Victim and Witness Notification Program

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

Program Statement	1490.06, with Change Notice CN-1
Subject	Victim and Witness Notification Program
Base edition	May 23, 2002
Change notices	CN-1, October 20, 2016 — removes the requirement to send any notification by certified mail, return receipt requested
Supersedes	PS 1490.05, Victim and Witness Notification (6/21/00) — listed as “Directive Rescinded”
Governing regulation	28 C.F.R. part 551, subpart M — §§ 551.150, 551.151, 551.152, 551.153
Governing statutes	18 U.S.C. § 3771 (Crime Victims’ Rights Act); 34 U.S.C. § 20141 (services to victims, formerly 42 U.S.C. § 10607); Victim and Witness Protection Act of 1982, Pub. L. 97-291
Related BP forms	BP-323, Victim and Witness Notice — not published by BOP; Attachment B, Victim Notification Record; Attachment H, Escape/Immediate Release/Call Cancellation
Official PDF	https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/1490_006_cn1.pdf

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

Program Statement 1490.06 is the Bureau of Prisons’ instruction to staff on the Victim and Witness Notification Program: how a victim or witness who has asked to be told about a federal prisoner’s release gets that information, which events trigger a notice, and on what clock. It is a page that is read from two sides — by someone who is waiting to be told, and by the family of someone inside who has just learned that a “VWP assignment” exists — so it is written for both, and it tells neither of you whether you personally are or are not on the list; the wider family orientation is at what families should know about federal prison.

Two structural points before the detail. The request does not start with the Bureau. A victim or witness who wants to be notified must ask the United States Attorney in the district where the prosecution occurred; the Bureau refers requests it receives directly back to that office for approval. And the Bureau does not tell the incarcerated person anything about it. The policy is explicit that participation must not be disclosed to the inmate, and the record of contacts “may not be disclosed to the inmate.”

The rule itself: victim and witness notification

The heart of this Program Statement is section 13.c, “Types of Notifications and Time Frames” — the enumerated list of events that trigger a notice and the clock attached to each. This is what the whole document exists to set out, and it is reproduced here with the Bureau’s own time-frame language.

The notification events and their time frames

Event (as the Program Statement labels it)	What the policy directs staff to do	Time frame (verbatim)	Pin-cite
(1) Initial Notification (initial designation)	VNS creates a pending notification once sentence computation is complete; unit staff complete the notification to the victim	“within 30 calendar days of the date the notification was posted on VNS”	at p. 10
(1) Initial notification entered by BOP (Central Office or institution VWC enters the victim)	Unit staff complete a letter and mail it with the DOJ Victim Notification System Pamphlet; the “Contact Preferences” option may not be used	“within 30 calendar days of the date the notification was posted on VNS”	at p. 10
(2) Parole Hearings	VNS creates the pending notification 60 calendar days ahead of the anticipated hearing; unit staff mail the letter to the victim	created “60 calendar days in advance”; letter mailed “30 calendar days in advance of the parole hearing”	at p. 10
(2) Record review hearings	Not created automatically; unit staff create the pending notification manually using the BP-323 within VNS	“will ordinarily occur nine months prior to the Presumptive Parole date”	at p. 11
(3) Escapes	Unit staff must notify each victim by telephone, giving the date and time of the escape	“as soon as possible after the escape is discovered and confirmed (normally the same day)”	at p. 11
(3) Escapes — no telephone contact possible	Unit staff complete the notification process through VNS	“by the next work day”	at p. 11, as amended by CN-1
(3) Escapes — telephone contact made	Unit staff complete the VNS notification process using the notification preference	“within seven calendar days”	at p. 11, as amended by CN-1
(3) Apprehension after escape	The CCM or Unit Manager ensures a BP-323 is mailed, showing the apprehension date and current location or designation if known	“as soon as possible, but no later than 30 calendar days after receiving notification of apprehension”	at p. 12
(4) Furloughs / Unescorted Transfers	Not created automatically; unit staff create the notification manually. An unescorted-transfer BP-323 gives the institution’s name, address and transfer date; a furlough BP-323 gives only the city and state and the dates	No fixed interval stated; telephone contact if advance written notice is not possible	at p. 12
(5) Inmate Death	VNS notifies unit staff within 24 hours of SENTRY being updated; unit staff forward a BP-323 to the victim	VNS alert “within 24 hours”; BP-323 “within 30 calendar days”	at p. 12
(6) Transfer to a Community Corrections Center	VNS forwards automatically once a CCC acceptance date is entered; the BP-323 “is considered final notification” and goes by regular mail. Telephone contact where the letter will not arrive before the transfer	No fixed interval stated	at pp. 12–13
(7) Release to the Street	VNS creates the final release notification, then unit staff forward a completed BP-323 by regular mail	notification created “within 60 calendar days of the inmate’s projected release date”; BP-323 forwarded “[w]ithin 30 calendar days of receipt of this notification”	at p. 13
(7) Unexpected or immediate release	“Telephonic contact must be made when the inmate’s release is unexpected and/or immediate (i.e., court-ordered release, etc.)”; the BP-323 follows by regular mail	“by the next work day”	at p. 13
(7) Release to a detaining authority	A completed BP-323 is also forwarded for people releasing to immigration, other state or local detaining authorities, or treaty transfer to a foreign country	Regular mail	at p. 13
(8) Compassionate Release	Not created automatically. During the institution’s review of the request, “unit staff must notify the victims and solicit comments to be incorporated into the Wardens referral memorandum”	No fixed interval stated	at p. 13
(9) Writs	No notification required for a temporary release on writ or an escorted trip. If the person escapes or dies while out on a federal writ, the holding institution’s unit staff make the notifications	Per the escape and death rules above	at p. 14
Re-commitment — violation of supervision	Staff must notify each victim of the return to federal custody where the violation is associated with the original sentence; BP-323 mailed	“within 30 calendar days from the date VNS creates a pending notification”	at p. 14

