START HERE — RELEASE DATES

How to Check a Federal Release Date — and Make Sure It’s Right

The date on the BOP website is a projection built from layers of math: the sentence imposed, jail credit, good conduct time, and First Step Act credits. Any layer can be wrong. Here is where every number lives, what it means, and how a family verifies the whole stack without paying anyone.

LAST REVIEWED: July 5, 2026 · FEDERAL SYSTEM ONLY · EDUCATIONAL — NOT LEGAL ADVICE

TIME LEDGER — CASE FILE SUMMARY VERIFY THE MATH

Public source	BOP Inmate Locator at bop.gov — shows name, register number, facility, and projected release date
Full record	Sentence Monitoring Computation Data + FSA Time Credit Assessment, available to the person inside from their unit team
The layers	Sentence imposed → prior custody (jail) credit → good conduct time → FSA credits → projected release date
Common errors	Missing jail credit, wrong FSA eligibility coding, credits earned but not applied, stale conditional placement dates
Cost to verify	$0 — every document listed here is free to request

Step one: the public projected release date

The Bureau of Prisons publishes a projected release date for nearly everyone in its custody through the Inmate Locator on bop.gov. Search by name or by the eight-digit register number, and the listing returns the facility and a release date. That date already assumes full good conduct time will be earned, and — since the BOP’s systems were updated — it should also reflect applied First Step Act credits.

Write the date down together with the date you looked it up. Families who track the public date over time build the single most useful piece of evidence in a computation dispute: a record of when the projection moved and by how much. A date that jumps later with no disciplinary incident, or that fails to move after months of programming, is a flag worth pulling on.

Step two: the sentence computation record

The public date is a summary; the real math lives in a document called Sentence Monitoring Computation Data, generated by the BOP’s Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas. It shows the sentence imposed, the date the sentence began, prior custody credit awarded under 18 U.S.C. §3585(b), projected good conduct time, and the resulting dates. The person in custody can ask their case manager for a current copy at any time, and should — this document is the foundation of every audit.

Alongside it sits the FSA Time Credit Assessment, which lists eligibility status, PATTERN risk levels, credits earned to date, credits applied toward early release, and credits applied toward prerelease custody. Since October 2024 the computation also displays conditional placement dates that project when halfway house or home confinement should begin. Our conditional placement date guide decodes those lines in full.

Understanding the layers of the date

A federal release date is built in layers, and each layer has its own statute and its own failure modes. The base layer is the sentence imposed by the court, measured in months. The second layer is prior custody credit — time spent in official detention before the federal sentence began that has not been credited against another sentence. Missing jail credit is one of the oldest and most common computation errors, especially for people who moved between state and federal custody.

The third layer is good conduct time: up to 54 days per year of the sentence imposed, which the computation projects forward on the assumption of clear conduct. The final layer is First Step Act time credits, which can move the release date up to 365 days earlier and extend prerelease custody beyond that. An error in any layer propagates into the public date, which is why verifying only the final number tells you almost nothing.

How to run the audit at the kitchen table

Gather three things: the judgment and commitment order from the sentencing court (the family can obtain it from the court’s PACER system or from the person’s former defense counsel), the sentence computation, and the FSA assessment. Then work the layers. Does the sentence on the computation match the judgment? Does jail credit match the actual dates in pretrial detention? Multiply years of the sentence by 54 — does projected good conduct time match?

For the FSA layer, use our free calculator: enter the sentence, the earning rate, and the months of programming, and compare its estimate against the credits on the assessment. The calculator is an estimate, not the BOP’s official computation — but a gap of weeks or months between estimate and record is exactly the kind of discrepancy that deserves a written question to the unit team.

The dates beyond the release date

Families fixate on the release date, but three earlier dates often matter more to daily life. The FTC Conditional Placement Date projects when FSA credits should move the person to prerelease custody. The Second Chance Act Conditional Placement Date projects halfway-house placement under the separate authority of 18 U.S.C. §3624(c). And the home detention eligibility date marks when home confinement can begin under that same statute.

These dates drive the unit team’s referral timeline: halfway house referrals are typically worked up many months before placement, so a stale or missing conditional date quietly costs real time at home. Our guides to halfway house placement and home confinement explain how each is set and what to do when the referral machinery stalls.

When the date is wrong: what actually works

Start specific and start in writing. A request that says the computation shows 120 FSA credits but 14 months of clear programming at 15 days per 30 should show roughly 210 — please explain or correct — is far more effective than a general complaint that the date looks wrong. The person inside raises it with the case manager first; if that fails, the Administrative Remedy Program (BP-8 through BP-11) is the formal, free escalation path with enforceable deadlines.

If the BOP denies the final appeal or blows its own response deadlines, computation disputes go to federal court through a §2241 habeas petition filed in the district of confinement — pro se, for a five-dollar fee. Courts routinely decide jail-credit, good-conduct-time, and FSA-application disputes on the paper record the administrative process created. That is why the audit and the paper trail come first: they are the case.

What families get wrong most often

Three misreadings cause most false alarms. First, the public date already includes projected good conduct time — subtracting 54 days per year from it double-counts. Second, FSA credits toward early release cap at 365; credits above the cap are not missing, they are queued for prerelease custody. Third, a detainer or a final order of removal can lawfully freeze application of credits even while earning continues, which looks like an error but is the statute working as written — see our detainers guide.

The flip side: three real errors get dismissed as normal. Eligibility coding that contradicts the judgment. An earning rate stuck at 10 when two consecutive minimum or low PATTERN assessments should have raised it to 15. And conditional placement dates that never update after credits post. None of those are normal, and every one of them is challengeable for free.

Keep a family ledger

The habit that separates families who recover time from families who lose it is boring: a dated log. Every locator check, every computation copy, every program completion certificate, every unit-team conversation — one line each, with dates. When a dispute arises, that ledger turns your side of the story from recollection into record, and records are what the BP process and the courts respond to.

If you want structure, our Navigator membership includes the release-date tracker and a monthly bulletin covering BOP computation changes, and higher tiers add the full self-help template library and procedural coaching. Or do it all with a notebook and this site’s free guides — the point is that the math gets checked, not who sells you the graph paper.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I find a federal inmate’s release date for free?

The BOP Inmate Locator at bop.gov lists the projected release date for people in federal custody. Search by name or register number. The full underlying math — the sentence computation and FSA Time Credit Assessment — is available to the person inside from their unit team at no cost.

Why did my loved one’s release date suddenly change?

Common lawful causes: newly applied FSA credits (date moves earlier), a disciplinary sanction taking good conduct time (later), a corrected computation, or a detainer freezing credit application. If none of those happened, request the current computation and ask the unit team in writing to explain the change. Unexplained movement is worth challenging.

Does the BOP date already include good conduct time?

Yes. The projected release date assumes the person will earn full good conduct time — up to 54 days per year of the sentence imposed. It should also reflect applied First Step Act credits. Do not subtract those amounts again when doing your own estimate.

What is the difference between the release date and the conditional placement dates?

The release date is when the sentence ends and supervised release begins. Conditional placement dates project the earlier move to a halfway house or home confinement under FSA credits or the Second Chance Act. For daily life, the placement dates often matter first — they determine when someone comes home in practice.

Can a family member fix a computation error directly with the BOP?

The formal remedy process belongs to the person in custody, who files pro se. Families play the support role: gathering court documents, tracking dates, and preparing information the filer uses. That division is not a technicality — it is how the system is lawfully used, and it works.

How to Check a Federal Release Date — and Make Sure It&rsquo;s Right