religious exercise is governed separately by the Bureau’s religious-programming policy |
| national origin | Not defined |
| sex | Not defined; the regulation was published in 1998 |
| disability | Not defined; disability accommodation is governed separately |
| political belief | Not defined |
And the rule states what the prohibition covers:
| Covered by the rule (verbatim) |
|---|
| “the making of administrative decisions” |
| “providing access to work” |
| “providing access to … housing” |
| “providing access to … programs” |
Both tables reproduce the terms of 28 C.F.R. § 551.90, as printed at PS 1040.04 p. 2.
The two staff instructions attached to it
Outside the brackets, the Program Statement adds two things, and only two. The first is the Bureau’s stated program objective:
“2. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE. The expected result of this program is: Assignments in housing, work and programs will be available to inmates on an equal opportunity basis.”
The second is the only procedure in the document — a direction to each Warden:
“4. PROCEDURE. Each Warden shall review and, as necessary, establish local procedures to ensure that inmates are provided essential equality of opportunity in being considered for various program options, work assignments, and decisions concerning classification status.”
Reproduced from PS 1040.04 at pp. 2–3.
Read those two paragraphs closely, because they explain a great deal of what happens in practice. The Program Statement pushes implementation down to the institution: the Warden is told to establish local procedures. It sets no national standard for what those procedures look like, names no reviewing official, sets no deadline, and creates no form. That is why there is no such thing as a “1040.04 complaint” — the only route the Bureau gives you is its general Administrative Remedy Program.
On this page
What the non-discrimination rule means for you
If you are the person inside: the six protected grounds
The rule binds staff conduct across six grounds, but it gives you no procedure of its own. If you believe a work assignment, a housing assignment, a program placement, or a classification decision turned on race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief, the route is the ordinary one: an informal try with the staff member or your unit team first, then the written Inmate Request to Staff — the “cop-out” — then the formal chain of BP-8 informal resolution, BP-9 to the Warden, BP-10 to the Regional Director, and BP-11 to the Office of National Inmate Appeals. Our step-by-step walkthrough of the first formal filing is at how to file a BP-9.
Two practical points. First, the regulation’s language is about discrimination, which in this context means being treated differently because of one of the six listed characteristics — so a remedy that describes only a bad outcome, without saying what the comparison is and what made the difference, is answering a question the rule does not ask. Second, because Program Statement 1040.04 is a policy document rather than a statute, and because the regulation itself is one sentence with no procedure, the specific policy that actually governs your issue is usually the better citation. A religious-diet denial is a religious-programming question. A missed accommodation is a disability question. Cite the rule that has the detail in it.
If you are the family: what to do with a discrimination report
If someone you love tells you they are being treated differently inside, the most useful thing you can do is help them write it down precisely and early, while the dates and the names are fresh. Federal administrative remedies run on short clocks and on a written record, and the record is built from what the incarcerated person submits — not from what a family member says on the phone.
It also helps to know what this policy is not. It is not a hotline, there is no outside office that takes 1040.04 complaints from families, and the Bureau does not accept a family member as the filer of an administrative remedy on an incarcerated person’s behalf in the ordinary course. What a family can do is make sure the paperwork actually gets filed, keep copies of every response, and get the underlying policy — disability, religion, sexual-abuse prevention — in front of counsel if the answer is unsatisfactory. Our orientation page for relatives is what families should know about federal prison.
If you are counsel: discrimination complaints
Three things are worth knowing before you build anything on this Program Statement. It is agency policy, not law: the regulation at § 551.90 is what binds the Bureau, and PS 1040.04 is the Bureau’s instruction for applying it. The regulation is a single declarative sentence with no enforcement mechanism, no definitions, and no exhaustion provision of its own. And the Program Statement’s only procedural content delegates to local institution practice, which means the relevant document in a given case is often an Institution Supplement rather than the national policy.
We looked for a decision squarely resolving whether § 551.90 supports a standalone claim by a federal prisoner and did not find one we were prepared to cite, so we do not state a position on it here. What can be said from the text alone: the regulation speaks to Bureau staff, it names six grounds, and it is not limited to formally adjudicated decisions — it reaches “the making of administrative decisions,” which is broad language for a one-sentence rule. Where the conduct also implicates a constitutional or statutory right, the constitutional or statutory theory is the one that carries weight, and the regulation is context.
What has not changed in twenty-seven years
Nothing, for more than twenty-seven years — and that is the most important fact on this page.