Reproduced from Program Statement 1490.06 (CN-1). Every interval above was re-checked against the layout-preserved text of the original PDF.

The one rule that governs how everything is sent

Change Notice CN-1 replaced the mailing rule outright. As amended, section 13.c reads:

“All notifications will be sent via regular mail.”

As amended by CN-1 at p. 1 (October 20, 2016), amending PS 1490.06 § 13.c at p. 9.

That sentence matters more than it looks, and it is the single most likely thing to be got wrong by anyone reading this policy from a text extraction rather than from the PDF. The base 2002 text read “Initial and subsequent notifications will be sent via regular mail with the exception of escape notifications, which must be mailed via certified mail, return receipt requested.” CN-1 struck “Initial and subsequent,” inserted “All,” and struck the entire escape exception. The Change Notice states its own purpose in terms: it “provides guidance for removing the requirement to send any notification via certified mail/return receipt requested.”

CN-1 made three further deletions in the same operation:

Provision	What CN-1 did
§ 13.c, BP-323 sentence	Deleted in full: “However, the Victim and Witness Notice form (BP-323) may be completed as needed for the appropriate notification.”
§ 13.(3), Escapes	Deleted “forwarding a BP-323 form to the victim by” and “certified mail, return receipt requested”; inserted VNS and the notification preference
§ 17.b, Correspondence and Filing	Deleted the entire certified-mail paragraph and replaced it with a new § 17.b on documenting all communication on the Victim Notification Record

Verified by rendering pages 1–2 of the original CN-1 PDF, where deletions are struck through in red and insertions are bolded and highlighted.

The replacement § 17.b, as amended, reads:

“Unit staff must document all communication (e.g., telephone, correspondence, etc.) with a victim(s), including unsuccessful contact attempts, on the Victim Notification Record, Attachment B. The Victim Notification Record must be filed in the Privacy Folder, Section I of the Inmate Central File, and may not be disclosed to the inmate. This information may only be disclosed to court officials or law enforcement agency personnel on a need-to-know basis.”

As amended by CN-1 at p. 2, replacing PS 1490.06 § 17.b at p. 17.

Who counts as a victim or a witness

The definitions are regulation, not policy. Program Statement 1490.06 prints its own typographic key — “[Bracketed Bold – Rules] / Regular Typed – Implementing Information” — and section 9 is bracketed, meaning it reproduces 28 C.F.R. § 551.151. We verified the regulation independently; the definitions below are the regulation’s own words:

Term	Definition, verbatim from 28 C.F.R. § 551.151
victim	“generally defined as someone who suffers direct or threatened physical, emotional, or financial harm as the result of the commission of a crime. The term ‘victim’ also includes the immediate family of a minor or a homicide victim.”
witness	“someone who has information or evidence concerning a crime, and provides information regarding this knowledge to a law enforcement agency. Where the witness is a minor, the term ‘witness’ includes an appropriate family member. The term ‘witness’ does not include defense witnesses or those individuals involved in the crime as a perpetrator or accomplice.”
serious crime	“a criminal offense that involves personal violence, attempted or threatened personal violence or significant property loss.”
release from a Bureau institution	“an inmate’s furlough, parole (including appearance before the Parole Commission), transfer to a State or local detention facility, transfer to a community corrections center, mandatory release, expiration of sentence, escape (including apprehension), death, and other such release-related information.”

