This page explains where the facts on our federal prison pages come from, how often we re-check them, and how to tell us we got something wrong.
Every facility page, policy explainer and prison-life page on this site carries a dated verification stamp. This page is what that stamp links to.
Where the facts come from
| What | Source | How we use it |
|---|---|---|
| Program Statement numbers, edition dates, change notices | The Bureau of Prisons’ own policy index and the PDF of each statement | Read directly from BOP. The PDF’s own header controls over any index or summary. |
| Facility addresses, phone and fax numbers, mailing formats, judicial district, population | BOP’s published locations data and each facility’s page on bop.gov | Generated from BOP’s records rather than retyped, so our tables cannot drift from theirs by transcription. |
| Statutes and regulations | uscode.house.gov and ecfr.gov | We read the section text. We do not rely on a summary of it. |
| Court decisions | The court’s own opinion | Quoted from the opinion, never from a secondary description of it. |
| Forms | The BP-form PDFs published by BOP | Linked directly, by form number. |
We do not treat another law firm’s website, a prison-consulting site, an encyclopedia entry, an AI-generated summary or a case aggregator as authority for what the law or a policy says.
How often we re-check
- Policy pages: monthly. An automated check reads BOP’s live policy index across all eight policy series — currently 297 statements in force — and compares every Program Statement number, edition date and change notice against what our pages say. It reports only what has changed.
- Facility pages: quarterly, against BOP’s published locations data.
- Immediately, whenever BOP reissues a policy we cover. The Bureau reissued 23 Program Statements on a single day in June 2026; the check is designed for exactly that.
A stamp on one of our pages means a person confirmed the page against the source on that date. If a check finds a difference, the page shows the last date we actually verified it until a person has reviewed the change. We would rather show you an older date we can stand behind than a current-looking one we cannot.
What the stamp means, and what it does not
A verification stamp means the numbers, dates and citations on that page matched their primary source on that date.
It does not mean the page is legal advice, that a policy will be applied to a particular person the way the text reads, or that any outcome is likely. A Program Statement is the Bureau’s own internal policy — it is not a statute and not a regulation. The regulations in 28 C.F.R. bind the Bureau; a Program Statement is its instruction to staff for applying them. Courts treat that difference as significant, and so do we.
Bureau staff exercise discretion within these rules. Nothing on this site can tell you how that discretion will be exercised in a particular case.
When a policy changes
We keep the superseded edition noted rather than deleting it. People are often working from the edition that was in force when something happened to them, and a page that silently swaps in a new number leaves them unable to tell what applied at the time. Where an edition has been replaced, the page says so, gives both numbers, and links the current PDF.
Who writes and reviews these pages
Pages in our federal prison sections are written by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, a federal prison expert whose authority is grounded in both formal legal training and firsthand experience of the federal Bureau of Prisons, and reviewed by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., who leads the firm’s federal criminal defense and appellate practice.
Tell us if we are wrong
If a number, date, address or citation on this site does not match the source — or if you have the current version of a document we are citing in an older edition — we want to know. Corrections go to the firm’s contact address, and we will name the correction and its date on the page we fix.
This page describes our editorial process. It is general information about the federal prison system, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026