Custody Reviews

I thought you might want to know about one of the tasks I did during my first couple of weeks at Eastern. At Eastern inmates' custody classifications' are reviewed every six months. Because the inmate arrive at Eastern at different times, each case manager has about seven or eight (or sometimes up to sixteen!) inmates to review every month. A checklist is completed to determine if the inmate should remain at medium custody (eastern), be demoted to closed custody, or promoted to minimum custody. I was given access to the OPUS (Offender Population Unified System) database in order to find all the facts required of the checklist and then I compiled it all from the computer. Some of the things that must be written into the final report of the inmate's review include the length of the inmate's sentence, if he has any infractions, any escapes or any stg (security threat group, a.k.a. gang) affiliations. There are two very important things to know when making the ultimate decision and those are the Case Factor Score and the PRD (Projected Release Date.) The CFS is based on many factors and must be between 0 and 11 for an inmate to be considered for minimum custody. The PRD is important because an inmate must be within 60 months of his PRD or parole eligibility date in order to be considered for minimum custody.

I know none of this is of much use to anyone reading this but I'm just learning so much stuff and I wanted to share it with people.

Before anyone thinks that the Department of Corrections is allowing an intern to decide the custody status of inmates, I must mention that many of the inmates on my boss's case load have a federal detainer on them. A federal detainer means that some time during his sentence the inmate will attend a hearing to determine if he will be deported or remain in the U.S. after he finishes his sentence. No matter how low the inmate's score is he will be retained at a medium custody facility because he needs to be tracked in order to be deported and because of the higher priveleges an inmate receives in minimum custody he is considered a high flight risk. I reviewed about seven inmates' cases over the past two weeks and all of them are staying here at Eastern because of federal detainers.