Behind the walls of America's prisons are jailhouse lawyers, like myself, seeking emancipation. Equipped with passion, time and skill we trace the cracks within archaic and “modern” law to force open bondage holding us from the many possibilities of life.
Jailhouse lawyering is akin to reverse-engineering. We know the problem very well, but have to work backward to uncover how it came to be. We start from the dusty memories of grade school civics class talking about the supposed three branches of government and follow the law from Congress, to the agency charged with carrying it out, and finally to the courts.
Jailhouse Lawyer Calvin Duncan at the Angola Louisiana State Penitentiary Law Library in 1986. Via Wikimedia
When Congress writes a law where an agency is tasked with implementation, crucial details are often lacking. It is in this space agencies, like the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), take liberties on execution. Like any great bureaucracy the BOP has and will interpret to its self-interest. It may add or revise language that was not in the text to begin with or ignore and operate independent of congressional intent.
Congress wrote the First Step Act (formally known as the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act) enabling eligible Federal Inmates to earn Time Credits that reduce the amount of time a person spends in prison. The BOP interpreted and codified them in Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). In doing so, it re-framed when an inmate "arrives" in custody and thus when they become eligible for credits.
This simple bureaucratic shift caused thousands of inmates to stay locked up longer than they should.
The push-back was strong, led by those who refused to accept the BOP’s narrow interpretations as final. Armed with the Writ of Habeas Corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, they launched a series of strategic strikes against the BOP’s "arrival" rule: the regulation that claimed you couldn't earn credits until you physically stepped foot inside their designated federal facility.
- Sharma v. Peters (M.D. Ala., Nov. 4, 2024): A federal district court ruled that BOP regulations could not categorically use extra layers of eligibility restrictions (such as denying or delaying credits during transit, temporary holds, or administrative detention like the SHU) that conflicted with the clear text of the FSA.
- Benson v. Warden FCI Edgefield, (4th Cir. Apr. 22, 2026): Dismantled the BOP’s reliance on administrative deference, affirming that courts, not agencies, have the final word on how the law is interpreted.
- Miles v. Bowers (1st Cir. Apr. 27, 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that FSA time credits can accrue from the statutory commencement of a federal sentence - not from the date an inmate physically arrives at a designated (BOP) facility.
- DiPippa v. Warden, FCI Elkton (N.D. Ohio, Aug. 17, 2026) The BOP tried to move the goalposts, arguing that even if the "arrival" rule was dead, I wasn't "successfully participating" simply because I was housed outside the designated institution.
I filed pro se, to fight back.
I argued that the law required credits to be available "throughout the entire term of incarceration," regardless of the BOP's internal housing designations. The court agreed, striking down the BOP’s attempt to use narrow regulatory subsections as a blanket bar to liberty. By September 1, the BOP finally surrendered, fully granting the credits I had fought for.
Facing a series of adverse court rulings in a legal landscape increasingly reluctant to treat agency interpretations as scripture, the BOP put an interim final rule into effect on September 30, 2026, removing the designated-facility-arrival language from 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a). Under the amended rule, an eligible prisoner may begin earning First Step Act time credits after the term of imprisonment commences, not only after arrival at the designated BOP facility.
It was a hard-won victory from the very people the law had attempted to overlook, the incarcerated.
Brian “Peppy” Di Pippa is a liberationist, subversive media propagandist, and pro se litigant dedicated to opening the cages and fighting both within and against the carceral state. Learn more at https://freepeppy.org/