Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by Jamie Fellner, senior advisor in the US Program of Human Rights Watch, and Mary Price, vice president and general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

At Human Rights Watch, this report was edited by Maria McFarland, US Program acting director, and Tom Porteous, deputy program director. Dinah Pokempner, general counsel, provided legal review. At Families Against Mandatory Minimums, it was reviewed by Julie Stewart, president, Molly Gill, legislative affairs counsel, Kate Taylor, research associate, and Kevin Ring, consultant. Editing and production assistance was provided by Elena Vanko, US Program senior associate. Anna Lopriore, creative manager, Grace Choi, publications director, Kathy Mills, publications specialist, and Fitzroy Hepkins, administrative manager, greatly assisted with production.

Human Rights Watch and Families Against Mandatory Minimums are grateful to the many prisoners and their loved ones, advocates, and attorneys who helped us gain an understanding of the compassionate release process and who trusted us with their stories. We note with regret that some prisoners we met or learned about did not succeed in securing compassionate release and died behind bars, separated from their families. Consistent with longstanding practice, in this report we have used pseudonyms for current prisoners.

We also wish to acknowledge our gratitude to the Bureau of Prisons for its cooperation and assistance to us in connection with the research for this report. In particular, we appreciate the openness to this project shown by BOP Director Charles Samuels and the willingness of Kathleen Kenney, BOP assistant director and general counsel, to patiently and forthrightly answer our many questions, to provide statistical data, and to facilitate our visit to the Federal Medical Center at Butner, North Carolina. We also are grateful to the willingness of Sara Revell, then warden at FMC Butner, and her staff in coordinating our visit to the facility and our meetings with staff and prisoners.

We regret that the same cooperation and commitment to transparency was not shown by the office of the deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, which refused to meet with us. The deputy attorney general also refused to respond directly to the written questions we submitted concerning the Department’s policies about compassionate release and guidance to the BOP.

Finally, we thank the former and current government officials who were willing to speak with us about compassionate release and give us the benefit of their insights and experience, even though almost all preferred to do so off the record.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums would like to express its debt to Pastor Paul Jones, whose unflagging efforts on behalf of his imprisoned parishioner inspired this project, and to the families of James Michael Bowers (1939-2002) and Michael Mahoney (1954-2004), whose efforts to free their loved ones failed, but who compelled us to work to change the culture of “no” at the Bureau of Prisons.