Three things follow from the text. “Serious crime” is not limited to violent crime — “significant property loss” is in the definition, and it is not further defined. “Witness” expressly excludes defense witnesses and anyone involved in the crime as a perpetrator or accomplice. And “release” is a broad term of art here: it covers a furlough and a transfer to a halfway house, not only walking out the door.

How someone gets on the list — and off it

Getting on. 28 C.F.R. § 551.152(a) provides that “A victim and/or witness of a serious crime who wants to be notified of a specific inmate’s release must make this request to the United States Attorney in the district where the prosecution occurred,” and that requests the Bureau receives directly “will be referred to the U.S. Attorney in the district of prosecution for approval.” Section 551.152(b) provides that institution staff “shall promptly notify the victim and/or witness when his or her request for notification has been received,” and shall advise each approved person of their responsibility to report address and telephone changes.

Staying on. The Program Statement puts the burden of keeping contact details current on the person who asked for notice. Address and telephone changes go to the Correctional Programs Branch, Unit Management Section, Central Office, so that they are entered against every linked victim record. Each victim is assigned a Victim Identification Number (VIN) and a Personal Identification Number (PIN) to access the automated system, and if those are lost, unit staff regenerate the initial letter to the address held in the system.

Coming off. 28 C.F.R. § 551.153 sets three routes:

“(a) A victim and/or witness may request cancellation of the notification by contacting either the Bureau of Prisons or the U.S. Attorney from the prosecuting district. The Bureau of Prisons shall notify the victim and/or witness that his or her request for notification has been cancelled.

(b) Bureau of Prisons staff may cancel a notification request when the victim and/or witness has not responded within 60 calendar days to a Bureau of Prisons inquiry concerning whether the victim and/or witness wishes to continue receiving notification of the inmate’s release(s).

(c) A notification request by a victim and/or witness ordinarily terminates when the inmate has completed service of the sentence for the serious crime which resulted in the request for notification.”

The 60-day silence rule in (b) is the one that catches people. A request can be canceled because an inquiry went unanswered — and if the address in the system is stale, the inquiry may never have arrived. Before canceling in a returned-mail case, the Program Statement directs staff to document every contact attempt on the Victim Notification Record, contact Directory Assistance to verify or update the address, and contact the U.S. Attorney’s Office victim-witness coordinator for input; the Unit Manager then sends a memorandum to Central Office “when all attempts to notify the victim have been unsuccessful for 60 calendar days from the date of the mailing.”

What victim and witness notification means for you

If you are a victim or a witness

The single most useful thing on this page is where the request goes: to the United States Attorney’s office in the district where the case was prosecuted, not to the prison. That is the regulation, and the Bureau will refer a request made directly to it back to that office anyway. The second most useful thing is the 60-day rule — an unanswered inquiry can end a notification request, so keeping the address and telephone number current with Central Office is not a formality.

We cannot tell you whether you are enrolled, and neither can this page. If you want to know your status, or to correct your contact details, the victim-witness coordinator at the U.S. Attorney’s office that handled the prosecution is the office that can actually check.

It is also worth knowing what the Program Statement does not promise. It is agency policy, not law. The statutes behind it — the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and the services provision at 34 U.S.C. § 20141 — each say expressly that they do not create a damages claim: § 3771(d)(6) provides that nothing in the chapter authorizes “a cause of action for damages” against the United States or its officers, and § 20141(d) states that the section “does not create a cause of action or defense.” What the CVRA does give a victim is a right to assert: § 3771(a)(2) confers “[t]he right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused,” and § 3771(d)(3) provides that the rights “shall be asserted in the district court in which a defendant is being prosecuted for the crime or, if no prosecution is underway, in the district court in the district in which the crime occurred.”

