The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a Department of Justice federal law enforcement agency charged with managing incarcerated individuals. The BOP is led by a Director, who in term serves under the direction of the U.S. Attorney General. The BOP summarizes their activities as “protecting public safety by ensuring that federal offenders serve their sentences of imprisonment in facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and provide reentry programming to ensure their successful return to the community.”
Title 18, Section 4042 of the U.S. Code establishes the BOP’s duties, which include: managing and regulating Federal penal and correctional institutions; providing suitable quarters for all inmates; providing for the protection, instruction, and discipline of all inmates; providing technical assistance to State, tribal, and local governments in the improvement of their correctional systems; establishing prerelease planning procedures; and establishing reentry planning procedures.
The BOP has custody over approximately 150,000 inmates, about 85% of whom are confined in BOP-operated facilities.
[Last updated in December of 2021 by the Wex Definitions Team]