Program Statement 1040.04 is dated January 29, 1999. Its Change Notice, filed in front of the Program Statement and issued the same day, states its own purpose and scope: “To update the Program Statement pertaining to Non-Discrimination Toward Inmates,” and summarizes the change as “In addition to restating the policy in clearer language, Program Objectives have been added and ACA Standards have been updated.” It rescinded PS 1040.03, Non-Discrimination Towards Inmates (4/18/94). Those two sentences are the entire revision history the document carries.
The Bureau has since reissued policy in bulk — twenty-three Program Statements took effect on 22 June 2026, and dozens more were reissued between February and May 2026. PS 1040.04 was not among them. It remains in force in its 1999 form.
That matters because the legal landscape it sits in did not stand still. The regulation the Program Statement implements was published in October 1998. Since then Congress has enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act (2003) and the Bureau has built out a detailed sexual-abuse prevention regime around it; the Bureau has issued dedicated policy on the management of gender dysphoria; and disability accommodation and religious exercise inside federal prisons are each governed today by their own Program Statements with their own procedures. None of that is reflected in these three pages, because none of it existed when they were written. The one-sentence rule at § 551.90 is still good — the eCFR carries it as current — but a reader who stops here has read the shortest and oldest document in the stack.
Where people get stuck filing under the wrong policy
Filing under 1040.04 when a more specific policy governs. This is the most common and the most costly error. A remedy that says “this violated PS 1040.04” and nothing more invites a one-paragraph denial, because the Program Statement contains almost no standard to measure the decision against. If the issue is a disability accommodation, cite the Bureau’s policy on incarcerated people with disabilities. If it is a religious diet, service, or article, cite religious beliefs and practices. If it involves the management of gender dysphoria, including housing and search decisions, cite gender dysphoria management. If it involves sexual abuse or sexual harassment, cite PREA and sexual-abuse prevention, which has reporting channels this policy does not. Route: identify the governing policy first, then file the remedy citing that policy and § 551.90 together.
Describing an outcome instead of a comparison. The rule prohibits treating someone differently on six named grounds. A filing that establishes only that something bad happened — a job lost, a program denied, a cell moved — has not engaged the rule. What moves it is the comparison: who else was situated the same way, how were they treated, and what makes the difference attributable to one of the six grounds. Route: put the comparison in the BP-9 itself. A fact raised for the first time at BP-10 or BP-11 has a much harder path.
Asking the wrong office. There is no national non-discrimination office at the Bureau that takes inmate complaints. Paragraph 4 hands the job to each Warden, who is told to establish local procedures. Route: start with a written Inmate Request to Staff to the department head who made the decision, because it creates a dated record and often produces the institution’s actual reasoning in writing — which is exactly what a later remedy needs.
Treating a Program Statement as if it were a statute. Program Statements are the Bureau’s instructions to its own staff. They can be reissued, superseded, or rescinded without any court saying a word, and this one has sat unchanged since 1999. The regulation at § 551.90 is the part that binds. Route: where a filing turns on discrimination, build it on the regulation and, where the facts support it, on the constitutional or statutory right — and treat the Program Statement as evidence of what the Bureau told its own staff to do.
Related BOP policy on discrimination complaints
The four policies below cover most of what people mean when they say “discrimination” in a federal prison, and each one has procedure that PS 1040.04 does not:
- Inmates with disabilities — accommodation requests, programming access, and the assessment process
- Gender dysphoria management — how the Bureau handles housing, search and medical decisions
- Religious beliefs and practices — diets, services, religious articles, and the request process
- PREA and sexual-abuse prevention — reporting channels that exist independently of the administrative remedy system
On the procedural side: the Administrative Remedy Program is the route for nearly every complaint of this kind, the Inmate Request to Staff is the document that starts it, and prison grievances explains the sequence in plain terms. Because paragraph 1 reaches housing and program access, the security designation and custody classification policy and inmate housing are often the documents that actually explain how a contested decision was made.
The companion page to this one is what rights prisoners have. Where a Bureau decision has gone against you and the administrative route has run out, our federal prison consulting services describe how the firm works these matters; legal representation is provided by Elizabeth Franklin-Best.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Non-Discrimination Policy
What does BOP Program Statement 1040.04 actually say?
It reproduces one regulation — 28 C.F.R. § 551.90 — which states that Bureau staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief, and that this includes making administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing and programs. Beyond that it adds a one-sentence program objective and a direction that each Warden establish local procedures to ensure essential equality of opportunity in program options, work assignments, and classification decisions.
What categories are protected under 28 C.F.R. § 551.90?