If you are the family of someone inside

You will not be told whether a VWP assignment exists, and neither will they. Section 17.c of the Program Statement states that “An inmate’s inclusion or the victim’s participation in VNS must not be disclosed to the inmate or any unauthorized third party,” and section 17.d directs that material indicating VWP status “must not be filed in the disclosable sections of the Inmate Central File.” As amended, section 17.b provides that the Victim Notification Record “may not be disclosed to the inmate.” So the answer to “how do I find out if there’s a victim notification on this case” is that the Bureau will not tell you.

The place this becomes concrete for a family is the visiting and telephone list, and it is the paragraph to read if anyone in your family was named as a victim in the case. Section 16 directs unit staff to review a VWP inmate’s visiting and telephone list “to ensure the inmate is not attempting to communicate with his or her victim(s) without prior written approval,” and before a victim can be added to either list, the Unit Manager must:

“a. Contact the appropriate U.S. Attorney’s Office VWP Coordinator for his or her input;

b. Ensure that the victim is informed of the inmate’s request; and

c. Obtain written approval from the Warden before placing the victim on the inmate’s visiting or telephone list.”

Reproduced from PS 1490.06 at p. 16.

Read that as a family: a request to add a relative who was a victim in the case triggers a call to the prosecutor’s office and a communication to that person telling them the request was made. If they say they do not want to be on the list, the Program Statement directs that the inmate be told the request is denied, under the Bureau’s telephone and visiting policies. This is why families are sometimes blindsided — the mechanism is not arbitrary, it is section 16 working as written. General visiting mechanics are at inmate visitation; the correspondence rules are at correspondence.

Section 17.d adds a related caution: where staff become aware that a VWP inmate is corresponding inappropriately with a victim or witness, the Unit Manager must notify the Special Investigative Supervisor and request that the person be placed on the institution’s mail monitoring list, and follow the correspondence policy if restricted general correspondence status is warranted.

If you are counsel: victim and witness notification

Four practical points.

Compassionate release triggers a victim-notification step. Section 13.c.(8) directs that during the institution’s review of a compassionate release request, “unit staff must notify the victims and solicit comments to be incorporated into the Wardens referral memorandum.” VNS does not create that notification automatically — staff must build it manually — which means it is a step that can be skipped, and it is one of the reasons a warden-level request can sit. If you are preparing a request, it is worth knowing that a comment-solicitation step exists inside the Bureau’s own process. The framework is at compassionate release / reduction in sentence.

The Victim Notification Record is a Privacy Folder document. Attachment B is filed in the Privacy Folder, Section I of the Inmate Central File, and by the terms of amended § 17.b it may not be disclosed to the inmate; disclosure is limited to “court officials or law enforcement agency personnel on a need-to-know basis.” That placement matters for any records strategy — see Central File and records and FOIA and Privacy Act requests.

The escape and immediate-release paths run through a fax form. Attachment H, the Escape/Immediate Release/Call Cancellation form, is faxed to the VNS Call Center to initiate telephonic notification, and is also the mechanism for stopping calls to someone who is being contacted in error. The Program Statement prints the VNS Helpdesk numbers on the attachment.

Check the edition and check the strikethrough. Anyone working from a text version of this Program Statement rather than the PDF will see the deleted 2002 language sitting in the document as though it were still operative — including the certified-mail requirement for escape notifications, which CN-1 removed. Work from the PDF.

What changed in the victim notification program

The base Program Statement is dated 23 May 2002 and rescinded PS 1490.05, Victim and Witness Notification (6/21/00). Its own Summary of Changes lists five items: adding text and procedures for the National Victim of Crime Notification System (VNS); removing the requirement to send final release notifications by certified mail, return receipt requested; removing the requirement to send carbon copies of notification letters to the U.S. Attorney Victim/Witness Coordinator; incorporating procedures to notify inmate victims regarding incarcerated offenders; and incorporating procedures for when a victim is compromised.

Change Notice CN-1, dated 20 October 2016, is the only amendment since, and it finished the job the 2002 edition started — removing certified mail from the remaining notification, the escape notice. Its four operations are set out in the table above.

Nothing has changed since 2016. PS 1490.06 was not among the twenty-three Program Statements reissued effective 22 June 2026, nor among the Feb–May 2026 reissues.

