Good Time Credit in Jail: First Step Act, Losses, and Appeals

Good time credit is a reduction in a prison sentence given to people who follow the rules while incarcerated. In the federal system, someone serving more than a year can earn up to 54 days off for each year of the sentence the judge imposed, which works out to roughly a 15 percent reduction. A separate program created by the First Step Act of 2018 lets many people earn additional days by completing approved rehabilitative programs. Both types of credit can be taken away through the prison disciplinary process, and losing them is easier than earning them back.

How Much Time You Can Earn

Federal good time credit, formally called “good conduct time,” is set by 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). Anyone serving a federal sentence longer than one year, other than a life sentence, can earn up to 54 days of credit for each year of the sentence imposed by the court.¹ The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) decides each year whether the person’s compliance with facility rules was strong enough to award the full amount.

The math is straightforward once you know it applies to the sentence handed down, not the time actually served. Someone sentenced to 10 years can earn up to 540 days of credit if they stay clean every year, cutting roughly a year and a half off the sentence. Before the First Step Act, the BOP calculated the 54 days based on time served, which produced fewer credit days; the current formula gives more.²

There is an education piece. The BOP must consider whether the person has a high school diploma or GED, or is making satisfactory progress toward one, before awarding credit for that year.¹ In practice, the bar is not high. A person counts as making satisfactory progress unless they refuse to enroll in the literacy program, pick up a disciplinary write-up during it, or withdraw voluntarily.³

Extra Credit Through First Step Act Programs

On top of the 54-day good conduct time, the First Step Act created a second, independent type of credit for people who participate in approved programming. These are called earned time credits or FSA time credits, and the earning rate depends on the person’s assessed risk of reoffending:

Eligible inmates earn 10 days of credit for every 30 days of successful participation in an evidence-based recidivism reduction program or productive activity.⁴
People classified as minimum or low risk earn an extra 5 days per 30, for 15 total, provided their risk score has not gone up over two consecutive assessments.⁴

Qualifying activities include substance abuse treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy, anger management, vocational training, and educational courses. Holding a facility job also counts. The BOP publishes the list of approved offerings.

The BOP uses a tool called PATTERN to classify each person as minimum, low, medium, or high risk. To actually apply earned credits toward early transfer out of prison, a person generally needs to be classified as minimum or low risk on both the general and violent recidivism scales at their two most recent assessments.¹ Medium and high-risk inmates still bank the credits at the base rate; they simply cannot use them until their classification drops.

Who Cannot Earn First Step Act Credits

The 54-day good conduct time is available to almost everyone serving more than a year. First Step Act earned credits are not. Anyone convicted of an offense on the list in 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(D) is excluded from earning the additional credits entirely.⁴ That list is long and covers dozens of statutes, grouped roughly as follows:

Violent offenses such as murder, assault with intent to kill, carjacking, bank robbery resulting in death, drive-by shootings, and domestic assault by a habitual offender.
Terrorism and espionage offenses, including biological and chemical weapons crimes, destruction of aircraft or motor vehicles, sabotage, and gathering defense information for a foreign government.
All federal sexual abuse charges, sexual exploitation of children, and failure to register as a sex offender.
Peonage, slavery, and human trafficking offenses.
Using or possessing a firearm during a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, and repeat felon-in-possession charges.
Criminal street gang activity, threats against the President, escape from custody, genocide, prison contraband, and certain high-level drug offenses.⁵

People with disqualifying convictions still earn the standard 54-day good conduct time and can still participate in programs for other BOP incentives.² They just cannot earn the added FSA credits that lead to early transfer.

How the Credits Actually Shorten Time Inside

The two credit types come off the sentence in different ways.

Good conduct time subtracts directly from the sentence. A 10-year sentence with the full 540 days of good conduct time earned gives a projected release date roughly a year and a half earlier than the original.²

Earned time credits work differently. They do not erase part of the sentence; they move the person out of a cell earlier by shifting them into pre-release custody. That takes two forms:

Up to 12 months of supervised release can be started early using earned credits, but only if the original sentence already included a supervised release term.¹
Any remaining credits beyond that 12-month cap can be applied toward transfer to a residential reentry center (a halfway house) or to home confinement. The person is still in BOP custody during this phase.⁶

Earned credits reduce time behind walls, but the person stays under supervision until the underlying sentence runs out.

How You Lose Good Time Credit

Both types of credit can be forfeited through the prison disciplinary process. When staff witness or reasonably believe someone committed a prohibited act, they write an incident report. Serious infractions go to a Discipline Hearing Officer (DHO), who runs a hearing and decides both guilt and sanctions.⁷

The person charged gets written notice at least 24 hours before the hearing, though they can waive that. At the hearing they can appear in person or by video, make a statement, and present documentary evidence. The DHO issues a written decision describing the evidence relied on and the reasoning behind any sanctions.⁷ Loss of good conduct time is one of the sanctions available, and for certain serious offenses it is mandatory.⁸

The conduct that triggers credit loss runs from violence and possession of contraband to refusing a work assignment or failing to participate in a required program. The heavier the offense, the heavier the forfeiture, with new criminal acts and assaults carrying the steepest losses.

Challenging a Loss of Credit

The BOP’s Administrative Remedy Program handles appeals of DHO decisions. These appeals skip the institutional level and go directly to the Regional Director. The deadline to file is 20 calendar days from the DHO’s written response.⁹

If the Regional Director denies the appeal, the next step is a final appeal to the General Counsel’s office within 30 calendar days. That is the last stop inside the BOP. After exhausting this process, a person can seek review in federal court, but courts give substantial deference to BOP disciplinary decisions and overturn them only when the process was fundamentally flawed.

The Regional Director has 30 days to respond and the General Counsel has 40. If no response arrives within those windows (including any extensions), the inmate can treat the silence as a denial and move up. Missing any of these deadlines is one of the most common ways people give up the right to challenge a sanction.⁹

State Prisons and Local Jails Run Their Own Rules

Everything above is federal. The federal system houses roughly 13 percent of the total U.S. prison population; state systems set their own rules, and the variation is enormous. Some states offer credit that can cut a sentence by as much as half. Others are far more restrictive, and a handful have eliminated good time entirely for certain offense categories.

The principle is the same everywhere: behave, participate, and time comes off. But earning rates, eligible offenses, forfeiture rules, and program requirements differ in every state. Anyone in a state facility should look at that state’s statutes rather than the federal rules. County jails holding people on shorter sentences often have their own separate credit systems set by local or state law, and those frequently operate differently from both the federal system and state prison rules.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3624 – Release of a Prisoner
2
Federal Bureau of Prisons. First Step Act Overview
3
Federal Bureau of Prisons. Program Statement 5350.28 – Literacy Program (GED Standard)
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3632 – Development of Risk and Needs Assessment System
5
Federal Bureau of Prisons. Good Time Disqualifying Offenses
6
United States Sentencing Commission. First Step Act Earned Time Credits
7
eCFR. 28 CFR 541.8 – Discipline Hearing Officer Hearing
8
eCFR. 28 CFR Part 541 – Inmate Discipline and Special Housing Units
9
eCFR. 28 CFR Part 542 – Administrative Remedy