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The Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Release Preparation and Transitional Reentry Programs

Report No. 04-16
March 2004
Office of the Inspector General


Appendix II
Statement on Management Controls

In planning and performing our audit of the BOP Preparation of Inmates for Reentry into Society, we considered the BOP’s management controls for the purpose of determining our auditing procedures. The evaluation was not made for the purpose of providing assurance on the management control structure as a whole; however, we noted certain matters that we consider reportable conditions under generally accepted government auditing standards.

  • The BOP did not ensure that its institutions set realistic occupational and educational completion goals.  Further, the program completion goals are stated as the number of completions rather than a percentage of completions, which does not accurately reflect program performance because it does not take into account the number of enrollments or the inmate population, see Finding I.
  • The BOP did not have a mechanism in place to hold institutions accountable for meeting goals. Additionally, institutions were not required to develop or implement corrective actions plans to remedy performance and ensure that goals are met in the future, see Finding I.
  • Despite the wide range in the percentage of inmates that successfully completed occupational programs and the percentage of inmates that withdrew from the mandatory GED program at institutions of the same security level, the BOP did not use the data for reviewing program performance at each of its institutions, see Finding I.
  • The BOP has only tracked the participation data for most of its psychological programs since January 2003.  However, the BOP does not use its data for reviewing program participation at each of its institutions, see Finding I.
  • The BOP also does not track the percentage of inmates that successfully complete the RPP at each of its institutions prior to release, see Finding I.
  • The BOP has not established a CCC utilization target for its high security institutions. Additionally, the BOP does not have a formal standardized process to ensure that institutions are held accountable for meeting their goals and that corrective actions plans are developed to remedy low CCC utilization, see Finding II.
  • The CCC utilization rates and targets cannot be used to determine whether all eligible inmates at each institution were released to the community through a CCC, as required by BOP policy, see Finding II.

Because we are not expressing an opinion on the BOP’s overall management control structure, this statement is intended solely for the information and use of the BOP in managing its programs designed to prepare inmates for reentry into society.