That leaves a real currency gap, and it is the most important thing on this page for a reader trying to understand the legal framework. The base Program Statement lists its statutory foundations as the Victim and Witness Protection Act of 1982, the Crime Control Act of 1990, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, and the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance of January 31, 2000. It does not cite the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3771 — which is unsurprising, because the CVRA was enacted in 2004, two years after the base edition, and CN-1 did not add it. The services provision the 2002 edition would have known as 42 U.S.C. § 10607 now appears at 34 U.S.C. § 20141, where subsection (c)(5) directs that “After trial, a responsible official shall provide a victim the earliest possible notice of— (A) the scheduling of a parole hearing for the offender; (B) the escape, work release, furlough, or any other form of release from custody of the offender; and (C) the death of the offender, if the offender dies while in custody.” That is the statutory duty the Bureau’s program implements, and it is not named in the Program Statement.

The internal cross-references have also drifted. Several sections point to “Section 12” where the notification procedures are in section 13, and section 19 points to “Sections 8.a., 8.b., and 8.c.” for the definitions of victim, witness and serious crime, which are in section 9. The referenced directives are stale as well — the Program Statement cites the 1998 compassionate release policy, a 1999 visiting policy and a 2002 telephone policy, all since superseded. None of that changes the notification clocks, which are the operative content, but it does mean a citation lifted from this document should be checked before it is relied on.

Where people get stuck asking the prison instead of the prosecutor

Asking the prison instead of the prosecutor. The regulation routes the request to the United States Attorney in the district of prosecution, and the Bureau refers direct requests back there for approval. A letter to a warden asking to be added to a notification list is not the mechanism, and it will cost time. Route: the victim-witness coordinator at the U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the case.

A stale address ending a notification request. Under § 551.153(b) the Bureau may cancel a request where a victim or witness “has not responded within 60 calendar days” to an inquiry about whether they want to keep receiving notice. If the address on file is out of date, the inquiry may never arrive and the silence still counts. Route: send address and telephone changes to the Correctional Programs Branch, Unit Management Section, Central Office, as the Program Statement directs, and confirm them with the U.S. Attorney’s victim-witness coordinator as well.

Expecting notice of an event the policy does not cover. Section 13.c.(9) states that “Unit staff are not required to notify victims/witnesses when a VWP inmate is temporarily released on writ to other law enforcement authorities, or an escorted trip.” Section 7 provides that the notification procedures “ordinarily do not apply” to pretrial, holdover and detainee status, except where such a person with a VWP assignment releases, escapes or dies. And section 8 provides that where the victim is themselves incarcerated, the ordinary time frames “ordinarily do not apply,” because staff must weigh the safety of both people. Route: read the event list above before concluding a notice was missed. Several categories are excluded by design.

Assuming the notification is enforceable against the Bureau. A Program Statement is the Bureau’s instruction to its own staff. The regulation binds; the statutes create rights but both expressly disclaim a damages action — § 3771(d)(6) and § 20141(d). Under § 3771(c)(1), officers and employees of the Department of Justice and other federal agencies “shall make their best efforts to see that crime victims are notified of, and accorded, the rights described in subsection (a)” — a best-efforts duty, and the Bureau is a Department of Justice component. Route: where a CVRA right is at stake, § 3771(d)(3) puts it in the district court of prosecution, and that is a matter for counsel rather than for an administrative remedy filed inside a prison.

Trying to find the BP-323. The Victim and Witness Notice form is referenced throughout this Program Statement and is the document a victim actually receives in the mail. The Bureau does not publish it. We checked bop.gov’s public form set on 7 September 2026 and no BP-323 is posted there. What the Program Statement does tell you about its content is specific: section 8 of the form carries the apprehension date and current location or designation after an escape; a furlough BP-323 shows only the city and state and the dates; an unescorted-transfer BP-323 shows the institution’s name and address and the transfer date.

Related BOP policy on victim and witness notification

The events that trigger a notice are governed by other Program Statements, and those are where the underlying rules live:

• Compassionate release / reduction in sentence — the process into which the § 13.c.(8) victim-comment step feeds
• Furloughs and halfway house placement procedures — two of the “release” events in the regulation’s definition
• Community corrections manual — the Community Corrections Manager’s role in notifications for people at a residential reentry center
• Inmate visitation and correspondence — the section 16 and 17 consequences for a visiting or telephone list
• Central File and records and FOIA and Privacy Act requests — where the Privacy Folder documents sit and how records are sought
• Pretrial inmates — the population section 7 largely carves out
• Administrative Remedy Program — for an incarcerated person’s dispute about a visiting or telephone list decision

The companion page for relatives is what families should know about federal prison. Where a compassionate release request is the live question, our federal compassionate release practice explains how the firm builds one.

Frequently Asked Questions About Victim and Witness Notification

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