Six: race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and political belief. The list is closed — the regulation does not say “including” or “such as,” and it does not define any of the six terms. Age, sexual orientation and gender identity are not separately named in the text of § 551.90; issues involving gender dysphoria are addressed by a separate Bureau Program Statement.
Is a BOP Program Statement the same thing as law?
No. A Program Statement is the Bureau’s internal instruction to its own staff on how to carry out policy. The regulation — here, 28 C.F.R. § 551.90 — is the part that binds the agency, and it is published in the Code of Federal Regulations after notice and comment. The Bureau can revise or rescind a Program Statement on its own; it cannot change a regulation the same way.
How do I file a discrimination complaint in federal prison?
There is no dedicated 1040.04 complaint form or office. The route is the Bureau’s general Administrative Remedy Program: an informal attempt with staff, then a written Inmate Request to Staff (“cop-out”), then BP-8 informal resolution, BP-9 to the Warden, BP-10 to the Regional Director, and BP-11 to the Office of National Inmate Appeals. Where the conduct involves sexual abuse or sexual harassment, the Bureau’s PREA policy provides reporting channels that do not depend on the administrative remedy system.
Has PS 1040.04 been updated recently?
No. It is dated January 29, 1999 and remains in force in that form. It was not part of the Bureau’s reissue of twenty-three Program Statements effective 22 June 2026, nor of the further reissues between February and May 2026. The regulation it implements, 28 C.F.R. § 551.90, was published at 63 FR 55774 on October 16, 1998 and is carried as current in the eCFR.
What Program Statement did 1040.04 replace?
PS 1040.03, Non-Discrimination Towards Inmates, dated April 18, 1994. The 1999 edition lists it under “Directives Affected — Directive Rescinded.” The accompanying Change Notice describes the revision as restating the policy in clearer language, adding Program Objectives, and updating the referenced American Correctional Association standards.
Does 1040.04 cover how a prison job or program assignment is made?
Yes, in the sense that the regulation names work, housing and programs specifically, and the Program Statement’s procedure paragraph directs each Warden to ensure essential equality of opportunity in program options, work assignments, and classification decisions. It does not set out how those assignments are made — that detail lives in the Bureau’s designation and classification policy and in local institution supplements, which is usually where a contested assignment decision has to be examined.
Program Statement 1040.04 — full text
What follows is the Bureau’s own text, reproduced in full from its published PDF. Nothing is shortened or paraphrased. The official version is posted by the Bureau here: PS 1040.04 (PDF).
Change Notice U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons DIRECTIVE AFFECTED: 1040.04 CHANGE NOTICE NUMBER: 1040.04 DATE: 1/29/99 1. PURPOSE AND SCOPE. To update the Program Statement pertaining to Non-Discrimination Toward Inmates. 2. SUMMARY OF CHANGES. In addition to restating the policy in clearer language, Program Objectives have been added and ACA Standards have been updated. 3. ACTION. File this Change Notice in front of the Program Statement on Non-Discrimination Towards Inmates. /s/ Kathleen Hawk Sawyer Director
Program Statement U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons OPI: OGC NUMBER: 1040.04 DATE: 1/29/99 SUBJECT: Non-Discrimination Toward Inmates Rules Effective Date: 10/16/98 1. [POLICY § 551.90. Bureau staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief. This includes the making of administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing and programs.] 2. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE. The expected result of this program is: Assignments in housing, work and programs will be available to inmates on an equal opportunity basis.
3. DIRECTIVES AFFECTED
a. Directive Rescinded
PS 1040.03 Non-Discrimination Towards Inmates (4/18/94)
b. Regulations Referenced. The rule cited in this Program
Statement is contained in 28 CFR § 551.90.
3. STANDARDS REFERENCED
a. American Correctional Association 3 Edition Standards forrd
Adult Correctional Institutions: 3-4265, 3-4266.
b. American Correctional Association 3rd Edition Standards for
Adult Detention Facilities: 3-ALDF-3E-04, 3E-05, 3E-06. [Bracketed Bold – Rules] Regular Type – Implementing Information
PS 1040.04
1/29/99 Page 2
c. American Correctional Association 3 Edition for Adultrd
Correctional Boot Camp Programs: 1-ABC-3D-04.
d. Standards for Administration of Correctional Agencies 2nd
Edition: 2-CO-3C-01. 4. PROCEDURE. Each Warden shall review and, as necessary, establish local procedures to ensure that inmates are provided essential equality of opportunity in being considered for various program options, work assignments, and decisions concerning classification status. /s/ Kathleen Hawk Sawyer Director
Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026